Custom Properties

Two attributes of Property are critical to the creation and use of custom properties through the Business Importer:

• IsCustomField=true is required.
• The Type attribute contains the name or description of the custom property. When adding new values to a custom property previously defined, the ComplianceCultureType table is searched for a matching value for the Type attribute (a match then identifies the database storage for the custom property). This search is initially conducted according to the local culture setting on the central application server. If there is no match found in the localized strings for that culture, a search is made using the default culture (en-US). If no match for the Type value is found, the custom property is new, and is automatically created in the compliance database. (For more details about localization tables, see Localization of New Values.)

Note: An attribute DataType is now deprecated, as custom property values are stored internally as strings in the operations databases.

Custom properties are only available for the following objects in the compliance database:

• Application
• Asset
• Computer
• Contract
• Purchases (Purchase Order header and lines)
• Software License
• User.

For example, suppose that the incoming data stream includes a WarrantyStartDate column, intended to be a custom property of an Asset object in the compliance database. There, the custom property is to be called AssetStartOfWarrantyDate. Here is an example definition of this property in the XML:

<Property
    Name="CustomAssetStartOfWarrantyDate"
    IsCustomField="true"
    Type="AssetStartOfWarrantyDate"
    Update="IfBlank"
    Value="WarrantyStartDate"
    ValueType="Field Value"
    UseForMatching="False" />