Quick Object Connect is a fast and simple method of connecting business objects to documents. In order to use this for a particular type of business object (also known as logical unit (LU)) and for a particular document class, the system administrator must set up a certain configuration (described below). The result of this setup is that you get a specific field to enter the identity (described below) of a business object of a certain type. For example, the system can be configured so that for document class 100 the user will have one specific field for connecting the document to a Project Activity and another for connecting the document to a Document Folder.
The connection is done using the Connect Object tab in the Document Revision window. Each object is identified by an identity consisting of one or more values separated by either by a period, a comma, a semicolon or a colon character. For a Project Activity it could be the project, sub project and activity identities that need to be entered (to uniquely identify a specific activity), like this: PROJECT_ID.SUB_PROJECT_ID.ACTIVITY_ID. The values that need to be entered are configurable and when you are going to enter a identity you can see the values that need to be entered in the form of a help text in the tab. Although the necessary values are always shown with a period, you can use any of the four supported separator characters. In the instances where the value to be entered contains one of these separator characters, you must pick a separator that is not part of one of the values. You can also use the List of Values to select a certain object. For more information about how the process of entering the values works, refer to the activity description.
All business objects exist as logical units in the system. These logical units can be made document-aware by configuring them in IFS Solution Manager. As a result, all or a sub set of these business objects can be configured for quick object connect in IFS Document Management, per document class.
There are two places in which you need to enter basic data for Quick Object Connect. That is, Document Basic/Quick Object Connect tab and Document Class Management/Object Type for Quick Connect tab. In Document Basic/Quick Object Connect tab you specify which business object types should be available for quick connect. You can choose among all document-aware object types. In order that the system uniquely identifies a specific object of a specific object type, you need to configure the fields for which the user must provide values. For some object types it will be enough with one field, for others more fields will be needed. For most object types it will be the primary keys that should be used but you are free to select any field combination as long as it makes it possible to uniquely identify an object. Also, sometimes you might know that even if a certain object type has two or more keys, only one is enough to uniquely identify an object, because you know how the customer's data looks like. For more information about how the process of entering the values is, refer to the activity description.
In the Document Class Management/Object Type for Quick Connect tab you can select from the object types registered in the Document Basic/Quick Object Connect tab, to control which object types should be available for quick connect for a certain document class. You can also control the sorting order in which the specific fields will appear under the Document Revision/Connect Object tab using this tab. If no configuration is given for a particular class, all the objects entered in Document Basic/Quick Object Connect tab will be available for quick connect to documents belonging to that class.