You can use the Product Lifecycle Management module to create new products, product/location records, and product unit of measure records from product projects. To do this, you must set up tasks to store the product data. There are two methods you can use to set up tasks for product creation:
Create automatically generated grid tasks, which store all data for a product, product/location, or product unit of measure. This is the easiest way to set up workflow definitions for product creation because all the grid columns are automatically set up to correspond to the fields required to create a product, product/location, or product unit of measure. You can also manually set up a grid to store product unit of measure data.
Create tasks, each of which must be manually mapped to a specific product field in the Data Mapping window. The advantage of this method is that you have more control over the field names and positions for the workflow data entry window. This method can only be used for creating products, or for creating product unit of measure records in a grid.
Whichever method you select, the tasks must be of the Product Project workflow type and the Product workflow level.
In addition to creating the grid or non-grid tasks for storing product data, you must create an operation task (and include it in your workflow definition). The operation task creates a ribbon button in the workflow data entry window, which allows users to create the product after entering all the required data.
To create a product creation workflow definition using grid tasks:
In Lifecycle Task Maintenance, create a grid task to store product data. You can also create grid tasks to store product/location or product unit of measure data. For each grid task you create, do not select the User Defined option in the Grid Mode field.
Create an operation task for creating the product record.
In Lifecycle Definition Maintenance, create a workflow definition, and include the tasks you created in steps 1 and 2 in the workflow definition diagram.
Users can now launch product project workflows that use the created workflow definition. The users can create products (using the ribbon button associated with the operation task) after entering all the required data for the product, and marking the grid tasks completed.
Note To determine which columns are required, see the Product Import Format.
To create a product creation workflow definition using mapped tasks:
In Lifecycle Task Maintenance, create tasks to store product data. Click the Data Mapping button in the ribbon, and in the Data Mapping window, select the check box in the Map column for the product field that you want to associate with the task (or grid column for product unit of measure records). For example, if the task will store the product code, you select the check box in the Map column for the Product Code field. You must set up and map tasks for each field that is marked as required in the Data Mapping window. If you want to default the product code, product name, and/or product description from the product project, select the Default from Product Project check box for the appropriate mapped task in Lifecycle Task Maintenance.
Create an operation task for creating the product record.
In Lifecycle Definition Maintenance, create a workflow definition, and include the tasks you created in steps 1 and 2 in the workflow definition diagram.
Users can now launch product project workflows that use the created workflow definition. The users can create products (using the ribbon button associated with the operation task) after entering all the required data for the product, and marking the tasks completed.
Note To determine which fields are required, see the Product Import Format.