I would like to use one Dynamic Application as the "source of truth" for several other Dynamic Applications. I have defined the fields correctly so they can be used by the other applications as cross reference fields. In trying to do so I have run into two problems.

1) Not all fields in the "source of truth" application are showing in the drop down (Create/Manage - Options - Field to reference). Stops at 6 fields.

2) When opening one of the subsequent applications I cannot select an entire record to copy, but instead have to choose field by field with obvious potential for error.

 Has anyone else tried to do this?

Not all field types are available for cross-reference relationships, which is the likely culprit behind your first point.  It will only allow you to establish the relationship between the supported field types: Decimal, Percent, Currency, Text, Hyperlink and ItemNumber.

Regarding your second point, the cross-reference relationship is at the field level.  It does not link to all fields in the source DA record.  The idea is that the field/value you display in the target record is supported by "metadata" in other fields in the source DA.

For example, if you had a source DA called "Priority" for the purpose of assigning a priority to a Change Request, the fields might simply be "Priority," which is a text field to store Priority text values, and "Description," a long text field that details the priority:

• Priority: High / Description: Project cannot complete successfully without implementation of change
• Priority: Med / Description: Project can complete without implementing change, but at a cost to budget, scope, or resources.
• Priority: Low / Description: No impact to project as scoped.

The cross-reference relationship would reference the Priority field, which is the value displayed in the target DA, but when a user looks up the Priority value, they also see the Description field as context.

I once worked with a customer who used 6 different cross-reference fields linked to 5 different DAs to manage data in their Change Request records, and it worked very well for that purpose (as describe above).  But it is not designed to link an entire record to another.

Erik - I understand the purpose of the cross reference field now, but I don't want our users to have to go through the process of linking each item across the applications. Too error prone. Is it possible to use the COGNOS report writer or other means to write to dynamic application records?

Thank you,

David

The Cognos tools we have integrated into Daptiv offer tremendous business intelligence capabiliites for interpeting and sharing information, but not business services for managing information. Currently, the only ways to access DA records apart from creating and editing them through the application is via a webform, which allows you to create records, or a web services call, which would allow you to create or update records. You will start seeing enhancements in this area in future releases, but for now the cross-reference fields are fairly basic.