Adding applications

Add an application to a Business Automation Navigator desktop so users can launch the application and work with it.

Before you begin

For this procedure, use a published application that was successfully imported into Business Automation Navigator.

About this task

In Business Automation Navigator, users access the applications that were built in Application Designer through assigned URL-addressable desktops.

To add the published applications to the Business Automation Navigator configuration, first create and configure some desktop definitions. Configure each desktop definition with a plug-in that provides a connection to the Application Engine, then associate the desktop with a set of applications. Finally, to manage the user access to the applications, grant access to each desktop definition to specific users or groups of users, which enables them to use the applications for their work.

Procedure

To add a published application to the Business Automation Navigator desktop:

  1. Log in to Business Automation Navigator as an administrator.
  2. From the Desktops page, create a desktop definition in the development environment, and specify its settings.
    1. From the Connections page, add a new connection to the Application Engine or use an existing connection:
      • For a new connection, click New Connection > App Service, and specify the definition name, ID, and the App Service endpoint URL, for example, https://<app-engine-url>/v1/applications.
      • If a connection already exists, point to the existing connection.
  3. Open the connection and connect to the Application Engine as an administrator.
    By default, all the plug-ins are enabled for the desktops. If you want to make a change, go to Plug-ins > Select the deployed plug-ins to enable for use with this desktop, and select the plug-ins that you want to enable for your desktop.
  4. From the Layout list of features, select the application that you want to deploy for testing purposes.
    If you do not see any applications listed under Layout, see the Troubleshooting information in the Results section.
  5. Open the application in the Business Automation Navigator runtime environment. If you encounter an error, see the Troubleshooting information.
  6. Test the runtime version of the application.
    https://<navigator-route>/navigator/?desktop=<desktop ID>
    Important:

    If you are using self-signed certificates, normal browser security blocks the connection to your business applications for your end users. Each user must accept the Application Engine certificate before to accessing the desktop. For more information, see Browser hangs when loading your business application for the first time in a Navigator desktop.

Results

Troubleshooting
No applications are listed under Layout
If you do not see the list of applications under Layout:
  1. Refresh your browser in case there was an intermittent connection error to the Business Automation Navigator database.
  2. If the problem persists, copy and paste the connection URL in the browser to ensure applications are being returned from the Application Engine.
  3. If applications are returned, check the logs for the Business Automation Navigator to see if there are any database errors.
  4. If there are database errors and the configuration is not using a HADR database setup, restart the Business Automation Navigator pod to clean up any stale connections in the connection pool.
Browser hangs when loading your business application for the first time in a Navigator desktop
When you are loading your application in Business Automation Navigator for the first time, your browser hangs with a spinning icon. You might notice warnings about self-signed certificates, but cannot accept them.
If you look at developers tools, you might see errors that are related accessing a URL. For example, 
https://AppEngine_route/testApp(TA)?locale=en_US&contextRoot=https%3A%2F%2FNavigator_route%2Fnavigator%2F%3Fdesktop%3DtestAppDesktop&desktop=testAppDesktop&userId=myUser
The issue is caused by the usage of self-signed certificates. Modern browsers block redirects to a URL that uses a self-signed certificate, which prevents you from accepting the certificate. This causes an issue for business applications, since there is a redirect from Business Automation Navigator to the Application Engine. Once you are able to accept the certificate to the browser, you can access the business application.
To work around this issue:
  1. You must directly access the Application Engine from your browser. To determine a valid URL, you can use one of these methods.
    • Contact your administrator to get a valid URL to your Application Engine.
    • You can determine the business application URL that is requested by reviewing the network traffic in the developer tools for the browser.
    • If the public Application Engine route is known, you can access the following URL.

      https://<app-engine-route>/v1/applications

  2. After you have the Application Engine URL, paste the URL into a separate browser tab.
  3. Accept the self-signed certificate for the Application Engine.
  4. Switch back to the browser tab that was hanging while loading your application, and refresh the tab.
To avoid the issue, use a root signer certificate that is trusted by your end user's browser. When creating the environment, the root signer certificate is provided by the root_ca_secret setting. For more information, see Configure the root secret and trusted certificate list.

What to do next

The applications that you added are now available for users to launch and use. Users will use the desktop URL that you assigned them to log in to the Business Automation Navigator, then click the name of the application they need to run it in the runtime version of the Business Automation Navigator desktop.