Lesson 2.2: Adding and populating a custom class
In this lesson, you add a custom class to designate a new type of value. You then assign an initial set of values to this class by adding multiple classifications at the same time.
About this task
Overview
The fictional Sample Outdoor Company assigns all values that relate to size to the S Product Size custom class. The class includes both clothing sizes, such as WOMENS, JUNIOR, and LARGE, and units of measure such as CM and ML. To distinguish clothing sizes from units of measure, the company wants to add a separate custom class for units of measure.
A custom classification provides stronger contextual information about a value than a default classification. For example, if a definition does not assign the value TRAILCHEF to a custom class, the value is assigned to the + default class. This default class indicates that the value is a single alphabetic word. If a definition assigns the value to the Product Brand custom class, which is represented by the character B, the value provides more contextual information. When this information is provided, you can write rules that address a specific subset of the data and therefore handle that data more effectively.
Tasks in this lesson
Procedure
Adding a custom class
To create a class for units of measure, you can add the M custom class from the list of available classes.
About this task
Procedure
Procedure
- In the Standardization Rules Designer, click the Classifications tab.
- In the Custom Classes section, click Add Custom Class.
- From the Available Classes list, select M.
- In the Description field, enter Unit of Measure.
- Click Add. An entry
for the new class is shown in the list.

- Click Close.
Adding multiple classification definitions
You can assign more than one value to the new M class by adding multiple classification definitions at the same time.
About this task
If you add a new custom class in the Standardization Rules Designer, no values are assigned to that class initially. For example, to populate the M custom class, you add classification definitions for values that represent a unit of measure. After values are assigned to the class, you can add or modify rules to handle unit of measure values.
- CC
- CM
- M
- ML
- MM
Procedure
Procedure
What to do next
What’s next
- Identified the class that a value belongs to
- Added classification definitions
- Added a custom class
You can log out of the Standardization Rules Designer and complete the next module later. The revision remains open.
In the next module, you will add a lookup table that converts alphabetic information about product colors to numeric color codes.