Our last release of PLM 360 gave folks an easy way to show information from a related record without navigating to a whole separate workspace. Derived fields are a special sort of picklist where you can display data from a linked record. It’s great way to reduce navigation and display relevant information to the user.
Let’s walk through a quick example to show the usefulness of derived fields and a look under the hood as to how an admin sets them up. Let’s say you use PLM 360 to track equipment and service records. Here’s what the Equipment Record looks like:
And when you need to service any equipment, you create a service record:
Thing is, the equipment might move – sure, right now it’s in Facility C, but what if when it’s time to inspect it, it’s not there. Using derived fields, if you update the equipment location, it’s automatically reflected in the service record:
These fields set up in the ‘Equipment Section’ of the Service Record are actually the fields we say up top in the ‘Location’ section of the Equipment Record. They are read-only in the Service Record, but easy to see in one spot rather than having to navigate to another area.
Looking under the hood, we see the field for ‘Facility’ is of Data Type ‘derived’ and we specify the Derived Field Source by selecting the linking pick list from the current workspace to use as a pivot. We then chose a field to display as the source for the derived field.
There is more information about Derived Fields on the Wiki – be sure to check it out.
Enjoy using derived fields and remember if you want to connect with other members of the PLM 360 community, please visit our forum! ^MS
Photo: me If you’re ever in Oregon and want to hike through fields of wildflowers on Mt. Hood while talking about PLM, let me know.
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