Document Object Connection Default Values

When connecting a document to another business object in IFS, you fill in attributes values that controls how the system handles the connection. There is for example the Update Revision field used to control how new document revisions are moved between connected business objects or the Connection Status field that controls if the connection is locked or not.

These attributes can have default values, either set centrally for all documents, or set per document class. As the user connects a document to an object, these default values are applied automatically.

In order to set different default values for different types of business objects however, and combinations of a certain document class and certain types of business objects, Document Object Connection Default Values should be used. You can even control the default values based on the keys of the business object.

Condition fields and attribute fields

The Document Object Connection Default Values screen consists of several fields. All fields but Config No and Prio more or less maps against a field on the document-object connection itself, as seen under Attachments/ Documents, when the View is set to Detail mode, or under the Document Revision/ Objects tab.

Condition fields

In order to explain the functionality in this screen, the fields can roughly be divided into two categories: condition fields and attribute fields. A condition field is a field where you define the expression that will be used to match against the actual attributes that the user enters when connecting a document to an object. The condition fields are:

Each condition field contains a an expression. An expression can contain a fixed value with alphanumerical as well as whitespace and separator characters, or it can contain standard SQL wildcards (% and _), or a combination of both. It can also contain multiple expressions like these separated with a semicolon (;).

Note: The condition fields must have values. If you do not set one, the system will set the wildcard % in the field.

Attribute fields

The attribute fields keep the actual default values that should be set on the connection between the document and the business object. If it is empty, no default value will be set from that configuration. If there is a value, it will be used. The attribute fields are:

The attribute fields are not explained here. Use the What's this? functionality in IFS Cloud to read how these fields are used.

An attribute field can be left empty. When it is empty, the default value is taken from the normal document default values, defined centrally (for all document classes) or the default values defined per document class. See About Document Default Values for more information.

Apart from the fields in the two mentioned categories, there is a Config No and a Prio field. The former is just an identifier/number that can be used to refer to a certain rule. The latter is explained below.

Priority between configurations

When trying the defined rules to see if they match a certain document-object connection, they will be tried according to a calculated priority. The rules with the highest priority will be tested/applied before rules with lower priority.

The priority for a rule is higher the more specific it is and it is lower the more general it is.

For each condition field in a rule that contains a wildcard, the more general it gets, and the lower priority it gets. A field value (for example PUMP) is more specific. A field that combines letters or numbers with a wildcard is less specific than a field with only letters and numbers but more specific than a field with only a wildcard. A field that contains multiple expressions will get lower priority than a field with only one expression.

In cases where the priority between rules are the same, seen by the system, or if they are not what one expects, the optional Prio field can be used to affect the priority. If the system uses a different rule than what can be expected, set a value for the Prio field on the rule you want to give higher priority. The lower the value, the higher priority the rule will get.

Examples

Based on business object type

If you want the Update Revision attribute to have the default value Fixed for the document class 100 you can set this under the default values for that class. However, if you want the default value to be different when a document of this class is connected to the business object WorkOrder, then you have to define it here. Here is how to do it:

Based on three document classes

If a rule should match three separate document classes, 200, 400 and 500, a rule can be defined like this:

Based on two ranges of document classes

If a rule should all document classes that starts with DRAW  or ADM  in the class names, it can be configured like below. It can be handy if there are many classes with similar names and if you don't want to define one rule for each class.

Based on a key in the business object

It could also be that you want to have different default values depending on one of the key values of the business object. In the following example we have defined a special rule for functional objects on a certain site:

In the rule above, we set Update Revision to Latest Released and Association Category to Q for connections between a document, of any class, and a functional object on site 20.

Example of different priority for different rules

Below are a list of rules that all match a certain document-object connection. However, some of the rules are more specific than the others, and that gives the rule higher priority when the system selects one:

Given the rules above, rule 3 has the lowest priority, since it is the most general rule. Rule 4 is more specific, since there is a fixed value for Lu Name, and has therefore higher priority than rule 3. Rule 5 has the highest priority since it is very specific in the condition fields, and will be tried before the other rules.

For the rules above, and given the different values used for a certain document-object connection in the first three fields below, the configuration in the right most fields is the one that will be selected: