Creating a Hierarchy

After installation and setup are complete, you can organize equipment into hierarchy groups. This allows you to decide how you want to view related equipment and how you want profitability, service, and scheduled maintenance information to appear for multiple equipment records that may be affected by the same transactions at once.

About Containers

Containers are used to help organize equipment records in a hierarchy. Similar to the way folders are used to sort files that are saved on your computer, containers are used for organizational purposes but do not have the same functionality as equipment records. You cannot schedule maintenance on a container, and unlike equipment, containers cannot be sold, rented, or transported.

You may, for example, want to create a container for a specific plant, inside of which is a container for each building. You may even have a container for each floor within a building. To locate the equipment record for a pump that is malfunctioning, you can drill down on the appropriate plant, building, and floor; this narrows the list of equipment records that you need to scroll through to find and create a service call for the correct equipment.

Containers can also be used for reporting purposes; by organizing equipment records per the example above, you can keep track of how much work and money is going into a specific building or plant. You can also analyze the amount of preventative maintenance vs. emergency repair service that is performed at each level of the hierarchy; for example, if one pump has undergone more emergency repairs than the others, it may need more frequent scheduled maintenance or to be part of a replacement schedule.

Setting up Hierarchy Groups

When creating hierarchical relationships, you can use as many levels as you want; there is no limit on the number of containers you create or the number of components you connect.

Think carefully about how you want to set up your hierarchy groups. Service and maintenance can only be done on equipment, so if you want to track work that is performed, for example, on a building, make sure that the building is an equipment record, not a container. If service is performed not on the building itself but on the equipment inside, you may want to set up the building as a container.

Select Cards > Equipment > Equipment Hierarchy to open the Equipment Hierarchy Maintenance window, where you can set up and manage hierarchy groups. If you have a lot of equipment records, this window may load slowly unless you change the number of records that load at once. See Customizing viewing options.

On the left pane of the Hierarchy Maintenance window is a list of all equipment records and containers in the company. Selecting an object on the left pane allows you to view the following:

• On the information bar, details for that object. If you select a container, no details appear on the information bar.
• On the right window pane, anything directly underneath the object in the hierarchy. Objects that appear on the right pane can be ordered and multi-selected.

The left pane of the hierarchy window is also where a tree view of the hierarchy appears. To create a parent-component relationship between two equipment records, drag and drop the record that will be the component onto the record that will be the parent. You can arrange as many equipment records as you want into a hierarchy group.

The following icons help identify the objects in a hierarchy:

Icon	Description
	Indicates the company that holds all equipment, groups, and containers. Equipment that is DIRECTLY underneath the company node is at the top level; dragging and dropping a record onto the company node detaches the equipment (with its components) from any parent and moves it to the top level.
	Indicates a container that can be used to organize equipment records. Containers can hold hierarchy groups, individual records, and/or other containers. Equipment within a container is still considered top-level if it is not a component of any other record.
	Indicates a standalone equipment record that is not part of a hierarchy group. This equipment is at the top level (directly underneath the company node or within a container) and has no components.
	Indicates a parent equipment record that has components but is not itself a component of any other record. This equipment is at the top level and can be expanded to view the components that are underneath it in the hierarchy group.
	Indicates that the record is a component in a hierarchy group; this equipment has a parent record but has no components underneath it in the hierarchy.
	Indicates that the equipment is both a parent and a component in a hierarchy group. View this record by expanding its parent, then expand this record to view the components underneath it in the hierarchy.
	Indicates that the record is inactive; equipment cannot be attached to or detached from a hierarchy group while inactive. Any type of equipment (standalone, parent, component, component with component) may be shown as inactive.

About Hierarchical Relationships

If you are using Site IDs, when you create a hierarchical relationship between two equipment inventory items, an inventory transfer is automatically created. Similar to the way transfers are used to keep track of attachments as they are moved between inventory and equipment, transfers are also used to keep track of equipment as it is rearranged in the hierarchy.

Each equipment inventory item can have a Home Site ID and a Component Site ID. When an equipment inventory item is added as a component to another equipment inventory item, the component is transferred to the component site of the top-level parent in its new equipment group.
If the component's Site ID is already the same as the parent's Component Site ID, no transfer is created.

Removing a component transfers the equipment back to its home site.

Example: Two parent-component relationships exist:

When MIL0020 is added as a component to MIL0017, MIL0020 and MIL0021 become components of the top-level MIL0016.

Two inventory transfers occur:

When MIL0020 is removed from MIL0017, MIL0020 and MIL0021 are no longer components of the top-level MIL0016.

Two inventory transfers occur:

Posted inventory transfers can be viewed on the Inventory Transaction Inquiry window (Inquiry > Inventory > Item Transaction).

In addition, you can manually transfer group equipment, whether you are transferring equipment inventory items to a different site or fixed assets to another location. The transfer can only be created for the top-level equipment in the group, and all components are included in the transaction.
Adding a component also changes the location, division, branch, owning location, and operating location of the component to that of the parent. Manually changing these fields does not affect any other group members; however, creating a transaction that changes any of these values for the parent will change these values for the components as well.

For more information on how components are affected when you create transactions with group equipment, see Transactions.

Setting up Containers

You can use containers however you want; you could set up a complex structure of containers, several individual containers, or no containers at all. Containers can be added in two places: underneath the main (company) node and within another container. You cannot place a container underneath an equipment record.

1. Right-click on the node you want to create the container underneath, and select Add Container. There is a 30-character limit on the name that is saved for the container. If you wish, you can create multiple containers with the same name.
2. After you set up containers, you can use them to organize equipment; drag and drop equipment records into the appropriate containers. If you move a parent record into a container, the entire group (consisting of the parent record and all its components) moves with it.

Copying containers

You can copy containers, for example, if you are organizing equipment by branch, and you want to use the same basic structure of containers for each branch. You can set up one branch, then copy and paste (and rename and reorganize) the containers for additional branches. This saves valuable time setting up the same basic organizational structure multiple times.

When you copy a container, all the containers it holds are copied with it. If you have any equipment inside the containers you are copying, those records remain where they are; only the organizational structure can be duplicated like this. 

Right-click the container you are copying, and select Copy Container. Right-click on the company or container that you want to paste the structure underneath, and select Paste Container. You can then rename and reorganize the copied containers if you wish.