How to Automatically Populate a Project Name with a Project Sequence Number in OpenAir

Did you know there is an OpenAir feature that can be used to automatically populate a project name with a project sequence number per client?

Sometimes there are custom fields in OpenAir that contain secret built-in functionality – we like to call them “Easter Eggs”! This feature uses one of those custom fields.

How to configure

1. Navigate to Administration > Global settings > Custom Fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. On the list of custom fields, look for one called per_customer_project_id_seq. If it’s there, make sure it’s active.

 

3.  If the field was not pre-configured in your account, then create the custom field.

 

4.  Select “Project” and “Numeric”, then press “Continue”

5.  Fill out the form as follows, and press “Save”.  The display name can be whatever you prefer, but the field name must match exactly!

 

Once the specialty custom field is set up and enabled, the system will automatically create a prefix sequence number unique for the project’s client.   The feature will automatically keep track of the next available sequence number for the client, based on the highest sequence number already used for that client. The numeric custom field will be automatically populated by the feature and the project name will get the number as a prefix!

If you leave the number as editable on the project form, you can actually change it and the project name will take on the revised prefix. Not only that, if the number you change it to is the highest sequence number for that client, the next project for that client will be based on the edited number.

For example, the system chooses 1 for Client X’s first project. You prefer to have project numbers for this client to start at 1001. Change the project id of the first project to 1001, and the next project for that client will be 1002.

A variation of this feature allows the numeric field to control a client-specific sequence however it is not set as the prefix for the project.   This provides a unique per client numbering that can be reported on and used in list views for filtering. To enable this feature variation, simply set up a slightly different custom numeric field for projects with the field name of per_customer_project_id_seq_delete.