Grouping in a Nutshell

Grouping in Valuemation has the following features:

• Groups can be defined by more then one attribute on several levels.
• The grouped view can be displayed in the table view, tree view or multiline view, which gives three different perspectives.
• The group view can be activated or deactivated when required. The grouping attributes remain in place when the group view is deactivated, so that they do not have to be redefined when the group view is required again. Thus the grouping can be switched on/off with a single click of a button.
• Grouping can be defined in the Administrators Catalog Customizer for all Catalogs and all users, from the Users Catalog Customizer for that particular user, and directly from within a catalog on an ad-hoc basis. This offers maximum flexibility.
• The group view is possible regardless whether the objects for the catalog view are supplied (from Workflow, relation etc.) or we only have a query for the objects.

• Several levels of grouping are possible in Valuemation. Only the first level can be displayed in the Table View of a Catalog – all levels can be displayed in the Tree View. The Tree View is better suited to be used with the grouping function – the advantages of grouping are at their best and easiest to use from the Tree View of a Catalog.

Grouping in Valuemation supports the following variations:

• Grouping on one level by one attribute e.g. group all Systems by the attribute “Status”.
• Grouping on several levels by one attribute per level e.g. on the first level group all Systems by Status, on the second level group by System Type – that is group each Status group by System Type (you have to switch to the tree view and expand a Status group to see its System Type subgroups).
• Grouping on one level by more than 1 attribute e.g. group all Systems by the attributes Status and System Type in combination – that is each group will represent all the Systems that have the same Status and System Type.

• Multilevel grouping by more then one attribute – a combination of the second and third possibilities.

Also note:

• Grouping data allows the user to maintain an overview of all the data, while providing the required level of detail for specific objects. Using the catalog Tree View is particularly useful for this kind of work.
• Valuemation grouping works by grouping the business objects and so it is possible to group the objects in ways that the database itself would not support (e.g. grouping by transient objects).

• It is possible to group the content of a catalog according to one or more attributes. For instance, it might be useful to group a catalog of incidents according to severity and support group, or to group a catalog of contract items according to contract type and contract partner.

Note: It is not possible to define a grouping level for a collection attribute.