“During these sessions “Dr Flex & Dr LiveCycle”, observe your common Flex & LC symptoms. They advise on how to implement Adobe Enterprise Software and work in a healthy IT environment by giving you a FREE ‘health check’ session.” 

They also setup a blog where they will post all questions and answers so the community can benefit from this iniative ! Check it out : http://www.drflex.eu

You can see a list of new features + download at Adobe Labs.  

Looking forward to see you there !

ps : You probably already heared but MAX is coming back to Europe, this year we’ll have MAX Europe in Milan (Italy) early December.  

Through javascript you can get the user Id (This only works through Internet Explore !), so by using ExternalInterface in Flex you can call the javascript function that will get you the user id.

So first you wanna add the javascript to your index.template.html (in html-template folder of your flex builder project). Add the script to the script tag just below the body tag.

var wshShell = new ActiveXObject(“WScript.Shell”);
function getUserName()
{
return wshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(“%USERNAME%”);
} 

Then you can add to your MXML application this code to get the user id …

           try {
                    var name:String = ExternalInterface.call(‘getUserName’);
                    Alert.show(“name = ” + name);
                } catch (error:SecurityError) {
                    Alert.show(“A SecurityError occurred: ” + error.message + “\n”);
                } catch (error:Error) {
                    Alert.show(“An Error occurred: ” + error.message + “\n”);
                }
            } else {
                Alert.show(“External interface is not available for this container.”);
            }

 } 

 So as I said … it will only work on Internet Explore. Through the wshShell object you can also get the domainname if needed.

We’ll also have some Flex specialist at Adobe booth : James Ward, Christophe Coenraets, Marc Meewis and me. We also have invited Bruce Eckel to talk about his view on Flex and Java.

Ofcourse we’ll also try to have some fun by organizing the “Adobe Quest” … A cool way to get your hands on some cool Adobe gadgets … More on this later on …

And … just like last year I have 2 full conference passes to give away … How to win ? Post a comment to this item and tell me why you think Java and Flex/AIR are the perfect couple … The 2 most original posts will win a conference pass.

See you at Javapolis ? I’m looking forward to it !

So Livecycle ES has got an orchestration tool that allows you to build functionality by linking ”services” together. Each services stands for a specific piece of functionality. The product comes with a library of these services. (Generate PDF, Secure PDF, Read LDAP info, Send email, SQL, …) Livecycle ES Workbench, a tool build on top of eclipse, allows you to draw the orchestration in and configure it.  

By building a custom components you can extend the Livecycle ES functionality by creating your own services. A custom component is a Jar file that excist out of a java object, a configuration file and an icon which defines the visual representation in the Workbench. I have created the LC ES Share component, by building a java object that would call the Share Java API.
After writing the component, the component developer would hand over the Jar file to the Livecycle ES administrator so it can be deployed into the Livecycle ES platform. After deployement, it will become available as a service and will be visible in the Workbench. From this moment on you can drag and drop the service into the orchestration you would be building.

The image above shows a sample orchestration. In this orchestration I will first generate a PDF file, then I’ll upload it to Adobe Share and finally I send out an email with the notification. The Generate PDF and the email component are in the LC ES product, the Adobe Share component is the one I have build.

You would configer the Adobe Share component by defining it’s properties in the UI. Check out the screenshot below. The fields I have to define here, are the same as defined in my java object and configured in the xml configuration file.

Another advantage of the Livecycle ES platform is, that from the moment i deploy my Adobe Share component, it will not only become available as a service to my orchestration designer.The service containerr also automatically makes the functionality availabe as a SOAP service, EJB service and a Remoting endpoint. The Remoting endpoint allows you to interact with this piece of functionality from with a Flex application.
You can even add watched folders or email endpoints, to make the Share functionality available when dropping a file in a folder or receiving a file by email. Find more information on the service container in the Livecycle documentation. 

I have made the source available, and also the component which you can deploy directly into your LC ES platform. Find here how to deploy components. You can download Livecycle ES trial version if you don’t have it installed yet.

One nice extra  is that I added an ANT build file to the source,  that will build the java source, create the jar file and deploys it automatically to the Livecycle ES platform as discussed in this post.