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Former Member
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As we all know SAP MDM 5.5 gives you individual applications to perform different actions. One of them is the content manager (MDM Client), which can be used for multiple purposes. Some of purposes are to view, edit and create new master data records, add images, documentation / attachments / specification sheets about the data (reading material for products etc). When we started working with our customer, we knew what the customer was looking for, however what we were wondering was how to use the different record modes for the customers data. Which record mode should be used at what time and what kind of data? One of the important things that MDM Client does is that it operates in Six different modes and each of these modes has got a specific purpose. In the blog by Roman Rytov World's fastest and shortest introduction to NetWeaver MDM 5.5 , he has explained the different types of tables we deal with while working with MDM. So, I am not going to go into those aspects. Each of the modes is designed to manipulate specific type of table and repository information. 1. Record Mode: This is probably the most commonly used mode. Here you can see all the details of the record, including the pictures, attached documents etc. You can also edit the records and change the details of the specific fields including the images and documents. 2. Hierarchy Mode: In this mode you can edit, view the hierarchy tables which include the regular hierarchy tables, taxonomy tables, and the Masks tables. You might be wondering I can do this in the Record mode so what is the difference. Well, in addition to what you can do in record mode, you can also edit the parent / child relationships and also the order of the siblings. 3. Taxonomy Mode: Here you can edit the taxonomy tables in the repository. You can create and maintain a Category hierarchy and maintain the attributes pertaining to a specific category or sub-category. This can be done in the record mode as well as the hierarchy mode also, however here you can concentrate on creating a pool of attributes and link them with the right category / sub-category. The link in the first column indicates the attributes for the selected category on the left hand side. 4. Family Mode: This is where you define the families to further break down into smaller chunks of data over and above the taxonomy we have defined. Here you can add an image for the entire list of products pertaining to a specific family. Or in case of vendor / customer, you can add their logo here. 5. Layout Mode: This mode is entirely from a Catalog designing perspective. This is where you design your layout according to how you want your catalog to look like, what fields you want to display, how the display should look like (vertical / horizontal etc ). 6. Publication Mode: This will be the last step before you publish your catalog to a DTP application like Quark Express. The publications can done based on a set of records from the main table and then apply Mask and a family hierarchy. After that you completely customize to identify which records to be included and which ones to be filtered. Closing Although MDM as the name suggests if for doing the Master data management, consolidation, harmonization and global data synchronization, it has excellent features for a catalog management solutions and truly so as the product comes from a catalog management background. However, what we have not explored yet is to publish the final publication to a DTP application and print a catalog.
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