Creating Aliases 

Use

Sometimes, you may want a group of products to appear in more than one location in the hierarchy tree, so that they can be found in various ways using drilldown search. A node alias provides just this ability, and allows products assigned to a single node to appear in two or more locations in the tree. For example, in a repository of gifts, you may have a hierarchy that lists all of the holidays, and you may want “Christmas” to be found in the tree under the node “Christian” (if navigating by religion) and the node “December” (if navigating by month).

When you use the Create Alias command to create an alias of a node, MDM creates a duplicate of the original node that can be renamed and moved to any other location in the tree. Aliases in the tree are highlighted in italics (figure below).

MDM provides commands not only to create aliases but also to find an alias from the original node and to find the original from the alias.

You can turn off the italic display of tree nodes that are aliases (for more information about the trees options, see Configuration Options).

You can delete a node alias exactly as you delete any other node.

Two aliases of the same node or aliases of two different nodes can have the same name if they are not siblings.

When you delete an original node that has aliases from the hierarchy tree, MDM notifies you that its aliases will also be deleted and requests confirmation to proceed.

Procedure

To create an alias:

       1.      In the hierarchy tree, select the leaf node for which you want to create an alias.

       2.      Right-click on the node and choose Create Alias from the context menu, or choose Tree ® Create Alias from the main menu.

MDM adds a new node named node [Alias] as a sibling of and just after the original node (figure above).

       3.      Press F2 to edit the name of the alias.

MDM highlights the name of the alias for editing.

       4.      Type the name you want for the alias and press Enter.

       5.      Drag-and-drop the alias to move it to the target location in the tree.

 

To find an alias for a node:

...

       1.      In the hierarchy tree, select the leaf node whose aliases you want to locate.

       2.      Right-click on the node and choose Find Alias from the context menu, or choose Tree ® Find Alias from the main menu.

       3.      Select the desired alias from the cascading menu of aliases of the selected node.

MDM immediately changes the selected node in the hierarchy tree to the chosen alias.

 

To find the original node from an alias:

...

       1.      In the hierarchy tree, select the alias whose original node you want to locate.

       2.      Right-click on the alias and choose Find Original from the context menu, or choose Tree ® Find Original from the main menu.

MDM immediately changes the selected node in the hierarchy tree to the original node.

Operation	Constraints
Create Alias	·        Must be in Hierarchy or Taxonomy mode ·        Aliases not allowed on masks table ·        Tree must have focus ·        Exactly one node must be selected ·        Root node cannot have an alias ·        Node cannot have children ·        Node cannot be an alias
Find Original	·        Must be in Hierarchy or Taxonomy mode ·        Tree must have focus ·        Exactly one node must be selected ·        Root node cannot be an alias ·        Node must be an alias
Find Alias	·        Must be in Hierarchy or Taxonomy mode ·        Tree must have focus ·        Root node cannot have an alias ·        Node must have at least one alias