Concept
Definition: A Business Property is an attribute that can be associated to products, services or even links between these (Configuration Processes, sales products, standard items) and that defines one specific characteristic for these.
Definition: A Business Property Set consists of multiple business properties, which have been grouped together because they treat a common subject.
Reference: Please refer to Managing the Product Characteristics for details on how to associate a Business Property Set with a product or collection.
Once business properties have been associated to products, they can be used in multiple ways:
- They can be used to look up or search products when creating a collection
- They can be used as search criteria inside a ProductFilter BRC
- They can be used as pricing criteria for sales products
- They can be used as custom criteria on product links for presentation purposes
- They can be used as criteria for discounting purposes
- Etc.
Once the business property set has been defined, you will be able to add business properties and to translate them.
Defining the Structure
This step allows you to build the structure for the business property set, meaning that it will allow you to define the business properties for that set. This step allows you to create, edit, delete and reorder business properties.
Creating a Business Property
In order to create a Business Property, proceed as follows:
How-To:
[In the menu toolbar]
Execute the new Business Property function [In the popup]
- Enter a name, a description, a type and a valuation mode.
- Hit “Add” or “Add & Open” in order to add the business property to the business property set.
- The business property is created and added to the structure.
Updating the System Properties
The System Properties of the Business Property define the basic characteristics of the Business Property. In order to update these system properties, proceed as follows:
How-To:
- [In the Explore Structure explorer]
Open the Business Property you would like to update by clicking on its name or description
- [In the System Properties section]
Update the necessary fields (cf. table below).
- [In the menu toolbar] Execute the Save function
The following system properties can be updated for a Business Property:
| FIELD | REQUIRED | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | The identifier of the Business Property. The length of the name is limited to 64 bytes and is preferably readable. It is recommended to adopt a coding rule for names, e.g. have them start with a small letter and use a capital letter for every new word. Example: myBusinessProperty |
| FIELD | REQUIRED | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Yes | Defines the type of value(s) that a Business property can be set to. Possible types are: Text: stores a character string up to 80 bytes Long Text: stores a character string up to 4000 bytes Boolean: stores a number value (0 or 1) corresponding tofalse or true Integer: stores a number value from -2147483645 up to 2147483645 as a multiple of 1. Numeric: stores a decimal value. All decimal values in CPQ respect the form NUMBER(16,10). Monetary: stores a price or a cost (a decimal value associated with a currency). All decimal values in CPQ respect the form NUMBER(16,10). Date: stores a date (month – day – year). The date entered needs to respect the international settings of the user. Url: stores a URL to a web page. URL’s must start with http:// or with https://. Object: stores an object using a complete identifier of the following form: workspace/type/name. Currently the type can be “Business Value” (BVAL),“Standard Item” (SI) or “Sales Product” (SP). Information: All decimal values in CPQ respect the form: "NUMBER(16,10)", in which: 16 designates the precision, or the total number of significant decimal digits. 10 designates the scale, or the number of significant digits to the right of the decimal point to and including the least significant digit. Example: the value entered as 1234567890,12345678 will be stored as 1234567890,123457. |
| Valuation mode | Yes | The valuation modes are the following: Simple (one value): the business property will store one unique value. This is used in most cases. The user will be allowed to enter a value or to choose a value in a list. List (multiple values): the business property will store multiple values. The user will typically be allowed to choose multiple answers in a list. |
| Layout | Yes | TextFieldValueSelector by default. Currently unused. |
| FIELD | REQUIRED | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Yes | The description will functionally describe the Business Property, and is limited to 4000 bytes. |
| Reference currency | No | The currency that is associated to this business property. Only applicable if the business property type is monetary. |
| Reference unit | No | The unit of measurement that is associated to this business property. Only applicable if the business property type is integer or numeric. Information: The measurement unit format that will be used to display the Business Property value in the Configurator or in the Catalog is set up in the measurementUnits.xml file. |
