Overview of Flexfield Configuration

Configuring a flexfield involves identifying the need for enhancing a business object with user-defined attributes and then integrating the attributes into deployment. In the case of key flexfields, configuring the flexfield involves identifying value set assignments and determining segment structures.

Overall Process for Configuring User-Defined Attributes

Before using flexfields to create attributes, familiarize yourself with the context layers and the configuration life cycle of the application. You can add attributes to a business object using a flexfield, if developers have registered that object to a flexfield. For descriptive and extensible flexfields, the overall configuration process involves the following:

Use the Highlight Flexfields feature from the Administration menu to find flexfields on pages associated with business objects.
Plan the flexfield configuration.
Plan flexfield validation.
Define the attributes by configuring the flexfield segments.
1. Use the Manage Extensible Flexfields or Manage Descriptive Flexfields tasks, or use the Configure Flexfield icon button directly on the page where the flexfield is highlighted. For simple configurations, use the Add Segment, Add Context Value, and Edit Segment icon buttons directly on the page where the flexfield is highlighted.
2. Optionally, validate the flexfield configuration.
3. Optionally, deploy the flexfield to a sandbox for initial testing.
Deploy the extensible flexfields changes to the mainline metadata, to display the attributes on the application pages and to make them available for integration with other tools such as Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence. But for descriptive flexfields, you must deploy your changes to a sandbox and test the changes before publishing your sandbox. To deploy your descriptive flexfield to a sandbox:
1. Create or activate a sandbox, and select Flexfields from the list of tools.
2. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, go to the Manage Descriptive Flexfields task.
3. Open the flexfield you want to edit, and make your changes.
4. On the Actions menu, select Deploy Flexfield to Sandbox.
5. Click Yes to continue with the deployment.
Perform the necessary steps to integrate the attributes into the technology stack.

A simple configuration is limited to such actions as adding a format-only field or adding a field with a basic list of values.

Overall Process for Configuring User-Defined Keys

Using key flexfields, you can configure intelligent key codes containing meaningful parts according to your business practices. You configure the key flexfield to have one segment for each part that makes up your key code.

For key flexfields, the overall configuration process involves the following:

Use the Highlight Flexfields feature from the Administration menu to find flexfields on pages associated with business objects.
Plan the flexfield configuration.
Plan the flexfield validation.
Define the value sets before configuring the key flexfield segments by going to the Manage Value Sets task.
Define the key flexfield structures and their segments, and define structure instances for each structure.
1. Use the Manage Key Flexfields task or the Configure Flexfield icon button directly on the page where the flexfield is highlighted.
2. Optionally, validate the flexfield configuration.
3. Optionally, deploy the flexfield to a sandbox for initial testing.
Deploy the key flexfield changes to the mainline metadata to display it on the application pages and to make it available for integration with other tools such as Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence.

Note: You can't deploy your changes in value sets, key flexfields, and extensible flexfields to your sandbox. You must deploy them directly to the mainline environment. However, if you're making changes to any descriptive flexfields, you must deploy your flexfield to the sandbox and test your changes before publishing your sandbox.
Perform the necessary steps to integrate the flexfield into the technology stack.