Standard fields

There are three fields that the Data Modeler adds to every business object. You cannot see these three fields within the Data Modeler, but they are visible from other platform tools that work with a business object's fields.

The three fields are classification fields that can be used to associate every record with a geography, a location and an organization. The names of the fields are GeographyName, LocationName, and OrgName. The Business Object data type is discussed in Business object fields.

In addition to the many uses these three fields have in business applications, the platform has a security-related use for the GeographyName and OrgName fields. These security-related uses are described in Organization and geography.

Two things must be done to take advantage of these fields:

• Geographies, locations and organizations must be entered into the platform. Entering information about geographies, locations and organizations is usually done by the people who use or administer the application because they know the context in which the application will be used.
• The other thing that must be done to take advantage of the three fields is to have a way to set the value of each of the fields.

The simplest way to set the value of the fields is to take advantage of the IBM® Maximo® Real Estate and Facilities auto-populate feature, which will copy the initial values for these fields from the triPeople or other record that describes the person who initiated the creation of the record. The relevant portions of these records are described in Authentication.

If the auto-populate feature is not sufficient to initialize the three fields to whatever values are needed, you will need to provide workflows to initialize the fields.