Advanced (Object Type Properties)

Object type hierarchy (Object Type Properties)

Object types can have hierarchical relationships. For example, the relationship between a customer company and its contact person can be defined so that the Contact Person object type is a subtype of the Customer object type. Viewing the value list for the Customer object type also displays the contact persons filtered by customer.

Note: You cannot define an internal hierarchy for an object type.

Defining an Object Type Hierarchy

Steps

Open M-Files Admin.
In the left-side tree view, expand the desired connection to M-Files Server.
In the left-side tree view, expand the document vault of your choice.
Still in the left-side tree view, expand Metadata Structure (Flat View) and then select Object Types.
The Object Types list is opened in the right pane.
Double-click the object type for which you want to define a hierarchy.
The Object Type Properties dialog is opened.

On the Advanced tab, do one or both of the following:

If you want to	Do the following
Define subtypes for this object type	Click the Add... button, then select the object types to be added as subtypes of this object type, and click Add. Note: You can select more than one item at once by holding down the Ctrl key to select multiple individual items or by holding down the ⇧ Shift key to select adjacent items on the list. Note: You can remove a subtype by clicking Remove.
Define this object type as a subtype of another object type	Check the This object type is a subtype of the following object type option check box and select the object type using the drop-down menu.

Click OK to save your changes and close the Object Type Properties dialog.

Results

An object type hierarchy is created between the selected object types. In M-Files, when you create a new object that you have defined as a subtype of another object type, you will need to select an owner object for it. Thus a relationship is created between the owner and the subobject when the new object is created.

Default for automatic permissions (Object Type Properties)

The actual final object receives automatic permissions when a value with automatic permissions specified is added for the object.

You can activate the automatic permissions by value, value list, object type or class. You can specify the automatic permissions for each object type in the same way as for each value.

Note: The value-specific settings always have priority over the settings made at value list and object type level. For more information, see Automatic Permissions.

Aliases (Object Type Properties)

Aliases can be used for identifying semantically equivalent metadata. For example, when importing objects from another vault, their Date and Description properties can be mapped to the target vault's equivalent properties on the basis of aliases even if the properties' internal IDs and/or names are different. That is, the aliases refer to semantically equivalent metadata in different vaults, or in other words, alias is a common ID for the same metadata definition between several vaults.

The alias is defined as a common ID with the same name in both source and target vault.

When defining the alias, you can use various external data type and archive standards, such as SÄHKE2, MoReq2, and Dublin Core.

For more information, see Associating the Metadata Definitions.

Performance (Object Type Properties)

You might want to enable the Use a separate metadata search index for this object type option for essential object types that are frequently used and that are found in large number in the vault.

Since these essential object types vary from organization to organization, the option is disabled by default. In document management, for instance, the Document object type is naturally the most important object type. In CRM vaults, however, the most important object types are usually something different, such as Customer, Project, Contact person, and so on.

Enabling this option makes M-Files use a separate search structure for the objects of the selected object type. This improves search speed for both the objects of the selected object type and for other objects – especially in case the vault contains a high number of objects representing this key object type.

Note: Enabling this option might take a long time to complete, from a couple of minutes up to a few hours. The vault is also taken offline for the duration of this operation, preventing any users from accessing the vault.