Configure Property Effectivity

The effectivity of a property determines when the property can be changed and which revisions of the parent object the change affects.

Important!

You can change the effectivity of a property after it has been created, it will not affect existing property values. Therefore, it is important that you choose the correct original effectivity carefully.

If you create a property with the wrong effectivity and it already contains data for many objects, you can try this workaround:

  1. Create a new property with the correct effectivity.

  2. Migrate the data from the original property to the new property.

    The Set Property Value command in PowerUser is useful for this.

  3. Delete the original property definition.

This requires that you match the property validation and value assignments, update property pages and reports manually, and update all references to the original property name in VBScript.

To configure a property's effectivity, select it from the Effectivity list. In most cases, you should select either the Versioned or Normal effectivity types:

The available Effectivity options are described in the following table.

Property effectivity options
Option Description

Global

The property's value is the same for all revisions of the object.

Normal

The property's value can only be changed when the object is in a workflow. The value only affects the current revision of the object.

Time Global

The property's value affects all revisions of the object.

Versioned

The property's value can be changed at any time. The value only affects the current released revision of the object.

Properties that will be used in the Field-Path definition must have an effectivity type set to Versioned.

Note:

If a property with this effectivity is placed on a wizard page that is assigned to a workflow transition, its value will be applied to the latest released revision of the document, not to the unreleased revision in the workflow. This can seem counter intuitive. The value is assigned before the transition executes that creates the new revision.

Work Global

The property's value can be changed at any time. The property's value only affects the current revision of the object.

2024