Implementing flex fields

 A flex field in the BMC IT Business Management Suite user interface enables you to create customized fields according to your requirements. You can configure a flex field to define its name and required usage and make it visible in the user interface. When a flex field is visible in the user interface, it is available in the related list pages and search forms as well.

For example, the following figure shows the fields displayed in an IT Service Details window:

You can use the flex field to add a new field called Internal Name to this window. After you configure the flex field, it is displayed as shown in the following figure:

A user of the IT Service Details window can then specify values for the new field in the user interface. The following figure shows the values displayed for the Internal Name field in the Edit IT Service Details window:

If you add flex fields to customize the BMC IT Business Management Suite user interface, you can still easily upgrade the software, because the flex fields do not change the number of columns (corresponding to the fields in the user interface) in the BMC IT Business Management Suite database.

You can enable the flex fields from the magick URL. To enable flex fields, you must specify their visibility on the screens with which they are associated.

BMC IT Business Management Suite provides flex fields of the following types:

• String: A user can add a text string, such as a name or a type, limited to 255 characters.
• Description: A user can add descriptive text in paragraphs, limited to 2,000 characters.
• Date: A user can select a date from a calendar.
• Code (code tables): The field provides a list from which the user selects. The field is equivalent to a selection list available in the user interface. Similar to a selection list, you can add values that are available for the user to choose from. For example, the following figure shows the values defined for the Internal Name flex field:

For more information about specifying values for selection lists, see Customizing-values-and-labels-by-using-selection-lists.

The following table shows the types of flex fields that are available for the windows in the BMC IT Business Management Suite and the number of flex fields available of each type. For example, for the Application window, 4 code, 2 description, 4 string, and 10 date flex fields are available.

Module	Object	Code tables	Description	Strings	Date
BMC Foundation	Application Application Instance Application Interface Application Interface Instance Asset Client Issue Organizational Unit Organizational Objective Planning Scenario	4 4 4 4 4 4 None 4 4 5	2 2 2 2 2 2 None 2 2 5	4 4 4 4 4 4 None 4 4 5	10 None None None 10 10 10 None None 5
BMC Demand and Resource Management	Action Item Job Category Program Project Flex Project Milestone Project Portfolio Resource Supply Line Item Task	2 None 4 4 2 4 5 4	1 None 2 2 2 2 5 2	9 None 4 4 2 4 5 4	None 10 None None None 10 5 None
BMC Supplier Management	Contract Obligation Term Vendor Vendor Initiative Vendor Portfolio Vendor Service	10 2 2 4 4 4 4	2 1 1 2 2 2 2	20 9 9 4 4 4 4	10 10 None 10 None 10 None
BMC IT Controls Management	Control Control Assessment Control Objective Enterprise Process Governance Objective IT Process Risk	7 7 7 4 7 4 2	1 1 1 2 1 2 1	7 8 7 4 7 4 2	10 10 None None None None None
BMC Financial Planning and Budgeting	Actual Line Item Benchmark Budget Line Item Consumption Metric Cost Model Cost Model Scenario IT Service	3 5 3 5 4 5 4	2 5 2 5 2 5 2	6 5 6 5 4 5 4	10 5 10 5 None 5 None

To implement a flex field

1. Go to http://<hostName>:<port>/itm/magick.do.
   • hostName: Server on which BMC IT Business Management Suite is installed
   • port: Port number of the application server
2. Log on with your BMC IT Business Management Suite administrator user name and password.
   
   The Object Metadata tab content appears.
3. From the Object Name list, select the object for which you want to implement a flex field.
   
   An object corresponds to group of windows in the user interface. For example, if you select IT Service, the flex field appears in the IT Service Details and Edit IT Service Details windows.
4. In the row that contains the flex field that you want to implement, click Edit in the Actions column.
5. In Label in the Edit Metadata window, enter a name for this flex field.
6. (Optional) In Tooltip, enter text that you want to display as a tooltip.
7. (Optional) To make this new field visible on the associated view and edit screens, select the Visible check box.
8. (Optional) To specify that this field should be ignored when the database is updated by an import process that uses staging tables, select the Manual Update check box.
9. Click Save.

The flex field is now available in the selected user interface object. You do not require any additional settings for flex fields of string, description, or date type. Flex fields of code type (code tables) are equivalent to selection lists in the user interface, so you can define values that the user can choose from. For more information about specifying values for selection lists, see Customizing-values-and-labels-by-using-selection-lists.