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Introduction to FlexCDM

Because the customer data model FlexCDM, which has been introduced to ConSol CM with version 6.9, is rather complex and very powerful, a separate introduction chapter will help you to understand all the details.

FlexCDM at a Glance

Flexible Customer Data Model

As the name FlexCDM suggests, the ConSol CM customer data model offers a very high degree of flexibility. Various customer groups can be defined, each with its particular data model.

In ConSol CM, we talk about customers to describe the general CM object. This can be either a company or a contact. A company represents an object on company level which will, in most cases, be a real company, a subsidiary, a division or some other organizational unit on a higher level. It can also be a collection of products, a machine pool, or any other object which comprises sub-objects. A contact represents an object on contact level, i.e. on the lower level of the customer model. A contact will often be a real person but can also be a product, a machine or some other object.

Contacts as well as companies can be set as customer for a ticket.

There are different ways to configure customer data models for customer groups. Within a customer group, there might be ...

a contact and a company level:
then we talk about a two-level customer data model (where a company can contain several contacts)
only a contact or only a company level:
then we talk about a one-level customer data model

Figure 133: Types of customer data models in ConSol CM

For example, you could classify your customers in two customer groups:

Resellers
With contact and company level.
End customers
With contact level only.

You can configure as many customer data models as required. Every customer data model can be used for one or more customer groups.

A customer data model comprises the general model, i.e. the levels (contact and company or contact/company only) and all data fields for all components (e.g. name, address, and phone for a company or name, e-mail, and room number for a contact).

Figure 134: ConSol CM FlexCDM - General principle

For a two-level customer data model:

The terms company and contact are used to indicate the hierarchical level of an object within FlexCDM. An object of type company does not necessarily have to be a real company, it can also be a town with several machines (contacts) located in this town, an organization with several subsidiaries (contacts), or even a technical unit (e.g. a ship) with several contacts in the unit. Similarly, an object of type contact does not necessarily have to be a person, it can also be a location, a machine, or anything else which should represent the contact level.

For a one-level customer data model:

The customer objects in a one-level customer model are either of type contact or of type company.

For the customers which are managed by your ConSol CM system, the levels and names of all components entirely depend on the configuration of FlexCDM.

Using FlexCDM you can build different realms where each includes a specific customer group and the respective data and processes.

Figure 135: ConSol CM FlexCDM - Customer data model

Please see section Setting Up the Customer Data Model for a detailed description of the customer management.

Introduction to FlexCDM Objects

In this section, we will give you an overview of all objects which are relevant for the FlexCDM.

Figure 136: ConSol CM FlexCDM - Example configuration

Important Terms

Here are some important terms for the FlexCDM:

Customer
General term for customer objects, can be of type contact or of type company.
Company
Data object of type company, company level.
Contact
Data object of type contact, contact level.
Customer group
A group of customers with a specific customer data model. The engineer permissions (via roles) for customer management are assigned based on customer groups.
Data object
An object within the customer data model. The object type can be contact (often times a person) or company. The technical (Groovy) equivalent is an object of class Unit.
Data object definition
All definitions pertaining to the unit. For a company these are e.g. all data object groups, all group annotations, and the assignment of all templates (for the display of customer data in the Web Client, not to be confused with other templates in ConSol CM!)
Data object group
A group comprising one or more data field(s) (data object group fields), analog to a custom field group for ticket data. A data object group can be shown or hidden or it can be displayed as a tab in the (new) customer data group section.
Data object group field
A single data field (types like custom field types) that can contain customer data, analog to custom fields when defining data fields for ticket data.
Customer data model
The whole data model that can be assigned to a customer group.
The data model can have:
- one level (only contact or only company)
- two levels (company and contact)
The customer data model also contains the definitions of data object groups and data object group fields.
Customer relations
Relations between a company and contacts or between companies or between contacts. All relations in their entirety represent the customer relations network.
Action Framework
A set of modules in CM which allows event-triggered, workflow-independent programming. The customer actions (also called data object actions or unit actions) which are relevant in the FlexCDM context are part of the Action Framework.