Overwriting Characteristics

Use

The characteristics you assign to a class are all defined in characteristics maintenance functions (see the SAP Library Characteristics (CA-CL-CHR)). In characteristics maintenance, you store all the details of a characteristics, such as the data type, the length, and the allowed values, globally.

You can then use this information in any class you like. This also ensures that an individual characteristic is the same for all users of all classes.

However, in some cases this global definition of a characteristic may not be quite what you want. Sometimes, the attributes of a global characteristic are essentially suitable for your requirements, but you want to change some details. For example, in one specific class, you may want a characteristic to always have values assigned to it. You may also want different values to be allowed for the characteristic in one specific class.

For this reason, you can change the attributes of a characteristic when you assign the characteristic to a class. These changes to the characteristic are then valid for this class only. The changes do not affect the attributes of the characteristic in other classes. These changes to characteristic attributes or characteristic values for a specific class are made using the Overwrite function in the Classification System.

Caution

If you classify objects in multiple classes, it may cause problems to have different attributes for a characteristic in different classes (see Inconsistencies in Multiple Classification ).

Features

You can change the following characteristics data for a specific class:

Basic datatab

Here, you have the following options:

You can define whether you must assign a value to the characteristic in this class (Entry required field)
You can define whether intervals are allowed as values for numeric characteristics (Interval vals allowed field)
You can assign dependencies to the characteristic for use in this class

Caution
You cannot overwrite the value assignment attribute of a characteristic (single-value, multiple value, restrictable). These settings apply to the characteristic wherever it is used.

Valuestab

If you want to overwrite the values of a characteristic, the values are saved for the overwritten characteristic. There is no longer any connection to the values of the global characteristic. If you include new values in the global characteristic, these are not shown in the overwritten characteristic. However, you can update the values of the overwritten characteristic with values from the global characteristic.

Here, you define which values you are allowed to assign to the characteristic in this class. You have the following options:

You can define whether values other than the allowed values can be assigned to the characteristic in this class (Additional values field)
You can define additional specific values as allowed for the characteristic in this class
You can assign dependencies to characteristic values for use in this class

Addnl datatab

Here, you can define how the characteristic is displayed in characteristic value assignment functions. For example, you define:

Whether you see a 30-character field for entering your characteristic value (Unformatted entry field)
Whether you see the template for entering a value (Propose template field)
Whether you see the allowed characteristic values below the characteristic description in characteristic value assignment functions (Display allowed values field)
Whether the characteristic is available for entry (Not ready for input indicator)
Whether a characteristic is displayed (No display indicator)