| Type | No | Allows choosing a user type for the business property. |
| FIELD | REQUIRED | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Catalog options | No | The business property is visible: if ticked, this option will make sure that the business property is shown when viewing the item sheet (the product details) The business property is leading: if ticked (and if the business property is visible), this option will make sure that the business property will be shown on the item lists, as a column To specify the order of the business properties in the item list, please refer to section 9.4.2 Managing search criteria The business property is comparable: if ticked (and if the business property is visible), this option will be included in the comparison when comparing multiple items in the catalog (or in the Configurator) The business property is filterable: if ticked (and if the business property is visible), this option will make sure that the item filter (called “Quick Find”) on the Catalog item list will enable to filter the collection content based on this business property The business property is scoreable: if ticked (and if the business property is visible), this option will be taken into account for item ranking whenever a Guided Selling process returns it as one of more results. The item’s weight will be determined in function of the option’s value (“Lowest First” or “Highest First”) The business property is indexable: if ticked, this option includes the indexation of the BP and BPS characteristics (Name, description, etc.) in the elements taken into account in the full text search feature |
Defining the Possible Values
The Value Domain defines which values will be acceptable for this Business Property.
- During Catalog set-up, they can be used to guide the (modeling) user when defining the product characteristics
- During Catalog run, they help the (catalog) user during searches and Guided Selling processes
Reference: For more information about domains, please refer to Business Rules and Constraints (BRC).
If no domain has been specified, the business property domain will be infinite, meaning that every possible value will be an acceptable answer. However, it will naturally be limited by the Business Property type (for instance, if the form property type is integer, only integer values will be possible answers).
If however you would like to restrict the domain to a subset of the values supported by the form property type, you can define a set of possible answers using one of the following methods: Domains can be specified by all or a subset of the following methods:
- Limiting the range of possible values: the domain of a numerical value can be restricted by defining a lower bound and/or an upper bound. It can also be restricted by defining it as a multiple of another numerical value.
Example: a numerical value must be a multiple of 1.5, between -4 and +100.
- Enumerating the possible values: in this case, the possible values belonging to the domain are literally specified.
Example: the possible values for a variable belong to the set {“Yellow”, “Green”, “Red”}. In this case a BRC must be used.
The following table specifies the attributes which will allow you to define a domain for the business
property:
| FIELD | REQUIRED | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|
| Value Selection | No | Defines a domain as an enumeration of values, specified by a BRC. |
| Score | No | Defines a score for each value of the domain. Information: The score needs to be issued by the same BRC that defines the domain. |
| Lower bound | No | Defines the lower bound of a domain for integer, numerical, monetary or date-based business properties. The lower bound can be given by a fixed value, or by a BRC. |
| Upper bound | No | Defines the upper bound of a domain for integer, numerical, monetary or date-based business properties. The upper bound can be given by a fixed value, or by a BRC. |
| Multiple of | No | Determines if the values belonging to the domain of integer, numerical or monetary business properties need to be a multiple of a numerical value. This attribute can be given by a fixed value only. |
| Default value | No | Determines the default value to be proposed by the configuration engine. The default value will not be automatically assigned by the system, but will be considered as a suggested value, which needs to be validated by the user. The default value can be given by a fixed value, or by a BRC. |
- Static, meaning that:
- Either the BRC output is independent (meaning that no aliases are necessary)
- Or the BRC output is dependent on external variables only (variables that cannot change during the domain execution, typically settings)
- Enumerated, meaning that it can be determined by
- Any macro-, formula- or productFilter-based BRC
- A matrix-based BRC that only contains the operator "equals" for its output alias
Managing Rich Media
Once a Business Property Set has been created, you can enhance it by adding multimedia to it.
Translating your Business Properties
The ‘Translate’ step is similar to the step of the ’Configuration Process’ project.
Reference: For more details, please check the following chapter: Translating your model.