You use Place specifications to define geographic entities that can be located on a map, such as a state, city, street, postal address, campus, or building. Place entities answer the business question of where other inventory entities (such as subscribers, services, equipment, service terminations, and so on) are located.
There are four different types of Place specification that describe different geographical entities:
Location defines places based on geographic references.
Address defines ways to locate places based on textual information.
Address Range defines a group of addresses as a range, such as an address defined with a low street number and high street number.
Site define places that do not have a single, precise location like a regional office or a cell site that may change physical locations over time.
When working with Place specifications, see the following topics:
A site is a loosely defined place such as a campus, cell site, or VPN site. Unlike a location, a site is not necessarily bound to specific geographic coordinates. Because sites are only loosely defined, they can evolve over time. For example, you might need to plan a VPN without knowing the specific locations of the VPN sites. You can create configurations to keep track of the changes.
If a site includes multiple specific locations, you can include them in a Place hierarchy for the site. For example, if you create a Site specification instance for a campus, you can create Location specification instances for its individual buildings and include them in the site's Place hierarchy.
An Address specification can be used to define a standard address format to meet your business requirements and national postal standards. For example, you could define an Address specification that includes the following information:
Street address
City name
State or province
Country
Postal code
These individual pieces of information are called address components. You define them as characteristics and add them to a Place specification with the entity type of Address.
Address components are classified into the following categories:
Geographically based: Values for these components can be defined as a geographic location based on Location-type Place specification.
Non-geographically based: Values for these components cannot be defined as geographic locations, so they are typically captured as text.
For geographically-based address components, you can add characteristics to an Address specification that provide lists of entities of the appropriate type. See "Populating Drop-Down Lists Dynamically" for more information.
You use Address Range specifications to define collections of addresses such as those used in Master Street Address Guide (MSAG) implementations. You can include individual addresses in the Place hierarchy of an address range instance.
You use the Location type for places that can be specifically defined by geographic references. Locations can be very specific places, such as a residence, or more general places, such as a city or province. In UIM, you create these hierarchies in the Place Hierarchy section of the Place Summary page.
You can geocode a location to identify its placement on the face of the earth and to enable geographic visualizations of your network or business.
Using geographic coordinates also makes it possible to calculate distances between locations.
You select from the four types of places when modeling Place specifications.
To select a place type:
Create a new Place specification or navigate to the editor of an existing one.
See "Creating New Specifications" for more information.
Click the Properties tab.
In the Entity Type field, select a place type.
See "Place Specification Properties Tab" for more information.
From the File menu, select Save.
You use the Place Specification editor to model Place specifications. When working with Place specifications, see the following topics:
Use the Properties tab to define the entity type for the Place specification. In the Entity Type field, select one of the following values:
| Field | Use |
|---|---|
| Site | Select to define a place that does not have a single, precise location. See "About the Site Place Type" for more information. |
| Address | Select to define a place using the standard address format to meet your business requirements and national postal standards. See "About the Address Place Type" for more information. |
| Address Range | Select to define a place using groups of related addresses. See "About the Address Range Place Type" for more information. |
| Location | Select to define a place based on geographic references. See "About the Location Place Type" for more information. |
Use the Place Configurations tab to relate Place specifications defined as Site (on the Place Specification editor Properties tab) to Place configurations.
Note:
You use this tab for geographic sites only. The buttons on this tab are disabled for all other types of Place specifications.| Field | Use |
|---|---|
| Place Configurations | Displays the name of the Place Configuration specification. |
| Cartridge | Displays the name of the cartridge project into which the Place Configuration specification is built. |
| Select | Click to select an existing Place Configuration specification. |
| Open | Click to open the selected configuration in the Place Configuration Specification editor. |
| Remove | Click to remove a Place Configuration specification. |
| Add | Click to add a new Place Configuration specification. |
Use the Related Specifications tab to define and review specification relationships. Only relationships with the entity types listed in this tab are meaningful by default in UIM. If you add specifications to the Others section, you must define custom rulesets that trigger actions or behavior based on those relationships.
| Section | Use |
|---|---|
| Inventory Groups | Lists the specifications of inventory groups to which places based on this specification can belong. |
| Roles | Lists roles to which entities based on this Place specification can be assigned. |
| Others | Lists specifications of entities that have a customized relationship with entities based on this specification. |