Viewing business object properties

About this task

One way of looking at the properties of an existing business object is to save a new business object for the first time. Here is the typical procedure for viewing an existing business object's properties.

Procedure

  1. Find the business object in the Object Browser panel.
    • The Object Browser panel is organized by module. You can find the name of a business object under the module that contains the business object. If you do not see a list of the module's business objects under the module's name, click the closed folder icon next to the module's name. This will cause a list of the module's business objects to appear under the module's name and the closed folder icon to change to an open folder icon.
  2. Click the business object's name in the Object Browser panel.
    This will cause the Business Object Properties to appear.
    • If the business object is freshly created, its displayed state will be Created. Otherwise, the business object's displayed state may be Pending Publication, Published, or Revision In Progress. A business object's state is explained in "Create-Publish-Revise cycle".
  3. After selecting a business object, additional panels are visible in the Data Modeler. The Properties panel is in the upper right corner of the window. Its displayed title is Business Object Properties. The other additional panel is the Field List panel. Fields are discussed in "Business object fields".
  4. When you look at an existing business object's properties, additional properties are visible that were not visible before the business object was created.
    • An existing business object has a read-only property named Created By that shows who created the business object. An existing business object also has a read-only property named Modified By that shows who last modified the business object.
    • A Revision property displays the current revision of the business object.
    • An Object Label property displays the current object label for the business object. All business objects contain an identifier called an object label.
    • There is one other property existing business objects have. The name of this property is Pre-Create Workflow. If this property has a value, it is the name of a synchronous workflow.
    • This property names a synchronous workflow to run when a record is created from this business object. Such workflows are used to set the initial contents of a record or its relationships with other records. Synchronous workflows are discussed in "Synchronous versus asynchronous workflows".
    • To specify the value of this property, click the Search icon. Clicking the Search icon causes a list of synchronous workflows to appear. The synchronous workflows in the list will be workflows launched from records created from the business object. If you select one of the workflows in the list and click the OK action at the top of the list, the workflow you selected becomes the value of this property.
    • If you want to clear the value of this property so that it has no value, click the X icon.