The Generic Data Adapter Wizard will guide you through the steps to link an Asset to external data. To link an Asset to external data you must select the Template in Template Manager and Add a new External Attribute Set to the Asset Template.

This will display the Generic Data Adapter Wizard.



Press the Next button to proceed. This will present the Asset Template Information Page.



You must enter the following information:

  • Enter a descriptive Name for the attribute set. The linked external field/column values will be grouped in this set and presented to the end-user.
  • Check the Inherit box if you wish that the external attributes are inherited by the children of the Asset Type type you selected.

Press the Next button to proceed. This will present the External Data Source page.



You must select the appropriate External Data Source which you configured via the External Data Source Manager. If you have not yet configured the External Data Source you must click the New button which will bring up the External Data Source Wizard.

Press the Next button to proceed. If the Database may require login credentials you will be presented with the User Login page. If you connect to a source that does not require login credentials this page will be skipped.



You will be presented with the following options:


    • Use the Automatic Login option if you wish to automatically login the V-Suite CORE User with the credentials you specify here.
    • Use the User must login to the data source (applied to External Data Source) option if you require the V-Suite CORE User to login to the data source and the user has access to all linked tables. The user will need to login once per V-Suite CORE session.
    • Use the User must login to the data source (applied to External Attribute Set) option if you require the V-Suite CORE User to login to the data source and the user has access to a sub-set of the linked tables (for instance is allowed to view linked Table-A but is not allowed to view linked Table-B). The user will need to login once per V-Suite CORE session.


Press the Next button to proceed. You will be presented with the Data Source Attributes page



This will display the Tables and Views in the specified data source. Select the Columns/Fields you wish to expose the V-Suite CORE User. 



If you are not sure which Columns are relevant you may click the Datasource Browser button which will provide you with a view columns and rows in selected table.

Press the Next button to proceed. If you have selected columns from multiple tables you will be prompted to specify the relationship between the tables, otherwise this page will be skipped.



Press the Configure Table Relations button to select the columns that join the tables by dragging and dropping the columns:



To verify that the relationship you specified is correct you may view the result by clicking the Browse Joined Dataset button. Press OK to accept the table relationship and press Next to proceed.

You will then be presented with database statistics to verify the data set you are linking to. Press Next to proceed.

You will then be presented with the Attribute Alias Page.



You may provide an alias for the column names. The alias is the name by which the column will be presented to the V-Suite CORE user.



You may also change “String” Data Type to URL so that in V-Suite CORE the attribute is recognized as a file/document path:



To hide certain columns in V-Suite CORE you should change the Read Only Type to Do Not Display.

In situations where a V-Suite CORE Asset is linked to multiple rows you may want the rows to grouped by one of the columns. Optionally select the column to group the rows by:



Press the Next button to proceed. This will display the Asset Mapping Keys Page.



Click the Configure Keys button to specify the criteria which link the Asset to the External Data rows.



You will see the external data columns on the left and the V-Suite CORE Asset Attributes on the right. Drag and drop the attributes which must have common values. You may specify multiple column/attribute pairs.

Press the OK button to save the mapping.

Finally press the Finish button to link the Assets to the external data rows. This may take a few minutes since it will update mapping indices so that external data can be queried. When the wizard has updated the indices it will display mapping statistics so that you can verify how many assets were linked to external data.