Migrating Free Properties to User-defined Properties

The free properties are only available in the parts management for reasons of compatibility. We now support you by means of a migration dialog in order to convert the outdated, free properties into user-defined properties or alternatively to delete them. Since different concepts are the basis for free properties and user-defined properties, the migration cannot take place automatically. Therefore when migrating a free property you must decide how the migration is to take place.

Benefit:

With the new migration dialog you can convert free properties step-by-step into more flexible and more configurable user-defined properties. By migrating, you avoid redundant data maintenance and simplify the management of your parts data considerably.

New migration dialog

You can find the new Migrate free properties migration dialog in the parts management under [Extras] > Migrate free properties.

In this dialog you select free properties, decide on the desired action for the respective free property (migrate, delete or none) and carry out the actions.

Table areas

All available free properties are displayed in the upper table. Information about the respective free property such as the displayed name is displayed in the left-hand table area Free properties. The identifying name and other information about the respective user-defined property to be generated or already existing are displayed in the right-hand table section User-defined properties.

When a free property is selected in the upper table, the parts that use the free property (meaning to which the free property has been assigned) are displayed in the lower table Usage. This makes it easier to assess the impact of the migration.

Possible actions

Use the drop-down list in the Action column to specify which action is to be carried out for the respective free property:

None: The free property remains unchanged in the parts database. Select this option if you do not want to migrate or delete the free property for the time being.
Delete: The free property is deleted at the affected parts. The deleted free properties no longer exist the next time you start the dialog.
Migrate: The free property is migrated to a user-defined property. You can either create a new user-defined property or select an existing one. To this purpose the field in the Identifying name column is enabled and you can enter a new identifying name or select the name of an existing property via a selection dialog.
A free property is not deleted by the "Migrate" action and continues to exist.

If the entries "None" or "Delete" are selected as the action, the fields of the columns in the table area User-defined properties for the respective free property are grayed out and cannot be changed.

Carrying out migration

If the migration dialog is closed with [OK], a migration is carried out for the free properties with the selected action "Migrate". When creating a new user-defined property, the displayed name of the free property becomes the displayed name of the new user-defined property.

Irrespective of whether a new user-defined property was created during the migration or an existing one was used, data is transferred to the parts that use the free property. The respective user-defined property is assigned to these parts and the value of the free property is entered at the user-defined property.