Global Items vs. Local Items

Overview and Examples

There are situations when a homebuilder is a holding entity which includes multiple homebuilding companies. To avoid entering and maintaining Items in every company, the application provides the ability to manage items in one place, on a global level.

1. This discussion is about where to setup Items in order that you can use the same list of items in another company.
2. First setup your Item list locally, we recommend this approach whether you intend to use Global Items or not. It is easy to push local items up to global items. Going the other way is more difficult.
3. There are three approaches to creating colour chart items in a new company.

• Maintain items in a Template Company (RECOMMENDED). Two ways to put items into the new company:
  • Copy the company to create a new company or…
  • Use the Copy-from function on the Items page in the new company.
• Create global items instead of local items and Push to Models from Global Items directly to the Local Models (note that you can push Local Items up to Global Items when you are ready to do this).
• Use the export/import Item routines between companies – this does not work for bundles and/or attachments.

4. Things to avoid:

• Do not mix global and local items, although technically possibly, it will become confusing.

5. Why we recommend using a template company rather than Global Items:

• Companies sometimes have different items on different sites.
• Sometime items can change purpose and nature between sites, for example, an upgrade finish on a low-end build becomes a standard finish on a high-end build.
• Standard setup for example Colour Chart Notes may need to be different on differing sites.
• If items have different variants in different sites, for example, Upgrade 1 tile has extra variants in a new site.
• You add items that are specific to a site.
• Please note that all these things can be done with Global Items but the more exceptions you have with a global set of data, the more confusing and cumbersome the system becomes. We have found that all these topics exist in builders, this is why we recommend template companies.

6. Things that Global Items do not do well:

• Local Items are considered a fundamental part of the system, we maintain a high degree of functionality and code maintenance at the Local Item level. Global Items are considered an additional offering so, from time to time, we will find that complex development will run behind and sometimes not even be considered. Examples:
  • Trade Types was written for Global Items 6-months behind Local Items.
  • The Items by Location matrix – This will not be built for Global Items.
• You must maintain all the Item support tables at a global level as well as local level.

Summary: Why Choose Global or Local?

If you have the same Items for each company, choose to use the Global tables instead of the Local ones.

Whenever in doubt, choose Local. You can always copy from one company to another or create your new company from a template company (if you have created one).

Managing these Global Items requires other related data entities to be maintained on a global level as well. These entities include the following.

• Global Item Categories focuses on the Global scope
  • Read Construction Item Categories for more information about general functionality.
• Global Workflow Templates
  • The article above explains the Construction Workflow Templates on the local (single Company) and Global level

Global Items allow for maintaining items in a global scope. The meaning of the fields is the same as described in the section "Construction Items". To maintain the list of Construction Items, open the page "Global Items" by searching it or by navigating to Homebuilder, then Setup, and finally select Global Items.

For more information regarding Action Buttons and Field Definitions, read Construction Items. This article outlines the functionality on the local, i.e.: single Company scale. Global Items work parallelly but on the Global Level. (data can be accessed in every Company using a global table.)

Global Item Card

Global Item Card has parallel functions to a Construction Item Card but on the Global level

The actions work the same way as in the page "Global Items". It is explained in the article Construction Items.