Maximo Workflow Designer Double Canvas

Can you see two Workflow Designer tabs in Maximo?

Something you may have noticed since upgrading past Maximo 7.6.0.6 is that there are two Workflow Designer “Canvas” tabs. At first glance, this looks like the first sign of Maximo becoming unhinged. However, two canvas tabs exist intentionally but only one should be visible. Starting in Maximo 7.6.0.6, Java is no longer needed to use the Workflow Canvas. In more recent versions of Maximo, you can utilize HTML5 to edit Workflow. This comes just in time as all of the web browsers compatible with Maximo have either removed or are publicly planning to remove support for the technology that enables the use of the Java browser plugin. Oracle has even announced that the Java Plugin has been deprecated.

Maximo Workflow Designer Double canvas

Maximo Workflow Designer Application featuring two Canvas tabs

If you can see both Workflow Designer tabs, check whether the correct application security conditions have been applied.
  1. Show the applet workflow tab: USEWFAPPLET
  2. Show the NON-applet workflow tab: USENEWWF

Security conditions in Maximo Workflow designer application

Check the security conditions in the Workflow Designer application

These conditions both reference the mxe.webclient.wfdesigner.usewfapplet system property. If they are properly referenced, one can control which canvas is displayed to the user: Java-based or HTML5 based. Setting it to “0”(The Maximo Default) will only show the user the HTML5 canvas. Setting it to “1” will only show the user the Java canvas.

Workflow Designer HTML5 Canvas setting

Setting Global Value to “0” will only show the user the HTML5 canvas

About the Author

Myles Vivian

Myles Vivian is an application consultant at Ontracks. He mostly spends his days performing large scale data migrations, configuring system infrastructure, writing automation scripts and writing Maximo blog posts. For the past year, he has also been involved with helping members of the IBM team develop their open source project called the maximodev-cli.