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The AutoCreate Configuration Item concurrent program automatically assigns the new configuration item to the same Item Catalog Group as the model and assigns catalog descriptive element values based on the options chosen, depending on how you setup your item catalog and model and option class bills. And, you can specify that certain catalog descriptive elements should become part of the configuration item's description.

For example, you could define item catalog groups for personal computers, processors, monitors, and operating systems and assign descriptive elements to each that represent key characteristics of items in that group. The Personal Computers catalog group might have all descriptive elements while the catalog groups for the main components of a personal computer would have only the element that applies to that type of component.

Catalog Group	Element Name	Include in Item Description
Personal Computers	Processor Type	Yes
	Monitor	Yes
	OS	Yes
Processors	Processor Type	No
Monitors	Monitor	No
Operating Systems	OS	No
Table 4 - 25. Catalog Groups (Page 2 of 2)

You could assign the Laptop Computer model and its options to catalog groups and assign elements as follows:

When you define the bill of material for models and option classes, you can specify a list of descriptive elements that the AutoCreate Configuration Item program should assign automatically to the configuration item. In this example, when you define the bill for the CPU, VGA, EGA, and Operating System option classes, you would specify a single descriptive element for each option class as shown in the table below:

Item	Item Type	Element Name
CPU	Option Class	Processor Type
VGA	Option Class	Monitor
EGA	Option Class	Monitor
Operating System	Option Class	OS
Table 4 - 27. Specify Descriptive Elements (Page 1 of 1)

In the example where you order a Laptop Computer with a VGA1 monitor, and 486 processor, and a DOS operating system, Bills of Material would automatically assign the following values to descriptive elements:

Configuration Item	Catalog Group	Element Name	Element Value
Laptop Computer-01	Personal Computers	Processor Type	Fast
		Monitor	VGA
		OS	MS-DOS
Table 4 - 28. Assign Descriptive Elements (Page 1 of 1)

Since the Personal Computers catalog group specifies that each of the three descriptive elements should be included in the item description, Bills of Material would automatically assign the description "Fast-VGA-MS-DOS" to the configuration item.

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