Numerator Service

1. Introduction

The Numerator Service enables you to provide a unique ID for all new documents, tasks, emails, etc. created on a business module.

This feature is great for providing entities, documents, e-mails and many other items with unique identifiers. This can greatly help in identifying where items belong, as well as granting overview of items. The number sequences used with this service can also be customized to contain information such as the name of the parent of the entity (e.g. the company of a project), and the day, month and year of the creation of the item, and many more properties.

A use case could be a company that works with a lot of different projects and documents. Projects can be outfitted with a unique automatically generated ID, which can also be used on associated documents, in order to e.g. easily know which documents belong to which projects.

The Numerator Service generates information when a new item is created, meaning the information that the Numerator Service generates is accessible only after and item such as an entity or document is created.

2. Requirements

There are currently no license requirements associated with the use of the Numerator Service feature.

3. Configuration

Configuration of the numbering service can be done from the WorkPoint Administration:

Click the "Home" button of the WorkPoint solution.
Click the cog icon in the bottom of the side panel to access to WorkPoint Administration.

In the left side panel of the WorkPoint Administration, click "Numerator Service".

3.1. Creating a number sequence

Creation of a new number sequence can be done by following these steps:

In the Numerator Service settings page, click "Add sequence".

In this example, we will create a number sequence for the ProjectID field for each project in the Projects module. This helps automatically generate a project ID for each new project in a sequential manner.

A title is provided for the sequence.
For "Next number" a value of "1" is set. This is in effect what the first project ID from this sequence will be.
The "Increment" value is set to "1", meaning that the "Next number" value will increase by 1 each time a new ProjectID is created using this number sequence.
The "Mask" is probably the most complex aspect of the numbering sequences. The mask allows for configuration of what the result of the numbering service will be. As described in the user interface, an example of a mask of "[DD]-[MM]-[YYYY]-[####]" will result in an ID of "28-04-2016-0001". "[DD]" refers to the current day, "[MM]" refers to the current month, "[YYYY]" refers to the current year, and "[####]" is a number sequence, containing the value from the "Next number" field.

Other properties can also be used. In the example from the image above, "[wpParent]" is the first property of the sequence. "wpParent" refers to the parent business module of the item that this sequence is set up for. In this example, the ID of the first project of a company called "Advanced Bicycles" would be: "Advanced Bicycles-2019-0001"

The "Reset next number on new year" checker can be checked if the value of the "Next number" field should reset when a new year begins.
When the configuration of the sequence is complete, click the "Save" button.

3.2. Using a number sequence

Using a number sequence requires it to be enabled on a business module. Working further on the example in section 3.1. we use the created number sequence on the Projects module of the solution:

In the Numerator Service settings page, click the "Edit" button for the Projects business module.

The numerator service is enabled for the Projects business module.
The "Keep document number on move" checker can be enabled to make it so that documents only get a new ID when copied, not moved between document libraries. This setting is not relevant for this example, thus it is left unchecked. For more information about this setting, visit section 5.1.
The "Use a number sequence on entities" checker can be enabled to use a unique ID from a number sequence for each entity in the business module. This is exactly what we want in order to be able to have each new project created have a unique project ID based on the number sequence we created earlier.
For the "Number sequence", the sequence we created is selected.
For "Number sequence field", we have to set the field on the project that should receive and contain the project ID. In this example, projects have a column called "Project ID", which we will use.
We leave the rest of the settings as default (they can be configured in just the same way), and click the "Save" button.

In the Numerator Service settings page, we can now review the configurations:

4. End User Guide

Click here to go to the end user guide article for Numerator Service.

5. Notes

The Numerator Service generates information when a new item is created, meaning the information that the Numerator Service generates is accessible only after and item such as an entity or document is created.

As exemplified previously, many different properties can be used in the mask of a number sequence. Typically used ones are:

Mask name	Property
[DD]	Current day
[MM]	Current month
[YYYY]	Current year (can be [YY])
[#]	The value of "Next number" is inserted in this property of the mask (can have as many '#' as needed)
[Title]	The title of the entity on which the item is created
[wpParent]	Title of the parent business module of the created item. Other fields from the business module can be used, such as [Title] (title of the entity on which the item is created)
String of characters	A string of characters can be used in the mask. E.g. "Project-[YYYY]-[##]" could result in "Project-2019-01"

The numerator service is typically used for providing unique IDs to entities, such as projects or cases, or for individual documents.

5.1. Keep document number on move

As previously mentioned, it is possible to set up the numerator service to make documents keep their assigned numerator service ID through the "Move" function in WorkPoint. This is done by checking the following checker:

If the above checker is checked, documents moved from a document library on one business module to a document library on another business module will keep it's assigned numerator service ID.

Be advised that keeping document number on move works ONLY if the start and end location for the document(s) share the same numerator service number sequence.

Consider the following diagram:

If the "Keep document number on move" checker is checked, documents moved in e.g. the way indicated by the arrows will keep their numerator service ID through the move.

Other examples exist, but a general rule is that if two libraries utilize the same numerator service number sequence, documents can be moved between these and keep their numerator service ID.

Be advised that this does not work if copying an item from one location to another. Copying items always grants the item a new numerator service ID.

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Requirements