Launch a URL from a button in SL pt 1

Being the king of integrations (kind of like being the king of your bike - bad analogy I know) at my job I am adapting a prior integration (as is tradition) to SL for another client.  That's a long story in itself but not the tale I want to tell.  This integration brings AP vouchers into SL from a new, SharePoint front-end another outfit is creating for the client.

One of the requirements of this integration is a button on the AP screen that takes the user to the document that originated the transaction.  There is a column in the data source that contains the URL that points to the source document.  When the user looks at this document on the AP screen in SL they want to click on the button and up pops the source document.

The key to the URL is the "document ID" from the source.  That we store in a "user" field in the SL AP table.  Unfortunately there is no place in the SL database to store the URL as it is stored in an nvarchar(max) column in the source SQL table and there is simply no place to contain that in SL.

Thankfully we have a customization from another outfit that launches a URL off another screen in the GL.  That got me started but I need the updated Customization Manager for VBA reference manual and some help from the internet to get through it.

Here are the elements required to complete this assignment:

1. Locate the "user" field on the AP Screen (actually another requirement - the client wants to see this.)
2. Add a button to the AP screen that takes the user to the related URL.
3. VBA code behind the button.
4. SQL stored procedure to return a URL for a given document ID.

All but element 3 are fairly straight-forward if you know enough about SL customizations.  The devil is in the details of step 3.

For the stored procedure in element 4 to work the SL 2011 Master80 user needs read access to the source database that contains the URL information.  This stored procedure also needs to be created in each SL application database while the source data is in a single unrelated database on the SL SQL server.  Master80 can execute the stored procedure in the SL database but not reach the data in the source without explicit access granted.

In my next post I will explain the components of the VBA code necessary to complete this assignment.