How to use product characteristic fields

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Relevant characteristics 3 Defining a product characteristic field 3.1 Defining the field 3.2 Linking the relevant characteristic 3.3 Visualization

Introduction

Product characteristic fields are a special type of property fields, only available for the Product entity. They are not backed by a model property path but by a special type of properties named relevant characteristics.

Before reading this guide it is recommended to read the following guides:

• Product Characteristics
• How to use Property Fields

Relevant characteristics

The relevant characteristics are used to reference the characteristic values that will be displayed by a product characteristic field. They are defined within the Relevant Characteristics list reference. Note that each module can provide each own relevant characteristics.

To create a new relevant characteristic the following steps are done:

1. As System Administrator, go to the Reference window
2. Select the Relevant Characteristics reference in the header
3. Switch to the List Reference subtab and create a new record with the information of the new relevant characteristic
4. Restart tomcat to make the new relevant characteristic available

Defining a product characteristic field

Defining the field

Product characteristic fields are a special type of property fields whose property path references a relevant characteristic. Note that relevant characteristic properties are only available for the Product entity.

First we need to define the property field:

1. As System Administrator, go to the Windows, Tabs and Fields window
2. Navigate to the tab of the window where we want to place the new product characteristic field
3. Create the new field, selecting in the Property field the relevant characteristic property
4. After saving the changes, remember to run the Synchronize Terminology process to keep the field name and help/description texts synchronized.

Linking the relevant characteristic

Before start using a new product characteristic field it is required to link the relevant characteristic referenced by its property with a real product characteristic. This is a configuration that done at client level.

To link the relevant characteristic with a product characteristic we have to do the following:

1. Go to the Product Characteristic window
2. Select the product characteristic we want to link
3. In the Relevant Characteristic field, select and assign the relevant characteristic referenced by our field.

If we access a window that has a field referencing to a relevant characteristic which is not linked to any product characteristic, a warning message will be shown to inform that it is necessary to configure the relevant characteristic to be able to see values on that field:

To fix this warning we have to:

1. Configure the relevant characteristic referenced by the field, by linking it to a product characteristic as explained above
2. Do logout and login

Visualization

Once configured, we will be able to visualize the product characteristic values in the product characteristic field:

It is supported to filter the grid with this kind of fields, by selecting values from the tree grid popup that is opened after clicking on the magnifying glass button of the filter of the field.

Besides it is possible to sort the grid by these fields. The sort criteria is based in the position (sequence number) of the characteristic value in the characteristic value tree.

If the position of a product characteristic value is modified in the tree, then the grid sorting criteria will change accordingly in an automatic way. Note that the sorting between sibling nodes is not deterministic.