When any set of actions require interaction with the Windchill server, either user interaction in the form of an action window or some data to be retrieved over the web, it is necessary to implement the action on the remote Windchill server. There are three steps to this server side customization:

To handle server side operations of DTI customization, create a new custom action. A custom action can be defined in any *-actions.xml file. For more information, see User Interface Customization.

For example, you could modify <Windchill>/codebase/config/actions/custom-actions.xml to introduce the following XML fragment as a child node to the listofactions root node.

This is the configuration for the test_action action defined for objects of type test_object. Invocation of this action would launch Test.jsp. On completion of interaction with the user interface rendered by this page, a response is built in TestFormProcessor and can be passed on to the client, if desired.

In case the server interaction involves any action windows, it is necessary to design the corresponding user interface. In its most simplistic form, the user interface can be a simple JSP file that resides on the server and performs some actions on a set of Windchill objects. For further information on implementing custom user interfaces, see User Interface Customization.

In case the server interaction involves any action window, it is necessary to design the corresponding user interface. In its most simplistic form, the user interface can be a simple JSP file that resides on the server and performs some actions on a set of Windchill objects. For further information on implementing custom user interfaces, see User Interface Customization.

When the data is to be submitted to the Windchill server, the form processor is responsible for generating the response to be returned to the client. The basic guideline of customizing Windchill UI remains the same, however.

For more information, see Customizing the UI with Ajax.