AssetWise Director Help

Managing Object Classes

AssetWise provides classification of objects to facilitate indexing, presentation, control, and searching for subtypes of documents, physical items, organizations, and other object types.

Hierarchical classification profiles per object type can be defined and provide:

  • A descriptive framework that will assist the user to determine the class for a specific object instance.
  • Object indexing rules for the object-class instance, such as defining required attributes for indexing purposes.
  • A basis for searching and browsing objects by class and related attributes.

The following AssetWise objects can carry classification structures:

  • Budgets
  • Change Requests
  • Conditions
  • Contracts
  • Disposition Orders
  • Distribution Orders
  • Documents
  • Events
  • External Objects
  • File Plan Components
  • Locations
  • Organizations
  • Persons
  • Physical Items
  • Pricelists
  • Programs
  • Projects
  • Relationships
  • Restrictions
  • Tags
  • Task Orders
  • Tasks
  • Virtual Items
  • Work Orders
  • Work Tasks
Note: To create or edit object classes, you must have the Classes > Class permission within the relevant scope.
Parent topic: Managing Classes and Attributes

To Create an Object Class

  1. Open the System Admin tab (View > System Administration).
  2. Set the default scope.
  3. Click the Information Modeling icon .
  4. Expand Classes & Attributes.
  5. Select a parent object class.

    The Class Group form opens in the Content pane.

    Note: All classes defined in a parent scope, including Global, will be inherited by any child scope but will be grayed out in the System Admin tab to distinguish them.
  6. Expand the Child Classes topic and click New.

    The Class form opens in the Content pane.

  7. Enter a unique code and name for the new object class. Codes are unique to an object within a scope and can be repeated in other scopes.
  8. From the Type list, select the class type.
  9. Click the Act As Parent Class list and select an option:
    • Required (Can have child classes but not object instances)
    • Optional (Can have either child classes or object instances but not both)
    • No (Cannot have child classes)

    This attribute determines whether the class will be a container for child classes or will be used as a class for object instances. A class cannot have both child classes and object instances.

  10. Click the Add icon in the action bar.

    The object class is created. You can now define additional relationships for the class. If this is a parent class, you can add new child classes to it.

    Tip: You might need to refresh the System Admin tab to view the new class in the hierarchy. For example, press <F5>, or switch to another area of the tab, like Security, then back to Information Modeling.
  11. Make sure the correct default scope and parent class are selected before creating a new subclass.

To Edit the Details or Relationships of an Object Class

  1. Open the System Admin tab (View > System Administration).
  2. Click the Information Modeling icon .
  3. Expand Classes & Attributes.
  4. Expand the class group containing the child class you want to edit, then select the child class.

    The Class form displays in the Content pane.

    Note: Click the Show all link if needed, to display all possible topics of this class.
  5. Optionally include more descriptive information in the Description field.
  6. Use the Date Obsolete field when a particular object class is to be phased out on a specific date. Select the required date from the calendar lookup.
  7. If a particular object class needs to be replaced by another class, use the Lookup Class icon to lookup the new class in the Superseded By field.
  8. Click the Save icon in the action bar.

To Move a Class and/or Its Child Classes Using the Class Move Wizard

You can move a class to another location within the same class group. For example, you can move a document class anywhere within the Documents class group.

To move classes, you can either drag classes to another location within the same class group on the System Admin tab, or you can use the Class Move Wizard to select the target location to move the selected class or classes to.

Note: A class can only be moved to another class if the target class does not have any templates or object instances created, and if the Act As Parent Class property on the target class is not set to No.
  1. Open the System Admin tab (View > System Administration).
  2. Click the Information Modeling icon .
  3. Expand Classes & Attributes.
  4. Expand the parent class group and then select the child class you want to move.
  5. Do one of the following:

    If you want to move the selected class and all its child classes, click the Move Class icon in the action bar.

    or

    If you want to move only the child classes of the selected class, click the Move All Sub Classes icon in the action bar.

    The Class Move Wizard dialog opens.

  6. Select a location to move the class or classes to and click OK.

Specific Document Class Details

For document classes, select the desired type from the Type list:

Type Description
User Defined (Default Type)

Used for all regular document types defined in AssetWise, excluding internally created list-type documents (see below).

Snapshot Used for creating a permanent record of the state of objects throughout their life cycle.
Item List Used to list physical items in a particular Product Structure Type as defined in the Maintain List Values > Physical Item Structure Type list. These parent–child relationships are displayed in a physical item hierarchy.
Physical Item Baseline Used to list all approved documents associated to a physical item at the time it is approved.
Product Baseline Includes all the approved documents for all physical items that form part of a physical item structure and will traverse all physical item hierarchies that are related to the level selected.
Serial List Used to list physical items in a particular Product Structure Type for serialized items. These parent-child relationships are displayed in an As-Configured item hierarchy.
Survey Used to define questionnaire-type documents.
Virtual Item Baseline Used to define virtual item group types where this list includes both the virtual item structure and the documents linked to the virtual item structure into a baseline.
Virtual Item Structure Used to define virtual item group types where this list includes only the virtual item structure.
Work Package
File Container Used to allow for files to be attached to objects other than documents
Condition (Communication; Field Condition; User Defined)
Restriction (Other; Limit; Closure)
Task Order (Inspection; Repair; User Defined)
Task (Approval task; Consolidate; Inspection; Repair; Review; User Defined; Survey)

Specific ProjectWise Class Details

Note: The ProjectWise class group is only available if the administrator has installed and deployed the ProjectWise database package for this community.

