Getting Started with Clinical Office: MPage Developer

Welcome

I've been working with Cerner as a developer since 1998 and have seen Cerner Millennium evolve significantly over the years. When I first started programming CCL, the DiscernVisualDeveloper didn't exist and our CCL scripts had to be written in the back-end with a system text editor. Anything fancy such as PostScript output had to be done entirely with code as layout builder hadn't been developed yet.

Cerner has come a long way with their development tools, and I'm glad to have been along for the ride. Improvements to CCL and the tools used to create CCL have been fantastic, and I've had a great time writing reports and extracts in CCL.

Nothing, however, has been as enjoyable as writing Cerner MPages. CCL scripts are fun, but to be able to create entire applications embedded in Cerner is one of the most rewarding things I've done in my career.

Without the right tools, creating Cerner MPages can be difficult or limited. That's why I've spent several years building and refining Clinical Office: MPage Developer to make it possible to create incredibly powerful Cerner MPages that can easily handle any project thrown at it.

MPage Developer has been built as a library for the Angular framework developed by Google. Over the years, I have been asked why I chose Angular instead of JavaScript libraries such as React or JQuery. My answer is simple. Angular is fantastic for developing applications. Cerner MPages are interactive applications and should never be thought of as a simple web page. Angular is also not as difficult to learn as some people make out. Sure, you won't be learning the entire framework in a day, but you don't need to. The tutorials on the Angular site are simple enough to work through and give you what you need to get started. Some of the more difficult topics have been baked into MPage Developer which will help ease you into creating amazing MPages in no time at all.

If you have purchased MPage Developer, you are about to start creating some fantastic MPages and have a great time doing it. If you are still deciding if you want to purchase or not, please enjoy the documentation, and hopefully we will see you back here one day.

John Simpson
Partner/Sr. Systems Analyst

First Steps

Before you can begin writing MPages, you will need to prepare your development workstation and your Cerner environment. Your workstation can be either a PC or Mac that you will need to install a code editor, Angular, and NPM. You will also need NPMJs and GitHub accounts.

The Cerner environment setup involves a one-time task of importing and compiling the MPage Developer CCL runtime scripts and modifying I:\Winintel\Static_Content\custom_mpage_content\custom-components\js\custom-components.js to include the support code for MPage Developer components running in the Cerner component framework.

Once your initial setup has been completed, you will be ready to download the MPage Developer GitHub template and start learning how to build your MPage.