The REN Server – an Overview and a Neat Trick – Part 1 of 2 February 13, 2008
Posted by Duncan in PeopleTools.trackback
This is part 1 of 2. See the companion post here.
The Overview
The REN Server is a seperate Web Server designed to publish Real-time Event Notifications to users, saving them the effort of repeatedly clicking on the Refresh button in Process Monitor. The Popup window you see when running a process ‘to window’ is originally an HTML area populated/called from an iScript, but then some HTML/JavaScript is loaded from the REN Server itself.
To assign permission to run a report ‘to window’ there are 2 steps to follow:
1) Look on the PeopleTools tab of the Permission List and click on Realtime Event Notification Permissions and check ‘Reporting Window’ has ‘Full Access’.
If you wish to use SQL, this will show which Permission List is giving you access to the Report to Window functionality. By default, it is PTPT1200.
SELECT RU.ROLEUSER
, RU.ROLENAME
, RC.CLASSID
, AI.AUTHORIZEDACTIONS
FROM PSROLECLASS RC
, PSROLEUSER RU
, PSAUTHITEM AI
WHERE RC.ROLENAME = RU.ROLENAME
AND RU.ROLEUSER = 'PTDMO'
AND AI.CLASSID = RC.CLASSID
AND AI.BARNAME = 'REPORTING'
2) You’ll also need access to the iScript. Stay with the Permission List, and look on the Web Libraries tab. You need to give WEBLIB_RPT Full Access to the iScript.
Again, if you wish to use SQL, this will show you the Permission list that is giving you access:
SELECT RU.ROLEUSER
, RU.ROLENAME
, RC.CLASSID
, AI.AUTHORIZEDACTIONS
FROM PSROLECLASS RC
, PSROLEUSER RU
, PSAUTHITEM AI
WHERE RC.ROLENAME = RU.ROLENAME
AND RU.ROLEUSER = 'PTDMO'
AND AI.CLASSID = RC.CLASSID
AND AI.MENUNAME = 'WEBLIB_RPT'
AND AI.BARNAME = 'ISCRIPT1'
AND AI.PNLITEMNAME = 'IScript_GetReport'
Now that security is covered you might think that there’s not a huge amount to talk about with the REN Server as in some ways it’s a bit of a ‘black box’. Unless you need Clustering/Failover or a Reverse Proxy Server there isn’t much to configure.
- There are some settings in the psappsrv.cfg (logging levels, ports and authentication token domain),
- and some settings under PeopleTools in the PIA (client authentication, SSL and host machine),
- and of course the option to boot the PSRENSRV process or not is set using PSAdmin
- there is also a psrenconfig.txt under the App Server directory, but I’ve never needed to mess with these settings
Yes, yes, you say. I know all that already. Tell me something I don’t know. Ok, I’ll wager you didn’t know this …
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The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog 
Hi,
I am looking at print link on the requisition page, when clicked creates a request, schedules it on the process scheduler. Then it opens a new window displays the status of the request ( I believe it uses renserve). I looked at the code, and it seems to use WEBLIB_PRT Iscript. The peoplecode trace does not show how this script is being called. Could you please explain how is this script called?
Running a process via the REN Server is also known as ‘Run to Window’. Somewhere in the code there’ll be a reference to Window as an output option. This is where the script is being triggered from.