Drill down URL in PSQuery

Drill down URL is an exciting feature offered by PeopleSoft for users who base their daily work based on the query results. The drill down URL will take you directly to the context sensitive transaction page as soon as you click on the link that appears along with the query results. This eliminates the need of noting down the value and navigating to the component manually to enter the data and open up the page for editing.

Despite of the extended value this feature provides, most of the users are still using the old approach of noting down values and opening up the component manually. The main reason behind this should be the lack of awareness of the feature or lack of knowledge on how to configure a drill down URL in PS Queries. Since most of the PS queries are handled and created by the business users (although with the help of developers), they might not be updated on the enhancement done on PS QUERY by the PeopleSoft Tools team.

I will demonstrate a simple step by step instruction on how to configure drill down urls in PeopleSoft PS QUERY.

Step 1 : Go to expressions tab on your PS QUERY and click on Add Expression button.

Step 2: Select the expression type as drilling URL.

Step 3: Click on the appropriate type of URL you want to create.

Select Query URL if you want your URL to point to a different query result. Select Component URL if you want to open up a transaction page. Select External URL if you want to open up an external page like google. Select Attachment URL if you want to open up an attachment by clicking on the link. Select Free Form URL to create your own type of URL.

Step 3.1: Query URL – Enter the Portal, Node, Query and Output Formats for your destination PS QUERY. If your destination query has prompt fields, then you can pass the prompt values by clicking on the prompt button. It will list all the prompts in the destination query. You just select the corresponding fields from the present query to pass on the value.

If you want to display the link based on some information retrieved by the query then click on the select fields. Your query results will display these values as a hyper link to the destination PS Query.

Step 3.2: Component URL  - Click on the add content reference link and then select your destination transaction component.

Click on the Search Fields and select the corresponding field from the query result field. This will map your URL to the corresponding transaction.

Using Map URL option, you can make one of your query result field as the URL. The URL will display the corresponding field value, but when you click on it, it will take you to the transaction page.

Step 3.3: External URL -You can type in the URL in the URL field.

Step 3.4: Attachment URL – You needs to enter the details and the URL will point to the attachment.

Step 3.5: Free Form URL – In this option you can enter whatever URL you want to point to.

Step 4: If you have not selected any mapping fields in any of the above steps, then to display the URL you need to ass the expression as a field. To do so just click on the “Use as Field” on the corresponding expression. If you had already selected a mapping field, the URL will appear on the corresponding query output field.

These are the four simple steps that you need to do in order to invoke this powerful feature in PSQUERY. Even if you are a functional or business user of PeopleSoft system, you can configure your query within 5 minutes which will save much of your valuable time from the manual process you are following currently.