We are testing using dynamic attributes to store the product attributes beyond the basic ones provided on the part attribute tab in part maintenance. A few examples of the attributes we are populating are: series, finish, elastomer, diaphragm material, rpms. Our ecommerce site built on the part trap platform would then use these attributes to structure our catalog and filter product searches. Due to the multiple tables involved our marketing team would prefer a different solution. What other strategies have you tried or seen that work well to store additional product attribute data after all the basic fields are utilized on the part table?
Why not add additional (UD) fields TO the Part table? Then they’re natively there for you to use without having to pull in additional tables at all.
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I would recommend creating UD fields on the part table.
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Right I am confused by that too - what additional tables would be involved?
I think she meant the extra tables IF they were to use Dynamic Attributes.
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That was our first choice, but we’ve already gotten to an additional 40 UD fields, with another 15 to 20 requested, so we are trying to find something that they can keep adding to and maintaining that requires less set up and maintenance from our team.
You are correct. Using dynamic attributes, the marketing team needs to reference the DynAttrVaulueSet DynAttrValue and DynAttrClassDtlListVal to get to the data they need. That is quite a bit more cumbersome than writing a condition based on a value in a part UD field.
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… could be the lesser of two evils.
Is this a dynamically-changing thing? Or just a huge hurdle to get it all set up, but once its set-up, its done?
It is constantly evolving. We are a distributor. Our sku count is 100,000. Some parts have 8 identified attributes today, but with time and work they will have 20. It is not dynamic in that once we get an attribute correct on a part it remains that, until we decide we want to improve it. Most of our changes are adding to and enhancing the attributes to drive searchability on our ecommerce site.
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Can attributes be grouped by Part Class, for example? So, all of Part Class A will share the same attributes, but other Part Classes will share only a few attributes?
Wait, I came in late to the party. It sounds like Dynamic Attributes are what you want, but only if they could be maintained easily. Is that correct?
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the other option would be to use one of the UD Tables and make it a Child table to the Part table. Honestly, that gives you no other real advantage to UD fields directly on the Part table itself (UNLESS you start approaching the columns-per-table limit in SQL).
My personal record for UD fields on a single table is 83. (on the OrderDtl table).
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I’ll let you know soon, I don’t think I’ll hit 83, but it may be close.
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I’ve got 85 on QuoteHed…so far. Could the sales team get away with having less information on a quote? Not according to them.
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Does it count if I put 100… Task001, Task002, etc onto UD18?
Not to get off topic, we debated dynamic attributes at one point but we do UD fields directly onto part_ud rather than mess with the extra table structure.
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Mmmm… i think it may depend on the context. First of all, are all 100 tasks for the same application? If so… WTF are you doing over there? 
I am curious (even though it’s COMPLETELY of topic to the OP) who has the most added UD columns to a single table.
I feel like if you’re added tasks are spread over multiple applications, it shouldn’t count (in the imaginary competition going on in my head).
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It was an attempt to build a workflow builder where you could have various dependencies for a single task. With a draggable UI to rearrange tasks. It technically works (not happy with the layout builder) but the original requirement for it kind of evaporated as positions changed and focuses shifted.
I have a few other screens for the end user to configure specifics per task per copy of the flow. And then one for the end user to complete said tasks. Kind of a Setup / Management / Entry hierarchy
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I’m pretty sure it’s not the record, but it sure seemed like a lot at the time!
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YES… it most CERTAINLY counts. It’s the same amount of work to do on a UD table as on any other table!. Don’t sell yourself short.
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