Why Use This Procedure?
The category management is an alternative type of category help used for the different categories in the system. The categories for which you can use the category management are supplier, supplier reference, customer, customer reference, service order, part, nonconformity, project and fixed assets.
In order to use this category management there are settings that must be activated for the respective categories. You can for example activate the new type of category management only for part category and so on.
If the setting for category management for e.g. customer category has not been activated then the Categories procedure will be used instead, where you can enter help text for that category.
In the Category Management window a category field is divided into different sections. You can enter descriptive text for the category components and also enter selection lists with valid values for the respective category component. For a category component it is possible to enter a starting position in the category field, the length in number of characters and type of category component (Optional, Optional with selection list or Mandatory with selection list).
Please Note! If you want to use category management, it is important to remember to define the category components and the selection lists so that the existing categories will "fit". Otherwise existing categories (that for example have more characters than specified in the Length column) will not be validated in the concerned update procedure when changing a category.
When you have defined category components you can in the category field in an update procedure open a window with category explanation. There the different category components and their selection lists, if any, are presented with descriptive text and can easily be selected.
In selection fields in search forms, the category explanation works a bit different than in the update procedures. In the selection fields you can choose to search for specific positions by using the underline character (_).
Window Functions
Read more about the Window functions under Window Functions in the MONITOR Basics guide.