Smart section sequence numbers

When you are looking at the properties of an existing multiple-smart section, it has a property labeled Table Sequence. Single-smart sections do not have this property. Smart sections that have not been saved for the first time do not have this property. The following figure shows the properties of an existing multiple-record smart section.

The purpose of the Table Sequence field is to solve a problem related to the order that information from records appears in reports. For more information, see Reporting in Maximo Real Estate and Facilities.

You can generate reports that show the contents of a multiple-record smart section ordered by the contents of any field in the record. If the records in question have fields named Date or Title, you can have the report order the information by its date or title.

Sometimes you want the contents of a multiple-record smart section to be listed in an order that does not correspond to the data it contains but rather to the order that records were added to a smart section. The Table Sequence field gives you a simple way of facilitating reports that show records in the order they were added to a multiple-record smart section.

The basic strategy for facilitating reports that show records in the order they were added to a multiple-record smart section is to add a Number field to the records for this purpose. The values put in this field will reflect the order in which their record is added to a smart section. We call these values sequence numbers.

After you have added a field to a business object to contain sequence numbers for the records created from it, you need a way to put the sequence numbers in the field. This is what the Table Sequence property is for.

The Table Sequence property contains a list of the Number fields in the multiple-record smart section. If you select the name of a Number field as the value of the Table Sequence property, IBM Maximo Real Estate and Facilities will put sequence numbers in the specified field.