To define a characteristic type, open .
Description of Page
Enter an easily recognizable Characteristic Type and Description for the characteristic type. Owner indicates
if this characteristic type is owned by the base package or by your
implementation ( Customer Modification).
CAUTION:
Important! If you introduce a new characteristic
type, carefully consider its naming convention. Refer to
System Data Naming Convention for more information.
Use Type of Char Value to classify this characteristic type
using one of the following options (refer to There Are Four Types Of Characteristics for more information):
-
Predefined value. Characteristics
of this type have their valid values defined in the Characteristic
Value scroll, below. For each valid value, enter an easily recognizable Characteristic Value and Description. For example, if
you introduce a characteristic type to record the number of volts
that are measured by a meter, you would add values for all voltage
levels measured by the meters utilized by your organization.
-
Ad hoc value. Characteristics
of this type have an unlimited number of valid values. For example,
if you use a characteristic to define the date a meter was ordered,
you'd use this classification because you can't define every possible
order date. If you use this option, you can optionally define the Validation Rule used to validate the user-entered characteristic
value. For example, if we carry on with our example, you'd use a validation
rule to make sure that what the user entered was actually a date.
Click here to see the algorithm types available for this plug-in
spot.
-
File location value.
Characteristics of this type contain a URL. The URL can point to a
file or any web site. Characteristics of this type might be useful
to hold documentation / images associated with a given entity. For
example, the image of the formal contract signed by a customer could
be referenced as a file location characteristic on a service agreement.
When such a characteristic value is defined on an entity, the value
is suffixed with a button that can be used to display the URL in a
separate browser window.
Note: File location characteristic values must be entered
in a "non-relative" format. For example, if you want to define a characteristic
value of www.msn.com, you'd enter the characteristic value
as http://www.msn.com. If you omit the http:// prefix, the system will suffix the characteristic
value to the current URL in your browser and attempt to navigate to
this location when the launch button is pressed (this may or may not
be the desired result).
-
Foreign key reference. Characteristics of this type have their valid values defined in
another table. A good example of such a characteristic type would
be one used on a premise to define the premise's building manager.
Valid values for this type of characteristic would be defined on the
person table (as you'd set up a person for the building manager and
then reference this person on the premise characteristic). If you
choose this option, you must use FK Reference to define the
table that controls the valid values of this characteristic type.
Refer to Setting Up Foreign Key References for more information.
Use the Allow Search by Char Val to indicate if searching
for an entity by this characteristic type is Allowed or Not Allowed. Refer to Searching by Characteristic Values for more information.
Where Used
Use the Data
Dictionary to view the tables that reference CI_CHAR_TYPE.
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