References - Store (Inventory) Item References

References - Store (Inventory) Item References

Introduction

Thirty customisable ‘Item’ type reference definitions have been added to the existing reference types of
Customer, Quote, Quote Product, Product Catalogue, Job, Rework, Component, Task and Invoice references:





Item Type References




These allow the configuration of extra detail fields that can be added to Store Item definition records expanding the categorising and grouping of your stock.
‘Item’ references are stored against the Store Items’ Inventory Record. The values can be set both under the Store Items’ definition under IQStore Admin:



Or through the Inventory record details on the Inventory Board:


Item references will show on all inventory type records – paper, inks, plates, materials etc.
For these inventory types, the Item references can only be accessed through the Inventory Details modal. They do not appear in the other items’ definitions.
On the Inventory Board, the first 3 references are also included as selectable columns that can be added to and removed from the Inventory Board display:


The first 3 item references are included in the Inventory Items CSV Export whether they are active or not.

Item references do not interact with any other parts of printIQ.

Reference Configuration

As with all references in printIQ, Item references can be defined as Text (free type), Numeric (free type), List (select from pre-defined values), Date (date selector)
Lookup (GL Code or Billing Subsidiaries) or Text with Validation types:


  1. Text – Alpha numeric strings can be entered into the reference
  2. Number – Only numeric values can be entered
  3. List – Can select from a pre-defined list of values for the reference
  4. Date – A date selector is presented
  5. Lookup – Valid types – GL Code & Billing Subsidiaries
  6. Text with Validation – See KB Article Text with Validation Reference field

Flags on the Reference definition:

  1. Read Only – Added where the reference is used but is not editable.
  2. Required – Sets the reference as a mandatory field which must be populated.
  3. Active – Controls whether the reference is available or not.
  4. Show on Screens – Determines if this is visible in the application




Wise Words

If an Item reference is marked as ‘Required’, it will force the reference to be populated on all inventory items - when they are saved on the inventory board.
To get around that, if a ‘Default’ value is set on the required reference, this default value will be applied to the inventory item record on saving - if the reference was not previously set.
If a reference is set as ‘Required’ and ‘Show on Screens’ is disabled, the ‘Required’ functionality is bypassed.


Text with Validation Reference Field


Please note, this validation might not work for you,
As it was developed to call a 3rd party validation service from printIQ. You will require a custom development to make this work.
Please contact support team for implementation.


A new Reference field called “Text with Validation” has been added to printIQ to validate the text entered in the reference field text boxes.
This field, when configured, can be used on all reference types
Configuration:
  1. To Access this reference field, navigate to Admin => References
  2. On the References page, select the reference type you would like to display this field on eg: quote/customer/Job etc.
  3. Select an available Reference field
  4. Click on the magnifier glass icon, to open the Reference field modal window
  5. Change the type to “Text with Validation”
  6. Specify the default name which should be shown as the label of the textbox on the page.
  7. Set it to “Active”
  8. Configure the Validation URL.
    1. The format of this URL requires the placeholder {value}. eg: https://www.abc.com/{value}. This {value} will be replaced with the text entered in the reference textbox.
  9. Configure the authorization to the validation endpoint
    1. Specify the “Authorization Header Name” – Currently, we support Basic mode
    2. Specify the “Authorization Header Value” – Base64 encoded version of the username and password
    3. Specify any other “Custom Headers” required – Any additional headers to be provided
  10. Click “Save” 

Internal Note:

Once the customer provides the Authorization username and password, we need to encode the credentials using Base64 encoding.
There are number of free sites which can generate an encoded version of credentials.
You need to paste the encoded version of the username and password into the “Header Value”. 

How does this actually work?

A new webservice called “ExternalValidation.asmx” was developed to call a 3rd party validation service from PrintIQ. 


As shown in the above workflow diagram, after the user enters the text in the validation field, the text is sent to the ExternalValidation.asmx web service in printIQ.
This service then builds web request by replacing the {value} with the text entered along with the authorization header name, value and custom headers (if any).
Once it has built the web request, it sends it to the external validation service. 

Once the validation is complete, then the webservice would get the response from the external validation service which then
has a set of rules which it runs through to return the response back to the webpage which were the user has entered the text. 

The response contains either the text is valid or not.

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