About Creating Specifications and Other Inventory Content

There is no set pattern to the way you use Design Studio to create specifications and other inventory-related content for UIM. The following list provides a high-level overview of the tasks you perform to create new content for UIM along with links to the help topics about those tasks:

• Create a project to contain the specifications and rulesets that you develop.

  Each project is mapped to directories in the file system and is a collection of files and folders. See the “Working with Design Studio Projects" for information about creating and opening projects.

• Define entity specifications.

  Specifications are the blueprints used to create inventory entities in UIM. There are many different types of entities, such as logical devices, equipment, telephone numbers, roles, places, and so on. See "Creating New Specifications" for general information about entity specifications. See the sections about the various specification types for detailed information about them.

  When you define a specification, you enter its properties, establish relationships of various kinds with other specifications, specify its layout, and more. See "Defining Specification Properties", "Defining Specification Relationships", and "About Specification Layouts" for more information.

• Define characteristics and add them to specifications.

  Characteristics define items of data that you want to collect, such as serial numbers, settings, dates, and so on. The same characteristic can be used in multiple specifications. See "Creating Characteristics" and "Adding Characteristics to Specifications" for more information.

• Defining configurations.

  Some types of entity specifications can be associated with configurations. Configurations define the resources that can be assigned to an entity and provide a record of the evolution of facts about the entity over time. See "Creating Configuration Specifications" for more information.

• Define rulesets and related entities.

  You use rulesets to customize UIM behavior. Rulesets are associated with extension points, which determine when the rule is applied. See UIM Developer's Guide and "Working with Rulesets and Extension Points" for more information.

• Prepare for deployment into UIM.

  Design Studio automatically builds cartridges from UIM projects. Before deployment, you should clean the project and resolve any errors. See “Reviewing the Error Log" and “Problems View" for more information.