Naming Rule – Exploring Multitude of Possibilities
This blog is created as a response and solution to the above PLM challenge, This is a part of our weekly Wiser Wednesday Challenge on Linkedin – Aimed to add value to the PLM community.
Check out Quiz #3 on our Linkedin page.
Naming Rule – Exploring Multitude of Possibilities
The naming rule will help us to configure the solution for this requirement before we dig into the solution let's spend a couple of minutes understanding the Naming rules. Naming rules help to decide the data entry format for properties on the business object.
Most of the time Naming rules are used to generate Item Ids & Revision Ids with specific formats or counters, also Naming rules can be attached to any attribute on any business object. With the help of Naming rules, we can generate Intelligent Part Numbers / Auto Number Series / Values based on Regex patterns / Using system variables etc.
While attaching Naming rules we can use various conditions which give move configuration flexibility.
Let’s understand the naming rule with an example if we have certain groups which are creating specific parts so we can actually integrate their group name in item_id if it suits the company’s requirement. Another example is if purchasing group is creating a commercial part in Teamcenter, we can identify such parts by creating a naming rule pattern, which will reflect as “PUR000111”.
Solution Detailing
Now, let's focus on the solution to the problem mentioned this week. If we look closely at our requirement, it consists of a pattern “USERID-USERNAME” and a counter which is limited to 999.
Requirement Overview
In our case, the first requirement is to have user-id, we can accomplish this with the help of system variables which will fetch the user-id. Similarly, the second requirement of having a username after the user-id can be also achieved using system variables. The third requirement is of having counters which can be easily generated in the naming rule.
The Teamcenter provides the facility to combine all the above three requirements by creating a single pattern and using system variables in the pattern.
Implementation Steps
As we need to use System variables to implement this solution, we need to understand how to use system variables in the naming rules. To use the system variables it's recommended to use the keywords like USERID, USERNAME, GROUP etc. which represent the session user id, user name, group name etc.
To use these system variables in the pattern they should be used with a dollar $ sign followed by {} i.e. curly brackets. The system variables should be mentioned inside the curly brackets i.e. ${USERID}. In this requirement the pattern will look like as: “${USERID} - ${USERNAME} - ”NNN
To replace the OOTB identifier with this pattern, we need to attach this naming rule to the “item_id” property of the business object we have created to manage the personal data.
With the above BMIDE configuration, this requirement can be fulfilled.
Solution by Chinmay Kulkarni.
