Using the "No Overwrite" option in a Crossover Domain

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In the early versions of Maximo there were "built in" crossovers that passed variables between related tables.  Some of these variables were extra fields that the user could use to pass additional information between these tables.  In all recent versions of Maximo it is now possible to create your own user defined crossover fields by creating a crossover domain and applying it to the applicable field.  A crossover will allow additional values to be passed or "crossed" over from a child table to a parent table when a field is populated in that parent table.  The two tables are connected based on a where clause that creates a one to one relationship between the two objects.

Crossover domains are now a common tool to move a copy of values from one related table to another.  Once the crossover takes place the variables then exist independently in the two tables.  If you then make a change to the value in the parent table then that change is only made for that table.  It does not link back to the child table that it originally came from.  In most cases crossovers are used just once when new records are created and the attribute is copied to the parent table.  However, depending on your settings the crossover field may be updated if the field used to trigger the crossover is modified in the record.

This is where the "No Overwrite" option comes into effect.  The default for this option is unchecked, which means that if you update the crossover attribute then the crossover fields will be overwritten.  If "No Overwrite" is checked then the crossover fields will not be overwritten if they already contain a value. An example would be if you have a crossover set up in your work order application to copy the serial number from the asset table to the workorder table based on the asset number entered.  When the work order is first created the crossover is fired and the serial number is pulled from the asset table into the field on workorder.  If later the asset number is changed on the work order then by default the serial number from the new asset value is copied into workorder.  If you had the "No Overwrite" option checked then the serial number would not be updated on the work order because a value already exists for that attribute.

For this example you would probably want to leave the option unchecked so that the new serial number is copied over, but in some situations you may not want the original crossover value to be updated and the "No Overwrite" option is the way to do this.