Considerations for Planning Extensible Flexfields

Once you have identified a flexfield, plan the configuration. Make a list of the UI pages and other artifacts that are affected by the configuration. Verify that you have the appropriate roles to view and configure the flexfields.

You can locate flexfields on a page using the Settings and Actions menu. Click your user image or name in the global header to open this menu, and select Highlight Flexfields to locate flexfields on a page. After you configure the flexfields, plan to deploy them for test and production users. Review the tools and tasks available for managing flexfields to add and edit flexfield segments.

Planning an extensible flexfield involves:

1. Identifying the following:

   • A hierarchical structure of categories

   • Existing context values

   • User-defined attributes, the relevant extensible flexfield segments, segment properties, and the structure

2. Planning the following:

   • Validation rules

   • Initial values

   • Security

   • Attribute mapping to Oracle Business Intelligence objects.

Category Hierarchy Structure

Existing category hierarchy structures provide the framework for planning what segments to add to an extensible flexfield as user-defined attributes of an entity. Some applications provide user interfaces to create and manage an extensible flexfield's category hierarchy.

Contexts and Existing Context Values

If related attributes can be grouped together, plan adding the attributes as a context of segments, and plan the order in which the attributes should appear. Some extensible flexfields have preconfigured context values. Region headers displayed in the user interface page or pages that contain the flexfield segments identify existing contexts. Using the Manage Extensible Flexfields task, find and open the flexfield for editing to view the list of configured context values.

See product-specific information for guidance in using preconfigured context values.

Plan the Segments and Segment Properties

List all the user-defined attributes that you want to add as extensible flexfield segments. For each segment, define properties, including the indexed property.

Plan Validation Rules

Define each segment's validation rules and check if value sets exist for those rules or you must create. If you must create a value set, you can create it either before you configure the flexfield or at the same time that you create or edit a segment.

When determining a segment's validation rules, consider the following questions:

• What is the data type: character, date, date and time, or number?

• Does the segment require any validation beyond data type and maximum length?

• Should a character type value be restricted to digits, or are alphabetic characters permitted?

• Should alphabetic characters automatically be changed to uppercase?

• Should numeric values be zero-filled?

• How many digits can follow the radix separator of a numeric value? In base ten numeric systems, the radix separator is a decimal point.

• Should the value be within a range?

• Should the value be selected from a list of valid values? If yes, consider the following questions:

  • Can you use an existing application table from which to obtain the list of valid values, or do you have to create a list?

  • If you're using an existing table, do you have to limit the list of values using a WHERE clause?

  • Does the list of valid values depend on the value in another flexfield segment?

  • Is the list of valid values a subset of another flexfield segment's list of values?

Plan Initial Values

For every segment, list the constant value or SQL statement, if any, to use for the initial value of the user-defined attribute.

Plan Security

Determine what privileges to set for view and edit access to context attributes, such as providing all users with view access but only managers with edit access.

If your security restrictions apply to several contexts, you can create generic actions. At a minimum, create the generic actions for the base data security resource. If the flexfield has a translatable option and you plan to use translatable contexts, then also create the generic actions for the translation data security resource. For example, the Item flexfield supports the translatable option and has a data security resource ITEM_EFF_VL in addition to the base data security resource ITEM_EFF_B. Then, create actions for both data security resources, such as EDIT_NONTRANS_ATTRS for ITEM_EFF_B and EDIT_TRANS_ATTRS for ITEM_EFF_VL.

If your security restrictions are more fine-grained, such as having to secure each context with a different privilege, then you can create more fine-grained actions.

Plan Which Segments Map to Oracle Business Intelligence Objects

If an extensible flexfield has been enabled for Oracle Business Intelligence, you can make the attributes available for use in Oracle Business Intelligence Applications.