05-24-2013 01:25 AM
Ok so heres my issue, right now if I have a .dll in the plugins folder I can access the act instance by doing the following:
dim with events actApp as ActApplication
Public Sub OnLoad(ByVal actrunning As Act.UI.ActApplication) Implements Act.UI.IPlugin.OnLoad
actApp = actrunning
EndSub
This allows me to get the current contact and other values I need. My question is how do I get values like current contact from an external application, is it possible to get the current ACT! instance thats open?
05-24-2013 07:14 AM
Not that I'm aware of unless you have a way of passing your instance of the ActApplication object between applications
05-24-2013 07:24 AM - edited 05-24-2013 07:25 AM
This is just a thought. If your external application has your plugin DLL as a reference, you could possibly make your actApp object into a public (read-only) property/instance (in the plugin), so the external application could then use it. Again, just a thought and I have no idea if it'll work or not.
03-04-2014 06:15 PM
Just wondering if you ever found a resolution to this, I have the same requirement.
03-07-2014 03:29 PM
Generally speaking you're going to be working against our application security on this one. Act! API is setup to allow the Act! host to manage 3rd party plugins or controls, access an instance of the framework (not of the currently active application), but outside of these patterns we don't allow a 3rd pty app access to an instance of the application (the framework and application being 2 different things).
There are some limited app functions accessible from outside of the app space e.g. the welcome page exposes some functions to javascript to allow popup from what is essentially a browser form. But these are generally considered internal interfaces and are limited anyway, and likely not particularly useful for customizations purposes.
For really basic app - app integrations you can build a plugin from Act! which serializes or sends contextual data from the App instance to an end point another app can use. e.g. you could write a plugin that pulls the contact ID when on a contact detail view and writes it to a file and have your other app read the file and take the ID and query the framework for the contact record info.
03-07-2014 06:30 PM
03-08-2014 08:09 AM
Thanks for the replies and ideas. I don't see any issues in using remoting or MSMQ to get this to work. I also would like to run the windows reports from a framework app. Are these reports anywhere that I can get at them through a separate app?