Search

InterAction® Administrator Answer Center

Web Client Page URLs

  • Updated

Each Web Client page has a URL. Entering this URL in a browser sends the Application Server a request to display the specific page.

End users don’t need to know about page URLs as long as they can start the Web Client and navigate from there. For some configuring tasks, however, you need to know how to determine the URL for a given page. You typically use this when creating links to specific Web Client pages, both from outside of Web Client (such as placing a link on an intranet or in an e-mail message) or from other Web Client pages (such as including a navigational link on a profile page).

The URL for a page is always composed of the URL for the Page server followed by the name of the page method that defines the page. By default, the Page server name is the name of the Web server on which Application Server is installed, followed by:

/InterAction

For example, if the Application Server is installed on a machine named IAAppServer, then the Page server name will be the following:

http://IAAppServer/InterAction

For more about the purpose of the Page server, see Application Server and Web Client Architecture.

Therefore, the URL for the page named home would be the following:

http://IAAppServer/InterAction/home

Passing Parameters to Web Client Pages

Most Web Client pages require you to pass additional information. For example, the Person Overview page needs the ID of the contact it should display. You pass this information to the page using parameters. Each parameter includes the name of the parameter and the value you want to pass.

To include parameters in the URL, you place them at the end, separated from the page name with a question mark (?):

http://PageServer/page-name?parameter-name=parameter-value

The arguments after the “?” are referred to as a query string. Multiple parameters are separated with ampersand characters (&).

For example, the following URL calls the Person Overview page and passes the value 8589934802 as the contact ID:

http://IAAppServer/InterAction/relationship-overview-person?contactId=8589934802

The parameters required for a page depend on the page itself. An easy way to determine the page name and parameters is to copy them out of your browser. You can use the E-mail Link option or do it manually, as described in Shortcut for Determining the URL for a Web Client Page.

Shortcut for Determining the URL for a Web Client Page

An easy way to determine the page name and parameters for a page is to navigate to the actual page in the Web Client, then do one of the following:

  • If available, choose the E-mail Link option in the upper right corner of the page. This creates a new message in your email program containing the full URL to the page. Information used to authenticate you as an InterAction user is automatically removed.

  • If the E-mail Link option is not available on the particular page, you can copy the URL from your browser. You should manually remove the parameters related to user authentication (proxyAccount, accountName, and auditAccountName).

For example, suppose your organization has several offices. Although the out-of-the-box Personnel search lets users find organization employees based on a variety of criteria, your users want a shortcut for each office that will bring up the list of employees without requiring them to enter any other criteria. You decide to place these links on the Web Client home page. Therefore, you need the URL to a page that displays the contacts for a given office.

The easiest way to determine these URLs is the following:

  1. Navigate to the out-of-the-box Personnel search.
  2. For the criteria, leave all of the fields blank, but select the office you want from the Office drop-down list, then choose Search to begin the search. The Web Client will display the contact-search-results page with the list of personnel assigned the selected office.
  3. Choose the E-mail Link option. This opens a new message in your email program containing the URL for the search results page. For example, you might get a URL that looks like the following:

http://IAAppServer/InterAction/contact-search-results?isProfile=true&searchDescription=Personnel%20Search%20Results&profileId=4&contactTypeId=1&searchField_12884891886=8589934614&readableSearchCriteria=Contact+Type+is+%27Our+Personnel%27+and+Office+Equal+to+%27Chicago%27

You can now use this URL as the destination for your link. You could even put this link on your intranet, or send it to your users in the e-mail message.

To simplify the URL, you can remove any parameters you don’t need.

If you are using this as a link on a Web Client page, you can use the variable $(PAGE_SERVER) instead of the Page server name (in this example, http://IAAppServer/InterAction/). For details about variables, see Using Variables for InterAction Information.

This method does not work if you need the URL of a page that displays as a popup. In that case, right-click on the page and choose Properties, then copy the URL from the Properties dialog box.

Sending Links by Email to Help Professionals Make the Most of InterAction

Sending links to specific Web Client pages can be a powerful tool for enforcing organization policy and helping professionals integrate the product into their daily work. Most e-mail systems display Web URLs as actual links that the professional can click; this lets you point users directly into specific areas of the system.

The following are some examples of how this can be useful:

  • When rolling out InterAction, e-mail users links to key “getting started” type pages, such as the Web Client home and My Alerts pages. Include instructions and organization policies about using InterAction in these links.

  • Your Marketing department is preparing to send out a mailing (such as holiday cards) and wants to ensure that the right people are included on the link. They can send out a link to the “My contacts not on this list” page for the specific list. When a professional follows the link, he or she will see a user-specific list of contacts that might need to be added to the mailing list. The professional can add contacts to the list right from this page.

    This same concept can work for any other “list” that can be displayed in the Web Client, such as a working list or contact type list. You can even use a URL to display the results of a search. For example, you could send a new employee a link to a list of all personnel in his or her office.

  • Your organization has an electronic internal newsletter that frequently includes write ups about recently-acquired clients. Instead of including all the details about the clients in the newsletter, include links to the relevant pages in the Web Client. Not only will users get the same information, they are also reminded of the power of InterAction.
  • Your end users have requested a specific configuration change, such as adding a new search form. When the change is finished and available, send users a link directly to the new search.
  • Send out suggestions and instructions for using specific features. Include links directly to the pages for those features.
  • Send a link to the page for reviewing new contacts that need to be added to the firm list.

For any of these pages, you can determine the URL using the steps described in Shortcut for Determining the URL for a Web Client Page.