Maximo Open Forum

We are in Maximo 7.6 and the Specifications tab of the Asset screen does not natively sort properly.  It's sort order is based on the AssetSpec.DisplaySequence which is written at the time the record was created.  We have some specifications with over 60 AssetAttrid records and when new ones are created they are often not added to the bottom of the list.  They are sorted based on what makes sense for the purpose.  But over time that causes the fields on the Specifications tab to change order from record to record based on what the order was at the time the asset specification was first assigned.  Some of our assets have over half of the fields in the wrong order.  

The problem is natively Maximo can not filter or sort based on information from another table.  The sort order is globally set in the ClassSpec table in the AssetSequence field so I had to write a DB function that looks it up and sorts it so that from one record to the next it is in the right order.  The problem is I am looking at MAS 8 and the ClassSpec table no longer has the multiple sequence fields in it.  What is the driving mechanism of the AssetSpec order in MAS 8 / 9?

We have a small sandbox but it would take a few hours of entering data to test this and thought I might ask here first.  Does anyone know how it is ordered?  Does adding a new field to an existing specification in the middle of the fields replicate properly or is it added to the bottom just like in v7.6 while new assets would have it in the middle?

Brad, tried to reverse engineer this based on our 8.11 instance and a 9.0 demo instance. I haven't noticed this as an issue so I suspected that we build out something customer but it ended up being a configuration change. 

Looking at the asset application the specifications come from the data source specifications_datasrc. This relationship goes to the ASSETSPEC table and has a very specific order by. It does beg the question of where this display sequence comes from.

<datasrc id="specifications_datasrc" orderby="displaysequence,assetattrid,startmeasure" relationship="ASSETSPECCLASS"/>

We are normally pulling in specifications from the classification and I suspect you are doing the same based on your comments referring to the ClassSpec table. I suspect that CLASSSPECUSEWITH.SEQUENCE is the attribute that is setting the ASSETSPEC.DISPLAYSEQUENCE when the classification is applied to the asset. 

In an out of the box system you can adjust this order in the classification applications by opening the "Use with Object Detail" dialog via an icon on each attribute that is right next to the delete icon. This allows you to set the sequence of each use with object. You can also control the attributes to generate description and use in specifications for each object. 

The new or interesting thing that we did in our system to make this easier was create a similar dialog that allows you to view the same options at a "Use With Object" level rather than the attribute level. In classifications  on the use with section we can click the asset use with object and see all the attributes that for the classification. This allows the user to see a full list and the resulting order to make editing easier. I still think the overall process and configuration of classifications is tedious but this dialog help tremendously.