Overview

Supported Feature Data Types

When importing feature definitions, feature properties defined in the import data must be specified based on feature’s base data type.

Feature definition import supports the following feature data types:

Compound	Related Value	Table	Search	Boolean	Date	File	Image	Link	Number	String	Text
No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Compound data type is considered as deprecated and Related Value feature is a special feature type which cannot be imported and has to be set up in Perfion manually.

Feature Properties

Features have several types of properties:

General properties
Data properties
Remote properties
Advanced properties
Validation properties

Figure 1: “Feature Definition” window - “Feature Definition” tab

Feature definition import allows creating and updating feature definitions, but it supports only a subset of feature properties. The table below shows which properties are supported.

Property type	Creation	Update
General properties	Yes ( ID is controlled by Perfion )	Yes (translations )
Information Groups properties	Yes	Yes
Data properties	Yes	No
Remote properties	No	No
Advanced properties	Yes ( control type )	No
Validation properties	No	No

Feature General Properties

Feature general properties define feature ID, unique name, caption, how and where feature will be shown in Perfion, etc. Refer to Figure 1 to see available feature properties.

Most of feature general properties can be used when importing feature definitions. The exception is feature ID, which cannot be created by user and will be automatically created by Perfion. One can, however, use feature ID when updating existing feature definitions.

Feature Definition Translations

Some of feature general data properties are language controlled and property values can be defined for several languages. The properties are:

Translatable property	Specifications
Caption	Feature caption. Simple text, max 100 chars.
Caption Alt	Alternative feature caption. Simple text, max 100 chars.
Abbr	Abbreviation. Simple text, max 10 chars.
Unit	Unit identifier. If feature data defines some parameter which have units, then this field can be used to identify those units. For example, if feature defines the length, then unit can be defined as “cm”. Simple text, max 100 chars.
Help	Help text. It can be used for various purposes. For example, it is used for data validation to describe data validation rules. If help text is defined it will be shown as a hint during data entry in Item Editor window in Perfion. Text without limit. Even if there is no fixed limit how many characters there can be saved, the size of text type data will depend on other limits, e.g. available memory size allocated in database for such type data. This limit is not fixed, but indicative size is around one million bytes.

Note, in Figure 1 one can see only some of translatable properties. Values for those properties are shown only in one language, which is chosen as default language in Perfion. In order to get access to all translatable properties one has to click a button with down arrow next to Caption property and the new window will open as shown in the Figure 2. From the new window one can define all translatable properties and also add translations for other languages.

Feature definition import fully supports translatable properties. It allows to import new features with translatable properties and also to update existing feature translatable properties.

Figure 2: “Feature Definition” window - Translatable properties

Feature Data Properties

Feature data properties define how features will behave, how and where actual feature data will be stored, etc. Refer to Figure 1 to see available feature data properties.

There are many data properties and several can be chosen for the same feature. For example, feature can be selectable with sortable multi-value data and that data can also be localizable. The terminology used when describing features will be derived from data property names and therefore, the before mentioned feature, can be called “selectable” feature, “multi-value” feature, “localizable” feature, etc.

Feature data property	Description
Explicit	The explicit property does not exist, but all features, which does not have selectable data property are called explicit. Explicit feature has its own data value(s) saved in the feature itself. This is the most basic feature.
Selectable	The selectable data property means that a user can select the value(s) from a list of items instead of typing the value. The list of items can be maintained in feature data and if a value is edited, the change is immediately reflected on all items it is assigned to.
Selectable with hierarchy (Allow Hierarchy)	If feature is defined to allow hierarchy, then one can define hierarchy for feature’s items. Hierarchy can be defined only if feature has Selectable data property.
Selectable with custom ordering (Custom Ordering)	Custom ordering controls the native order of selectable items and should be set when you don’t want grid view alphabetically sorted by columns. It is primarily used for categorizers (left hand side) or drop downs where a custom order is desired. Custom ordering can be defined only if feature has Selectable data property.
Selectable with sortable related items (Sortable Related Items)	Sortable related items are used to control multi-value ordering and overrides custom ordering. Note that the flag is set on the categorizer (left hand side) – not on the item that you want to sort. Its primary use is for output channels where you want to control the order in multiple categories so an item can have different order in different outputs. Sortable related items can be defined only if feature has Selectable data property.
Localizable	The Localizable data property defines that a feature have different values depending on localization. Localization can also be understood as language/dialect. Example: let’s say there is a string type explicit feature, which describe product colors and this feature is localizable. Then, this feature will have one value for each language, which are defined for Perfion user. For example, if there are “English (en)” and “Danish (dan)” languages specified in Perfion, then localizable feature will have not one value, but two: one for English and one for Danish language.
Inheritable	Feature with Inheritable data property allows feature values to be inherited. For example, if feature items have hierarchy and if feature has value defined for higher lever hierarchy item, then lower hierarchy level items will not have their own value, but instead will inherit the value from the higher hierarchy level.
Formula	Formula data property is available only with Text and String type features. Formula is a special property, which allows creating custom data using values from other features by using templates. Features with Formula data property can be used to import data to, but it cannot be used as import key feature.
Multi-value (Allow Multiple)	Features with Multi-value data property allow to store multiple values. If feature is explicit multi-value feature, then one can save multiple values instead of one. If feature is selectable multi-value feature, then one can select multiple values from selectable feature’s default values instead of one. If feature is localizable multi-value feature, then each feature’s value will also have localizable value for each locale (e.g. language). For example, if feature have three values and three locales, then this feature will have nine values in total.
Multi-value sortable (Sortable)	The feature is almost the same as multi-value feature (e.g. have the same data structure), but the difference is, that all values have order. That means, that the order of existing values will not change after adding new values. The multi-values without order in most cases will be sorted alphabetically, while the sortable multi-values will be order by their predefined order.
Read Only	With Read Only, Perfion prevents all users from managing values in this feature. Read Only is typically used to expose values owned by ERP system and synchronized into Perfion.

Feature definition import allows specifying all data properties when importing new features to Perfion. However, it does not support data property update for features which already exist in Perfion.

Not all feature data properties can be set for features with different data types. The table below shows which feature data types supports which