By Scott Cunliffe
A great way to share data between workspaces is to make use of Derived fields. There’s no need for scripting, and they can be used in a variety of ways to give impressive results.
In this example, we’ll pass data – a telephone number - from the Supplier workspace, into the Items & BoMs workspace when we associate the supplier as an approved manufacturer.
1) Create a Picklist from the Suppliers workspace. Call it [WS] Suppliers.
2) Create a new field in the Items & BoMs workspace with the following selections:
3) Add another field, and choose the Derived option.
NB - the field ‘Main Phone’ must exist in the Supplier workspace
4) Add the fields to a section and Save Layout.
Next, create a new item or edit an existing one in Items & BoMs. Add a Supplier to the Item.
Our derived data is automatically pulled in.
This gives us some great benefits:
- It does not require scripting
- Saves data re-entry
- Can share data from workspaces that users may not have permission to see
- Even if the record is locked (e.g. a Released Item), the derived fields will show the most current updates.
Once you are happy with the functional aspect of your data sharing, you can take a step further and start passing through other types of data, such as images, to make your items stand out visually.
In this case, I’ve replaced the link to the supplier with their logo:
Derived images can also be used to drive themes for workspaces. Consider setting up a workspace of items containing images instead of static picklists. For example, when you select the type of item e.g. BoM, you can pull through an icon for a BoM rather than static text.