Designing a key attribute profiling structure
Before you build a structure of categories, create an outline design of the data, field types and key attribute lists you need. This helps you identify common key attribute lists, so you have to build them only once.
Example category types are:
- Parent Category : No Data Held
- Single Instance Data Category
- Multiple Instance Data Category
For example, when recording training information about people at customer sites, you want to record the results of multiple evaluation forms, so the Evaluation Form Feedback category is flagged as a Multiple Instance Data Category. The other categories are Single Instance Data Categories, because data is stored directly within the categories.
You should also identify fields that are common to multiple categories.
For example, if you are collecting information about home appliances purchased, you may initially think of the following categories and fields:
All Categories
Washing Machine
Vacuum Cleaner
Fridge
You can quickly identify that each category has three fields in common; Manufacturer, Price, and Warranty Expiration. Instead of creating these fields under each category, you can create a higher level parent category first called "Home Appliances", which has these three fields associated with it. Then, when you create "Washing Machine", "Vacuum Cleaner" and "Fridge" as child categories of Home Appliances, they automatically inherit the three common fields, and all you have to add under each child category is the Model key attribute list for each appliance type:
All Categories
Home Appliances
Washing Machine
Vacuum Cleaner
Fridge
Adding fields to the parent level category after the child categories are created does not automatically add the new fields to the categories below. If you add a field to the parent level and then add a new child category, the child category inherits the existing and new fields.
Key Attribute Categories do not store default values. If there is no selection, nothing is stored, so you can't report on empty check boxes. For this reason, you should use a “Yes” or “No” selection instead of a check box.
