Numbers, Descriptions, and Rules

You can create rules that generate the identification numbers for several types of objects when they are created: items, change orders, and new item requests. You can also create rules that generate descriptions for items.

Generating numbers and descriptions with rules requires the following actions:

• Creating rule sets

• Creating rules

• Completing associations

Creating Rule Sets

You must associate the rule sets containing number generation rules with the item classes, change order types, or new item request types for those objects.

• You must select the Assignment type for the rule set, because you are assigning a new value to an object's number (or description).

• In the rule set, the association type must correspond to the object, according to the following table.

  Object to Be Numbered	Association Type for the Rule Set
  Item	Item class
  Change order	Change type
  New item request	New item request

  Note: Although you can also associate a rule set with an attribute group, you cannot generate numbers for an attribute group.

You activate a rule set by adding it to an item master rule set.

Creating Rules

The rules that generate numbers or descriptions must produce appropriate values.

• The return type of the rule must correspond to the object being numbered, according to the following table.

  Object to Be Numbered	Return Type for the Rule
  Item (number)	Item number
  Item (description)	Item description
  Change order	Change order number
  New item request	New item request number

• The definition of the rule must generate a number (or description) as the return value.

Completing Associations

You must associate the object with the rule set of the rule that generates the number or description.

• The rule set must already exist and contain a valid rule.

• The number generation method (or description generation method ) of the object must be set to Rule Generated. The location for setting the generation method varies by object.

• After the number generation method is set to Rule Generated, the associated rule set name must be set to the rule set that contains the generation rule that you created.

  Note: In an item class, you can use one rule set for item number generation, and a different rule set for item description generation.