Managing locations
Overview
In a hierarchical structure, locations represent your company's branches across regions, countries, cities, etc. The Global location is generated during the installation, is the uppermost element in the location hierarchy, and must not be deleted.
The configuration items that are not explicitly assigned to another location belong to the Global location.
Locations structure your organization according to regional aspects. This structure can be a hierarchy that contains the following elements:
- Part of the world
- Country
- City
Assignment to locations can later be used to give the users different permissions for managing the stored data. For example, you can define that an employee can edit only the data of a specific location. User permissions are defined by the roles assigned to them, so permissions are granted to or withdrawn from a user role.
Locations are managed in the Master Data application under Organizational Structure > Locations.
Creating locations
You can add locations manually or import them in bulk using the standard template.
Regional settings
When creating a new location, you can set the default language of this location. To change the default language for locations that already exist, you can change the language via the Change Default Language action.
This language will be the default user interface language of the Matrix42 Self Service Portal that is valid for users belonging to this location. Please note that the default language is taken from the location only if the user did not select the default language in their profile. For example, an English-speaking user relocated to the office in Germany, where German is the default language of the location. However, the user wants to set English as the default UI language. So when the user selects English as the default language in the user profile, English will be the default UI language for the user in the Matrix42 Self Service Portal. But if the user prefers German and makes no changes to the language settings of the profile, then German will be the default language for the user.
How to import locations
Running the Import action
Execute the Import Locations:
-
The Quick Import wizard will open.
- On the first page keep the Use existing import definition checkbox selected.
- Then click the Download Template File link.
- Open the file and fill in the data to be imported into the system.
- Upload this file.
- Follow through with the other steps of the wizard.
- After you click the Import button, the system will process the data. Upon completion you will see the import result message and a link to an import log file.
The Quick Import concept indicates that records can be imported from the corresponding navigation item by running the Import action. To be able to import records for any configuration item, an import definition for this configuration item must exist. An import definition sets the rules for importing data.
Common rules to consider when editing the import template file:
- Culture context of the data: when entering the text, consider the language specified in the quick import settings. It is important especially if the Excel file is uploaded as it may contain country-specific data such as dates, number formats, or currencies.
- Ambiguous values for matching attributes: if no or more than one matching values are found during processing of data, the value that is specified in the data source file is not saved to the system database.
Explanation of the import template
All imported data can be modified manually in the user interface.
| Field Name | Explanation | Maximum Character Length |
|---|---|---|
| Abbreviation | Required: key data used as the location identifier for the locations import. Alphanumeric string. | 50 |
| Name | Required: alphanumeric string. | 100 |
| Type | Specify one of the default options:
|
|
| Description | Alphanumeric string. | 1000 |
| Status | Two options are possible: Active and Inactive. When entering the text, consider the language that was set for the user interface. | |
| Valid from | Date. | |
| Valid until | Date. | |
| Org.Unit | Abbreviation of the organizational unit. | |
| Location | Abbreviation of the parent location. | |
| Manager | Principal contact person of the location. According to the pre-configured mapping rules, use the following data template:
|
Example of importing locations
The given example is a filled-out template to be imported:
The successfully completed import results in the following records in the Organization Structure > Locations navigation item:
