Creating Specifications

As a Product Developer, you can create specifications for your company in the Manage Specifications app. The data stored in these specifications can then be used for the products you develop.

For an overview of Specification Management features, see the User Guide for Specification Management.

To create a specification, perform the following steps:

1. Open the Manage Specifications app, and choose Create.

2. Assign a specification type to your new specification, for example "Finished Product".

   This assignment is mandatory, because some fundamental settings are configured by specification type, such as the property tree assignment. Also, the selected specification type can't be changed after you create a specification.

3. Provide a name and ID for the specification.

4. (Optional) Add translations to the name of the specification.

5. (Optional) Click the image icon on the top left and select an image from the Documents.

   You can only choose image type for the product image. The original product image is scaled down into a compressed image that is the thumbnail.

6. (Optional) Select a product category.

   You can assign a product category to your specification to add it to a hierarchical list of all the products a company produces. Product categories are used to define the portfolio of a company, and they affect the relevant properties of a product specification.
7. Maintain preconfigured properties for your new specification.

   The Properties tab stores data for your product and its components. Based on the definition of the property, you can input the following types:

   • Attribute properties, including key figure, character-based, date/time, boolean, and URL fields

   • Composition properties from a composition configuration or specification

   • Information properties that contain formatted texts to indicate the emphasis or hierarchy of the content

8. (Optional) Establish an inheritance mechanism for the specification, so that it can inherit property values from a source specification.

   To do this, choose Create in the Inheritance table on the Related Objects tab in display mode. You can select a specification version as the source, and choose the inheritance template that defines what properties are passed on. For more information about specification inheritance, see Using Specification Templates.

9. (Optional) Manage validities for the property.

   If the property is created with the validity enabled, you need to add validities in the Properties tab. Choose Manage Validities to add validity information.

10. (Optional) Upload attachments in the Documents tab.

    You can upload and download files both in the edit mode and display mode. For more information about how to manage the attachments, see Managing Specification Documents.