CustomAttributes, CustomAttributeSource and Attribute

Definition

Every item type can have custom attributes defined, which can be filled from Business Object or Provider Data Containers like the Business Workflow Container or the Alert Container. These attribute sources are defined within the CustomAttributeSource tag, which contains information on which attribute connector brings the custom attributes, how to identify these custom attributes in the provider system and how long the cache is valid.

Note that once an item arrives, these custom attributes are retrieved in additional calls to the backend. For performance reasons, in order to minimize responses times to the end user, this may happen while the item is displayed to the end user - causing such attributes to be empty initially and only to appear in subsequent requests.

It is possible to synchronously load the custom attributes with the primary pull of items of the connectors you configured for. In this case you do not need to do several refreshes to fill in the custom attributes.

The display names of the attributes for column headers and labels are defined in the display attributes of the default view of the item type.

Attributes	Description
`id`	Specifies the connector for custom attribute retrieval. Allowed values are: ABAP_BOR - for SAP Business Object Repository WEBFLOW_CONTAINER - for Business Workflow container UM - for portal user attributes from User Management ALERT_CONTAINER - for Alert container
`objectIdHolder`	Specifies the item attribute name that contains the value of object ID in the provider system. By default, the item attribute externalObjectId holds the ID of the object that is assigned to the task item. For additional attributes, please see the standard attributes. It is also possible to use custom attributes.
`objectType`	Specifies the object type of the referenced object. AlertContainer for alert container.
`cacheValidity`	Specifies cache validity: final - never refreshed (default) Session - valid for session only n - time in minutes for which the custom attribute is valid after retrieval Use with care since abuse might increase the connection load significantly. Use final whenever possible.

The CustomAttributeSource contains the actual attributes:

Attributes	Description
`name`	Name of the attribute at the object specified by CustomAttributeSource. This will also be the name of the attribute at the UWL item and the display attribute of the view, and it can be referenced by for example, filter expressions.
`type`	Specifies the target type of the attribute at the item: double , int , date or string (default). Usually obsolete: the source attribute type automatically determines the target attribute type.

Attributes

Description

name

Name of the attribute at the object specified by CustomAttributeSource.

This will also be the name of the attribute at the UWL item and the display attribute of the view, and it can be referenced by for example, filter expressions.

type

Specifies the target type of the attribute at the item: double , int , date or string (default).

Usually obsolete: the source attribute type automatically determines the target attribute type.

Example

<CustomAttributes>
   <CustomAttributeSource id="ABAP_BOR" objectIdHolder="externalObjectId" objectType="FORMABSENC" cacheValidity="final">
      <Attribute name="DEPARTMENT" type="string"/>
      <Attribute name="LASTDAYOFABSENCE" type="date"/>
      <Attribute name="FIRSTDAYOFABSENCE" type="date"/>
      <Attribute name="COSTCENTER" type="string" />
   </CustomAttributeSource>
</CustomAttributes>