The advanced document number generator gives you more control over the document number assignment. Using standard document number generation, the system either generates a number from the internal document number sequence, or you manually enter the number. The advanced document number generator offers you more control over document numbering by using number counters and booking lists.
Note: When the advanced number generation is used, the user supplied number, if any, is ignored by the system. This is by design and ensures that the administrator of IFS Document Management is in complete control over how document numbers are generated. In the future, there might be a third option that is similar to advanced but which will allow the user to override the number.
A number counter counts numbers, starting with a specified starting value and counting in an ascending fashion. You can decide how many characters long the number should be so that the number 10, for example, becomes 00010 when used as document number. Entering the value 0 (zero) for a length will allow the system to generate numbers that are as long as they need to be. The number 100, for example, will be three characters long, and the value 1500, four characters long. You can optionally add a prefix or a suffix to the number to create a document number like P00010S.
Each number counter is identified by an ID1 and ID2 value. (You can think of this as a number counter ID and a number counter sub-ID. These two IDs will be discussed further later in this document.)
For example:
| ID1 | ID2 | Start | Length | Prefix | Suffix | Description |
| MDRAW | - | 1 | 5 | M | Main counter for mechanical drawings | |
| MDRAW | P1 | 1 | 4 | MP1 | Counter for mechanical drawings in Project 1. |
In the configuration above, the first of the two number counters will be the main or default counter. The single hyphen (-) in the ID2 field specified this as the default.
For each document class for which you want to use number counters to generate the document numbers, you must configure the number counter ID1 to be used. This will make the system fill in or select this number counter ID1 automatically when creating a new document. If the user does not do anything more, the default number counter will be used for generating the document number. This document will later discuss how to set this up.
Using the example above, let's say a user works for Project 1 and wants to create a document. Instead of letting the system use the default number counter, the user can manually select the MDRAW counter with an ID2 value of P1. This will cause the user's new document to be assigned the next available number from the MDRAW P1 number counter instead.
If there is only one number counter with a particular ID1 value, this counter will always be used. (There will never be a need for the user to select ID2, even if the value for ID2 is not -.)
A booking list is a basic data object used to store a list of booked or reserved document numbers. Each number can have a remark that describes the purpose of the number. Often, one number might be used for a specific project or a specific batch of documents. A booking list is useful if you know that you will receive a batch of documents from some external party, and you want to send a list of numbers to them so that they can include those numbers into the headings of the documents.
Since booking numbers are reserved, the system will never generate them using a number counter. However, a user can still manually enter a booked number (or a number that would be generated from a number counter) by mistake when using standard number generation. (See below for a discussion about the standard and the advanced document number generators.) Think of a Booking List as a reserved range of numbers in a series of numbers that is generated using a Number Counter.
The numbers to book are generated using a number counter and starting from the number counter's current value. Generating numbers from a number counter into a booking list will reserve those numbers. No gaps are allowed in the list of booked numbers (the step between each number is always 1).
Only 100 booked numbers can be generated in the same operation. For example, if you want to book 150 numbers, first generate 100 and then 50 more.
Before the system will use the advanced document number generator instead of the standard number generator, the system administrator must enable the advanced document number generator feature. If the feature is not set up, the system will ignore any selection of number counter or booking list. The feature can be set up for all classes or can be specified on an individual class basis.
For information on how to enable this feature, read the Configuration section of this document.
Using the advanced number generator is simple, the user has two options when creating a new document (from the Document Titles window):
If you set up a number counter for the particular document class being used, the system will always use this number counter for that class as long as no booking list is selected. If you have configured and selected a booking list (the selection must be done manually), this booking list will override the number counter settings and numbers will be fetched from the selected booking list instead. After each number is fetched from a booking list, the number is removed from the booking list so that it cannot be used again.
Apart from creating the actual number counters and booking lists, the system administrator must activate the advanced document number generator for a document class.
In the Document Basic/ Document Default Values tab, set the default value NUMBER_GENERATOR to the value ADVANCED. You can set this value for all classes using the global default values, or per document class using Document Class Basic.
Set the default value NUMBER_COUNTER to the ID1 value of the number counter you want to use for a specific, or all, class(es). If this value is not set, the user will not see any suggested value for the Number Counter ID1 field when creating a new document. The user then will have to manually select values for both Number Counter ID1 and Number Counter ID2 fields. The user can, however, use a booking list if one exists.