Current process for my use case involves the user accessing the equipment information in our ERP, the record for which includes a hyplerlink to open a specified inspection document from our DMS. Future state would be to have that hyperlink updated to open a specific inspection application in Tulip.
For that application, we are trying to structure apps in a “Terminal” architecture, with a common hub app and a bunch of nodes for the various inspection steps that may or may not be required based on the equipment being processed.
But for launching the hub app initially from our ERP, I’d like to be able to pass certain equipment information through to that app as part of the hyperlink, if that makes any sense. This would be recieved by the app somehow and loaded into one or more variables so the app could load appropriate inspection requirements, etc., for the equipment at hand.
Hi @jmlowden, thanks for the request and all the detail. I think I understand what you’re trying to achieve, but would you mind sharing more about “passing certain equipment information through the app as a hyperlink?”
If I understand correctly, the hyperlink is to a specific app, but you want to pass info from your ERP to the app to conduct routing logic?
I could imagine something like that: tulip-player://js93jrusk2oejwofmwp2kekfotkjrnd8j2kd9?equipment_id="0125"&department="QS"
And if the opened App has Variables with these parameter names (equipment_id and department) available, it will take those values.
But that will come with some complexity (different data types, length… what to allow and what is the limit) and security thoughts…
It seems like there are essentially two different functions here:
Taking a user from the ERP to the inspection apps
Ensuring the app has sufficient information to determine the necessary activities for the current piece of equipment.
A question: Is it necessary for these two things to occur at the same time? At a glance, these seem like they are unrelated items, and creating the bill-of-process for the required operation could occur separately, probably when it is first defined within the ERP. If such data is standard for the same kind of equipment maintenance, it could be stored in a reference table and called at app start.
Is it necessary? Perhaps not. But it is highly desired as it would provide a streamlined user experience and avoid the duplicate entry of data. Operators will have already scanned the set ID barcode and populated some information into SAP.
There is not only the use case, where the operator also has access to the ERP.
Another scenario is, when you get a QR-Code or an RFID attached to a Material for an order and the code will open the right app and opens it with the right order information.
Or what I also was trying to do is, when an automation detects changes and already decides what todos are for each responsible, they could get an Email with a link directly pointing on the open task, the automation was about.
(Currently I send a Mail with a task information and the responsible opens the app and has to search for the correct task even, if it is already named in the mail. This feels unnecessary.)
This got me thinking, if you stored the relevant data in a lookup table, and filtered the table based on the current logged in user and the app, perhaps that could limit the search results so they only (initially) see the app-relevant tasks for which the user was notified.
For our surgical loaner kits inspection use case, it is possible that a different user may need to take over the inspection after a certain point (i.e. shift change), or might need to change stations, so there also needs to be a manual “reassignment” of the inspection task. TBD whether we limit that to supervisory access or anyone on the shop floor.
Another thought I had, and I’m feeling like there is perhaps some benefit to this vs. writing a bunch of variable data into a table record…perhaps the QR code could have all the variable names and values delimited in some fashion, and the trigger logic could tease that apart and assign the necessary values to the corresponding app variables whenever that code is scanned…I’m thinking this might be more efficient than a table read/write - as long as the QR code content wouldn’t become obsolete through the process.