For the ProjectWise object class, the Type list lets you select the desired type for the new ProjectWise object class:

  • Folder
  • Project
  • Datasource

Specific Relationship Class Details

The Relationships object class has specialized fields that relate to the functions that a relationship performs in linking two objects. Those specialized fields are as follows:

  • Left Object – This is a two-part field that specifies the label for the relationship as well as the object type for the relationship. The label for the left object is what displays when viewing the relationship from the right object.
  • Right Object – This is a two-part field that specifies the label for the relationship as well as the object type for the relationship. The label for the right object displays when viewing the relationship from the left object.
Note: The distinction between left and right really only matters while you are defining the relationship. Whatever you specify for left object and right object needs to be consistent for Left/Right Cardinality and for Controlled By properties.
  • Left Cardinality & Right Cardinality – defines how many of these can be related on the left side or the right side. There can be one-to -one, one-to-many, and many-to-many combinations with this configuration.
  • Controlled By – Indicates which member of the relationship pair is the controlling member. The class of the controlling member can include extended behavior that determines whether relationships can be added or removed when the controlling member is approved, and whether the other member of the pair must be approved in order to approve the controlling member.
  • Presentation – Indicates whether the navigational display of the members of the relationship should be displayed in a simple list or a hierarchical tree.

Specific Tag Class Details

For Tags, the object class has the option to choose from the drop-down list a Revision Rule set that will apply to that Tag Class. These are configured in the System Admin > Maintain List Values area.

Specific Work Task Details

Approval Task

Only applicable to Work Task classes and used to automatically approve an object such as a document or a change request as part of a workflow.

If an object class such as a document or change request includes extended behavior that specifies the check box labeled Approval work Task is Selected, then at least one Work Task class of this type within a scope must be created, and an instance of this class of work task must be added as a task in a Work Order template.

User Defined

Relationships

In AssetWise, objects have intrinsic (system) attributes and support custom attributes. We typically refer to these respectively as properties and attributes. Similarly, AssetWise has intrinsic (Inherent) relationships and custom (Named) relationships, that allow you to define links between AssetWise objects. Objects in AssetWise are typically used to represent objects in your business. For example, physical items, virtual items, and documents are all objects in AssetWise used to model information and structures.

The Relationship topics display in AssetWise Director under the blue Relationships header, as shown below.

AssetWise provides built-in relationships which can be found in the System Admin tab under Information Modeling > Relationships. These relationships are grouped as Inherent Relations and support the most common relationships between AssetWise objects. Some examples of inherent relationships are:

  • Document to Location
  • Location to Organization
  • Location to Person
  • Location to Physical Item
  • Person to Owner Project

When necessary, you can create custom (Named) relationships between objects if they are not provided in the Inherent relationships. For example, you can create a named relationship between a person and an organization which is not in the built-in relationships.

Since relationships are objects they subscribe to a number of common object behaviors. A relationship has classes, and because it has a class it will:

  • Allow custom attributes
  • Allow templates
  • Allow automations

AssetWise supports searching for objects with certain relationship links. For example, RelationshipType is a searchable object and can be used in an eQL report (i.e. a search can START WITH RelationshipType) to search on objects by their relationship to other objects.

Relationship classes have a Left Object and a Right Object and they have constraints (e.g. Left/Right Cardinality controls) that determine how many of the left objects can be related to the objects on the right and vice versa. For example, suppose you create a relationship named Person to Organization, and you define person for the Left Object control and organization for the Right Object control. If you then set both the Left and Right Cardinality controls to One, you will only be able to relate one organization to a specific person or one person to a specific organization using this class. If you need to relate multiple organizations to persons and vice versa, you should set both the Left and Right Cardinality controls to Many. This creates a many-to-many relationship between persons and organizations.

Relationships also contain labels. Labels for relationships are surprisingly important. The label is the visible part of the underlying architecture (i.e. the left and right object names), so people come to know their relationship by the labels you give them. The left and right names you use are what the user sees when creating or viewing the relationship. This is more important than the relationship name. Whatever you specify for the left and right object needs to be consistent for Left/Right Cardinality and for the Controlled By property.

To Create a Relationship Class

In this procedure, you will be creating an object class under Relationships. This example creates a class that relates a person to an organization with a one-to-one left/right cardinality.

  1. Open the System Admin tab (View > System Administration).
  2. Set the default scope.
  3. Click the Information Modeling icon .
  4. Expand Relationships.
  5. Select the parent relationship class that requires a new class definition.
  6. Expand the Child Classes topic, and then click New. The Class form opens in the Content Pane.
  7. Enter a unique code and name for the new object class. Codes are unique to an object within a scope and may be repeated in other scopes.
  8. Click the Act As Parent Class list and select an option:
    • Required (Can have child classes but not object instances)
    • Optional (Can have either child classes or object instances but not both)
    • No (Cannot have child classes)

    This attribute determines whether the class will be a container for child classes or will be used as a class for object instances. A class cannot have both child classes and object instances.

  9. Click in the first part of the Left Object field, type in a label for the Left Object (e.g. Person), and press the Tab key.

    This places your cursor in the second part of the Left Object field.

  10. Click the list icon, and then select the object type for the left object (e.g. Person).
  11. Click in the first part of the Right Object field, type in a label for the Right Object (e.g. Organization), and press the Tab key.

    This places your cursor in the second part of the Right Object field.

  12. Click the list icon, and then select the object type for the right object (e.g. Organization).
  13. Set the Left Cardinality and Right Cardinality fields to One.
  14. Click the Add icon in the action bar.

    The class is created.

  15. Refresh (<F5>) the System Admin tab to view the new class in the relationships class hierarchy.