Considerations for Managing Extensible Flexfield Categories

Categories are a way of extending the number of context-sensitive segments for a flexfield beyond the columns reserved for flexfield segments.

For example, an Items extensible flexfield has a category for each item and each category can have one or more contexts. The laptop item belongs to the Computers category. Since extensible flexfields are mapped to separate extension tables, not just to columns as with descriptive flexfields, the thirty reserved columns on the extensible flexfield table let you define up to thirty context-sensitive segments for each context.

If you add a Dimensions context to the Computers category, thirty segments are available. But if you need to add more than thirty attributes, create another context and associate it to the same category. You could now add an Electronics Attributes context to the same Computers category in which you create another thirty segments. You can continue creating more contexts and adding them to the Computers category. In this way your laptop computer item can be extended with as many attributes as you need, because it's mapped to a category and you can keep adding contexts to that category.

A descriptive flexfield on an items table with thirty columns reserved for segments can only have a single context. Once you configure the columns for that one context, you can't create any more segments.

Predefined and Preconfigured Categories

How you structure the flexfield configuration depends on how categories are defined for the flexfield. If the extensible flexfield is preconfigured with one category, associate all your contexts and pages with that category. If a product-specific extensible flexfield is preconfigured with several categories, associate your contexts and pages with those categories. If the extensible flexfields provide user interfaces for configuring multiple categories, associate a context with more than one category using inheritance.

Some products provide an activity or task for creating and maintaining categories for an extensible flexfield. See product-specific information to determine if you can create categories for the flexfield.

You can view a flexfield's category hierarchies by using either the Highlight Flexfields feature or the Manage Extensible Flexfields task to find and open the flexfield for editing.

Disabling Categories

While configuring an extensible flexfield, you can disable a category. The Enabled column in the Category table of the Edit Extensible Flexfield page, indicates which categories are enabled.

Note: When you deploy an extensible flexfield that has a disabled category, that category and its descendant categories aren't deployed. Contexts and their segments are deployed only if they belong to at least one enabled category.

Contexts

Group similar attributes into contexts. The group is displayed together in a region. The region's header is the context value.

If a category hierarchy exists for the flexfield, then you can leverage the hierarchy to reuse contexts for similar entities, such as similar items in a product catalog.

The following table shows an example of category hierarchy for an extensible flexfield. To store voltage information for all electronic and computer items, associate a Voltage context with the Electronics and Computers category. Both the TV and Video subcategory and the Computers subcategory then inherit the Voltage context from the parent Electronics and Computers category.

Display Name	Code	Description
Electronics and Computers	PROD_ELECTRONICS	Electronics and Computers
TV and Video	PROD_TV_VIDEO	Television and Video
Computers	PROD_COMPUTERS	Computers
Office Products and Supplies	PROD_OFFICE_PRODUCTS_SUPPLIES	Office Products and Supplies
Tools, Auto, and Industrial	PROD_TOOLS_AUTO_INDUSTRIAL	Tools, Automotive, and Industrial
Sports and Outdoors	PROD_SPORTS_OUTDOORS	Sports and Outdoors