Registering Custom Tasks

[nrose]

Hi,

I need to register Custom Tasks in metadata, and all seems good except for two issues:

1. How to I unregister a custom task from metadata?
2. How do I register in so it appears as a capability in AMO? The documentation states it is the same process as EG, but the tasks do not appear as a capability in the AMO roles. Is there something different that needs to be implemented in the custom task itself?

Thanks,

Nick

[MichelleHomes]

Hi Nick,

For 2, wrote a blog post about role-based access of our Metacoda Security Plug-ins within the SAS Management Console. Whilst this is not an EG/AMO custom task the method is similar, Role-Based Access to Metacoda Security Plug-ins

Hope it helps.

Cheers,

Michelle

[nrose]

Thanks Michelle,

The problem is more about the fact that the custom task doesn't seem to be registered in metadata for the AMO roles (although it is registered for the EG roles) rather than implementing role based access.

Regards,

Nick

[MichelleHomes]

Hi Nick,

Understand.

I assume you have gone through the steps as per the documentation for your SAS version, SAS(R) 9.3 Intelligence Platform: Desktop Application Administration Guide What method of deployment are you doing? drop-in deployment or add-in deployment?

Cheers,

Michelle

[PaulHomes]

Hi Nick,

I get a similar result to you with our custom tasks. I can register them as capabilities using SAS EG 6.1 Task Import Wizard (it seemed to only work for add-in deployment and not drop-in deployment - I need to test again to confirm that - once I can remove the capabilities).

After registering via EG they then only appear in SAS MC role capabilities tab underneath the SAS EG 6.1 application tree's Custom Tasks folder.  They do not appear under the SAS AMO 6.1 application tree's Custom Tasks folder. I'm assuming from reading the documentation that the SAS EG Task Import Wizard is supposed to register them for both EG and AMO (and I can't find a Task Import Wizard within AMO).

Equally, now I have the capabilities registered under EG I can't remove them. I even tried uninstalling the custom tasks and rerunning the Task Import Wizard hoping it might offer to remove them   The only way I can think of removing them now is to use the metadata API's DeleteMetadata method. I might give that a go tomorrow.

Cheers

Paul

[ChrisHemedinger]

Nick,

It looks like you might have already seen my blog post on this, but I'll include a link for completeness:

  Controlling access to custom tasks in SAS Enterprise Guide - The SAS Dummy

There is not a way to remove the task from metadata once it is registered (except perhaps by DeleteMetadata, as Paul mentioned -- use with extreme care).

For the task to appear in the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office capabilities, you should register the task for use in that application.  On a machine that has AMO, you should register the task using RegAddin.exe, found in the AMO installation folder.  This is the same tool as the Add-In Manager function in EG, but this instance controls a task list that is specific to AMO.

You also need "SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office Server Data" to have been configured in your metadata server.  This should happen during normal installation, but if somehow it was skipped, you won't see any "SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office" capabilities listed in SAS Management Console.

The remaining steps are in:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/bidaag/63126/HTML/default/viewer.htm#p1iucx8a5ae9ten1dex...

These steps seem to mix some references to EG and AMO, but essentially you still need to use the Task Import Wizard from the SAS EG Explorer tool.  When the Task Import Wizard asks for the location of the task registry (step 2), be sure to point to the AddInRegistry.xml file that was modified by the RegAddIn.exe tool.  Where is that?  It will depend a bit on how you registered the task, but it might be something like:

%appdata%\AppData\Roaming\SAS\BIClientTasks\4

Using the Add-In Manager is important because it creates this AddInRegistry.xml file, which the Task Import wizard will read.  "Drop-in deployment" doesn't modify this file; it adds tasks to the menu on-the-fly.  Once a task is registered in metadata as a capability, the AddInRegistry.xml isn't as important -- it's used only as a mechanism to get the task ID listed in the metadata.

If you continue to have challenges with this, I recommend working with SAS Tech Support.

Chris

[PaulHomes]

Thanks for that info Chris, that's really useful.  I tried SAS AMO 6.1 RegAddIn.exe on my Windows 7 64 bit install but it wouldn't start - I saw WerFault.exe running in the background and there's a note about a System.IO.FileNotFoundException in the Windows application event log. It might be something odd with my install, so I'll try a clean install before tracking it to SAS tech support.

Nick, I did have a look at using the SAS Open Metadata Interface today to delete the custom task capability metadata added by the SAS Enterprise Guide Task Import Wizard. I used the SAS Management Console XML Metadata Interface plug-in to drive it and ran into a small issue along the way. I took notes and wrote up a blog post about it this evening: Removing Custom Task Capability Metadata It's mainly a reminder to me about using the XML Metadata Interface plug-in, but I hope you find something useful in it too.

Cheers

Paul

[nrose]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your response. However, I think that there may be a bug in this process, as the RegAddin.exe doesn't seem to do anything when running it from the AMO installation folder, and besides, the xml file in the BIClientTask\4 directory has no information in the tags that the custom task has been registered in AMO as apposed to EG. Therefore, no matter what you do, the Task Import wizard runs the one time, and only seems to bring about EG capabilities in metadata and not AMO capabilities. The documentation on SAS Support is also obviously deficient as it seems to be a straight out copy of the EG version, so unless the one process of using the Task Import wizard brings about the necessary changes for both AMO and EG in metadata, I think I am stuck. It is also a poor design to not be able to de-register the custom task in metadata and I would hope that SAS provides a mechanism for this. It is not ideal to clutter up metadata with capabilities that have no use.

I am assuming I am one of few to have tried this, but if someone has managed to make this work, then, it would be great to share how they managed it.

I will forward this on to tech support and see if they can do anything.

Thanks again,

Nick