Creating additional categories in Asset base

Raiden46

Currently working on extending the capability of our Asset base application in order to enable the creation of additional categories aside from IT. So far i think we're making healthy progress as far as the forms go but I'm having a bit of trouble with getting the preset options I created to appear as dropdown menu items.

I can confirm that I've enabled the dropdown feature and have identified the properties that are associated with the preset categories I've created but have yet to link the two in a cohesive way. Attaching some screens to illustrate:

Related I should also note that while these presets can be set to be protected, would that level of protection override the warning that changes to applications would be reverted on update? If not would you recommend say an optimal way of cloning the Assets IT app and modifying it to leverage for a new asset group?

Sorry if this was a little longwinded but any feedback at all would be greatly appreciated.

gabriel

Raiden46
Hello and sorry for the late reply - I needed to find time to look at the app in detail.

To your questions and general comments:

First, it´s important to know, that you must not update either "REI3 Asset: Base" or "REI3 Assets IT". Any change you make will be reversed, if you ever choose to update these apps in the future. For more details, see the chapters about how to build on top of other´s apps. Adding presets to these applications counts as updating them, as a preset is part of an applications definition.
The protection settings of presets block changes to attribute values (if set on values) or deletion of a preset record (if set on the preset itself) - it has no influence over updates of the apps.
We´ve built the assets app originally to serve as an example of how to safely extend apps (REI3 Assets IT builds on top of REI3 Assets Base to reuse product details, shared definitions, and so on). We had planned to add more asset apps after that to make the use case more clear, but did not get the chance. REI3 Asset Base is, currently at least, not built to be extended in this way by other people - that is why the categories are locked. If we want to enable this use case, we probably have to add a couple of features - but so far there was little interest so we did not spend the time.

There are 2 ways forward: Either we work out how to open up REI3 Assets Base to allow this kind of extension. Or you use REI3 Assets Base as a reference and build your own apps - what we originally intended the app to be.

For the first way, we´d need to know, what exactly you want to build so that we can see how much we need to add. For the second, unfortunately there is no way to clone an app - but at least these apps are not very complex.

Nimantha

gabriel There are 2 ways forward: Either we work out how to open up REI3 Assets Base to allow this kind of extension
gabriel For the first way, we´d need to know, what exactly you want to build so that we can see how much we need to add..

I was also looking for inventory categories, and from reading the above, ways to perhaps extend the base Assets application.
Currently just looking for a way to add records / presets to the existing Category column in the application (which I assumed could be done from an accompanying admin column as in the other applications, but as noted above, some features in the app are locked, as per the design of the app) - (had a look at other columns, and I can manage to use that dataset as is, just need to ability to add values to the Category and Product type fields so as to classify inventory):

{Assets Base Application}

While waiting for Raiden46 to respond, just adding a table as an example:

{Populated Table}

An Editable Google Sheet for future reference (or if forum members wish to add more details or create a separate sheet)

gabriel

Nimantha I was also looking for inventory categories, and from reading the above, ways to perhaps extend the base Assets application.

The asset apps originally started as examples of how to build your own asset apps. If you need more/different asset types, you might just want to build these apps yourself - these are simple apps and be clicked together in a few hours.

But of course, we can extend these standard apps to support expansion like this, which can be useful as some of our other apps build on them (like REI3 Tickets).

I was also waiting for @Raiden46 s reply to see what the actual use case is. Depending on what they are trying to do, we´d need to do different things.