Display attributes

Content

The addon allows to add any attribute as a column on the grid view of a form. By default more than 70 forms from different modules support this featrue.

Product Attributes

Product attributes become displayable when the Product attributes checkbox is selected on the Parameters form:

When the Product attributes checkbox is selected, the Display attributes button becomes available on the form. Users can select any product attributes to display on the form:

Attribute columns are filterable, sortable, and the grid can be exported to Excel.

Users can control the Display attribute feature on the form level. If the feature is not required, it can be disabled per form:

Engineering Attributes

Engineering attributes become displayable when the Engineering attributes checkbox is selected on the Parameters form:

When the Engineering attributes checkbox is selected, the Display attributes button becomes available on the form. Users can select any engineering attributes to display on the form.

Engineering attributes from active engineering versions are displayed.

One product can have several engineering versions with different attribute values. If the source record doesn’t have a certain inventory dimension, then this record will be multiplied by the number of attribute values.

For example, the Released products form doesn’t have a certain inventory dimension. In my case, the A02 item has two engineering versions with two values for the Diameter attribute (20 and 30), and a similar Plastic value for the Material attribute:

The Search by attributes feature is integrated with the Display attributes feature. For example, if I use the Diameter = 20 filter, then only one A02 record will be shown.

If the source record has an inventory dimension, then the engineering version that corresponds to this dimension will be used to display attributes.

For example, the Sales order form has the line with A02 item and a certain Variant:

Another example is the Inventory on-hand form, where Users can display engineering attributes and see on-hand per engineering attributes.

It is possible to enable Product attributes and Engineering attributes simultaneously. In this case, these attributes will be displayed together on the grid.

Attribute columns are filterable, sortable, and the grid can be exported to Excel.

Users can control the Display attribute feature on the form level. If the feature is not required, it can be disabled per form level on the Parameters form.

Export attributes to Excel

When attributes are shown on the grid it is possible to export the values in the normal export to Excel function

The file contains selected attributes:

Personalization

There are 2 available ways to save attribute filters and columns. This is controlled by the setup in the Product attribute extension parameters form.

Personalization level has the possible values listed below.

Personalization per form

The Per form value uses the usage data to save each user’s last selection of display attributes. This means that whenever the form is opened the last selection of attributes is shown. This selection is useful when a generic selection of attributes across item types should be visible.

Personalization per form category

The Per form category personalization will save the selection per category.

This means that when selecting a category in a hierarchy will show the last selection of attributes to display for that category.

Below an example of automatic attribute display when i.e. “Headphones” is selected

When selecting another category then the last selection of attributes displayed for that category will automatically be shown

Personalization is saved in the users usage data. This data is normally not accessible to other users, but a new Share attribute extension personalization functionality has been made to allow sharing the usage data between users.

Select necessary users and lick Ok. Only usage data that is related to the Product attribute search add-on will be shared.

Saved views

The Display attribute feature supports integration with the Saved views feature. Select the Save in Personalization view parameter to enable it.

Once the parameter is enabled all attribute filters and display changes will change the saved view:

The saved view can be saved, then shared with other users or pin ad default for this form.

Setup

The Product Attribute Search implements the no code configuration approach. It means that attribute filters and/or attribute columns can be added to any form (standard or custom) via UI configuration without development.

From technical point of view there are no form’s extensions in the model. All display attributes are created during runtime. There is a generic engine that adds display attributes to the form based on configurations.

Product attributes extension parameters > Display attributes > Advanced button.

The Grid selection controls where in the form the attributes should be inserted. On example above the attributes will be added to the grid after the BOM_ItemId column.

The Button selection controls where the Display attributes button should be shown on the form. On example above the button will be added to the BOMButtonGroup button group after the InventDimParmFixed button.

The Query selection controls what field contains the item id or product id or product name value.

Is run time data source parameters controls wheter the data source with item value field exists on the fomr. For example, the form has a field that contains a reference to another table with item value field. We can display attributes for such form, in this case the table with item value field should be specified as run time data source.

Value type parameter defines how attributes are linked with record to filter – by item id, product record id or product name.

User can add a new custom or standard form to the configuration.