Integrating your application with other Domino Volt applications

A Domino Volt application can be integrated as a service within another Domino Volt application.

You can use another application to provide data to populate a drop-down menu on your form or app page. You can only obtain data from a form in another Volt application. Or, you can search a list of products that are maintained by another application. The ability to share data is a powerful feature of Domino Volt.

Note: When you use another Domino Volt application as a service, mandatory items must be explicitly mapped in the service mapping Inputs and Outputs. Default Items in the form do not satisfy the mandatory requirement as they are not evaluated on the server. If any value is marked as mandatory, it must have a value that is mapped to it in the mappings dialog.
When mapping input parameters, each target has a Search Operator that can change how the inputs are interpreted. For example, you can apply a search operator to create an assignment that links the input with the target - and the operator. To apply the operator, set the View to constant and then type the operator keyword in the editable field. The following table contains the list of available search operators.
Table 1. Search Operators for service inputs.
Search Operators Description
equals Equal to
notequals Not equal to
lt Less than
lte Less than or equal to
gt Greater than
gte Greater than or equal to
contains The target contains the given word. The contains operator only works if the other application has a full text index. If the other application does not have a full text index, your service call will fail. See the notes below about using wildcards with the contains operator.
Note: When you use the contains operator, the value you specify may include wildcard characters. Use a question mark (?) in place of a single character in a word. Use an asterisk (*) in place of zero or more characters in a word. For example:
  • blue matches the whole word blue
  • blue??? matches bluejay, but not bluebird
  • blue* matches bluebird and bluejay, but not abluent
  • *blue* matches all of the above (abluent, blue, bluebird and bluejay)

The services also provide access to metadata about the records, such as author, creation time, and the current stage. When you call these services, metadata can be used to filter the results.

The search results can be sorted by form data, such as a field in an application, or by some metadata, such as the lastUpdated time. The default sort order is ascending. To change it to descending, you must prefix your sort field with DESC. For example, the following string sorts ascending, "F_Name". The following string sorts descending, "DESCF_Name".
Note: Sorting by an application field (F_Name, for example) only works if that field is designed to be sortable. If the sorting is not enabled for the field, results are returned in the default sort order.
The following values are available for you to use when you are searching with metadata:
Table 2. Metadata fields and their corresponding sort keys
Metadata field Sort key
Last update time "lastUpdated"
Author name "itemAuthor"
Stage name "flowState"
Line ID "dbId"

You can also limit the results by setting a Page Size that limits how many entries you return, or a Page, which limits pages to return. If you do not provide paging values, then all records that meet your filters are returned.

To see the list of applications available as services select the HCL Domino Volt Applications entry in the Service Catalog list. A list of all applications and methods available for Service mapping is shown. Each application can expose the following methods that are based on Access settings:

Retrieve
Use Retrieve retrieve a single record from another application. For example, use Retrieve to pre-populate information that is based on an employee serial number that is entered by the user into the form. The retrieve returns a single row, and cannot be mapped to a repeating or list item.
Search
Use Search to return a list of records from another application that meets the search criteria. For example, use Search to populate a drop-down with a list of values from another Domino Volt application. The results from a search must be mapped to a repeating/list, drop-down, or table item.
Delete
When Delete service method is called, it deletes the record in the target application that meets the supplied parameters. Use this method with caution as there is no way to retrieve the data after the record is deleted.
Create
The Create method is used to create a record in the target application. Create replicates a user interacting with, and submitting, the target form.
Update
The Update method is used to update an existing record in the target application. Update replicates a user interacting with, and submitting changes to a record in the target form