Technical documentation - the Signifikant Information Model
- Ruud de Bruijckere
This document provides insight in the various information elements that can be added to a Signifikant site and how the visibility of this information can be controlled.
Catalogue nodes and presentations
A catalogue consists of one or more hierarchies of catalogue nodes. Each catalogue node can reference one or more presentations (in green in the illustration above). A presentation is a container of information that will be presented to the end-users when they navigate a catalogue node that references the presentation. There are six base types of presentations:
- Part: spare parts, ware parts, kits, modules, and complete products
- Part assembly: a combination of one or more illustrations with a parts list
- Illustration: one or more images with corresponding hotspot information
- Document: a document in one or more languages
- Content set: a set of files, e.g. a software upgrade or new drivers
- Catalogue: the top level of a hierarchy of catalogue nodes. A catalogue is a presentation in itself and can be included in other catalogues.
You can make your own presentation types based on these base types (e.g. to set different permissions on different types of documents). As an editor you can influence if, what and in what way a presentation is presented by adding the following modifiers to the presentations:
- Filters: show only the information that matches e.g. a serial number that the end user enters
- Permissions: show only the information that a user is allowed to see based on the user's group memberships
- Modes: change the default way a presentation is published, shown or can be ordered. Modes can override filters and permissions.
You can also add additional information to a presentation using the following templates:
- Specifications: custom attributes with translated names and units that allow end users to search for custom characteristics
- Bulletins: technical newsletters that will appear to the end user as a kind of mailbox, urging the end user to read the information
- Footnotes: information that is highlighted with an information icon
and that can either be shown on request or always.
Catalogue nodes and part assemlby rows can also use the modifiers and additional information mentioned above, except for the filters, which are limited to presentations. Note that presentations are also catalogue objects due to the "is a" generalization relationship between these two concepts. This means that all presentations have access to the attributes and options that are available for the catalogue object.
PersistentID
Nodes and presentations have a persistentID which can be used at imports to ensure the same information is referred and updated. This persistentID has to be unique per type of information and no duplicates may exist. E.g. there may only be one part with the same persistentID.
Presentation base types
Each presentation type is of a base type. The following base types exist.
| Base type | Id |
|---|---|
| Catalogue | 1 |
| Illustration | 2 |
| Part assembly | 3 |
| Document | 4 |
| Part | 5 |
| Content set | 6 |
Supporting concepts
Although the presentations are the main concepts in Signifikant, they rely on supporting concepts like:
- Image, document and content set files
- Hotspots
- Part replacements
- Brands
Translated texts
Some attributes are of type "translated texts" which means that they refer to a text id rather than a string. In runtime, the translated text corresponding with the text id and the language that the end user has chosen will be shown to the end user.
Permissions
In the permission.config file, you can determine which resources (functionality or data) will be available for which groups of users. In Signifikant Manager you can add permissions to catalogue objects, which means that an end-user must be member of a group that has been granted the resource to be able to view the catalogue object (presentation, node, or part assembly row).
Importable objects
A complete catalogue with presentations, additional information, etc. can be imported using Signifikant's import module. To be able to update the database incrementally, all these items are "importeable objects" and will have the attribute "persistent identity". Even if all identifying attributes of an object (id, name, label, part number, supplier part number) change, the import module will be able to match objects between updates with the help of the persistent identity. The importeable objects are marked with a thick border in the illustration above. They will take care of importing the necessary supporting objects (files, images, etc.).
Backing parts
Presentations may be purchasable. To allow this, a presentation may get a part number assigned to it. E.g. a part assembly gets a part number and the part assembly will then get an order button. This concept is called "backing part", and is handled by adding an associated part to a presentation. The part will in this case be the backing part of the presentation. Kits are part assemblies with a backing part and with the kit flag set to true.
In the web viewer, the information added to the presentation will be shown and not the information on the part. That is, if a kit is added to a catalogue and the kit has a set of specifications, the specifications of the part assembly will be shown and not specifications added to
Notes field
A special comment on the Notes field on presentations and part rows. The intention of the Notes field is for internal information only, notes between users of the Manager application.
The Notes field is not to be published and made available to external users.