How to collapse Navigation Menu on page load in Oracle APEX

By default, an APEX application shows the navigation menu on the left hand side and it's expanded by default when the application or a page loads.

What if you want to display it in Collapsed state by default ? Is it possible ?

Yes, this can be done in two ways. Let's see how to achieve this.

Method 1 -

You can set this at design time so that the Navigation menu is displayed collapsed by default when the application loads.

To do this -

- Navigate to Shared Components

- User Interface Attributes -> Navigation Menu

- Under Template Options, uncheck 'Use Template Defaults' and check 'Collapsed by Default (Default)' option

- Apply Changes

Method 2 -

Above method will let you hide Navigation menu but it won't be conditional as it will take effect when the application loads.

What if you want to hide the Navigation menu when a particular page loads ?

Let's take an example of below page. By default it will look like this with expanded Navigation Menu -

Let's hide the Navigation menu conditionally.

To do this -

- Navigate to the desired page definition

- Go to Dynamic Actions section

- Create a new DA on Page Load

- In True section, set Action as Execute JavaScript Code

- Enter below code -

$('#t_Button_navControl').click();

- Save

Now when you run the application and navigate to this particular page, the page will open and the Navigation Menu will be collapsed giving the page more space on screen.

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How to hide Interactive Report Control Panel in Oracle APEX

So, you've created a beautiful Interactive Report and to make it even better and cater to user requirements, you added a bunch of filters, formatting for highlights and perhaps some control breaks as well.

Now your report looks even better and much more readable for users .. but now there's a big section on top of the IR showing all the controls/settings you incorporated and they don't want to see it as they are never going to modify it (or you don't want them to modify it so as to retain the fix format for your report).

But how can we do this ? We don't see any out of box option that will let us hide the Control Panel of an Interactive Report.

This is where again the power of humble CSS comes in handy. Let's see how we can achieve this.

So, let's take an example of below IR. By default, it will look like this after applying all the controls. You can see the Control Panel section appearing on top of IR -

To hide the Control Panel -

- Navigate to your IR

- Under Advanced section, enter a Static ID (EMPREPORT in this case)

- Now, let's navigate to Page (Page2: Employees in this case)

- Scroll down in Property Pane until you locate CSS section

- Under Inline section, enter below code (replace EMPREPORT with your IR's Static ID) -

#EMPREPORT_control_panel{

display:none;

}

- Save

Now when you run this report, you'll see the Control Panel section is no more visible and IR still retains all the settings you've incorporated -

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Open External URLs using Oracle Function

Oracle EBS seamlessly lets us open OAF pages via Functions but there isn't a straight forward way of calling a webpage/external URL via a Function.

Below trick lets us a function which can be attached to a menu to open any external URL.

Create a new function in EBS with below details -

Type: SSWA jsp function

Web HTML: oksAutoRenewalHelp.jsp?thanks=http://www.amazon.com

oksAutoRenewalHelp.jsp is a standard jsp provided by Oracle which simply redirects the http/https request to the URL mentioned in the parameter thanks.

Here, you can mention any external URL as indicated above in bold. Attach the function to desired menu and when clicked, it will open the external URL.

However, above trick will open the external URL in same window.

So what if you want to open the URL in new browser window, thereby retaining the EBS responsibility navigator page ?

To achieve this, you'll need to create a custom jsp (similar to standard one) using below code snippet and use this jsp file in Function definition. This will simply open the URL mentioned in LINK parameter in a new browser window -

<script>

<%out.println("var url=\"" + request.getParameter("LINK").trim() + "\";");%>

var load = window.open(url,'','resizable=yes');history.go(-1);

</script>

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Add Top Scrollbars in Oracle APEX Interactive Reports

By default, Interactive Reports regions show horizontal scrollbars all the way in bottom. Due to this, users usually have to scroll all the way to right in order to find Vertical scrollbar just so that they can scroll to the bottom of the page to find Horizontal scrollbar... and vice-versa to reach top of the page.

As the column headers are fixed to the page, we can add horizontal scrollbar below the column header. This can be done with the power of CSS.

Just add below CSS in page header "Inline CSS" section -

#IRSTATICID .t-fht-thead{

overflow: auto !important;

}

For example, in Employee (IR) report, we set Static ID for IR to EMPREPORT -

Now, add below construct to Inline field under CSS section at Page level -

#EMPREPORT .t-fht-thead{

overflow: auto !important;

}

Save and run the report. You'll see a horizontal scrollbar has been added just under report heading along with original horizontal scrollbar in the bottom of the report -

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