About the Multi-Value Field

Multi-value fields are fields that can contain more than one value. The number of values allowed in a multi-value field is determined by the No. of values per field property, which can be defined for a new or existing field in the Information section. Multi-value fields can be useful in cases where you want the fields to store multiple, distinct values.

Suppose that you use the Work Order family to store records containing information about work performed on equipment in your plant. Now, suppose that the Work Order family contains the Maintenance Type field, which is meant to identify the type of work represented by a given Work Order record. In this case, it may not be adequate to associate a single maintenance activity with each Work Order record. For instance, some work orders may require that a piece of equipment be repaired or cleaned. If more than one activity is performed against a single piece of equipment by the same person at any given time, you may want to allow multiple values to be selected in the Maintenance Type field. Therefore, you can associate more than one activity with each Work Order record rather than creating multiple Work Order records.

To implement this behavior:

In the Information section of the field Maintenance Type, in the No. of values per field box, enter the number of values that you want to allow users to specify. For example, if you want to allow up to three maintenance types, enter 3.
Create a Valid Values behavior to populate the field Maintenance Type with a list of valid maintenance activities.

The behavior is implemented. Now, when a user accesses the Work Order family in GE Digital APM, the field Maintenance Type will display the list of allowed values.

When working with multi-value fields in the Configuration Manager, only a character or numeric field can be configured to contain more than one value by specifying the required value in the No. of values per field box. The character and numeric fields behave in a way similar to the example provided above. Binary, text, and logical fields cannot be configured as multi-value fields.