The most used and by far the easiest way of customizing Deltek Vision is the User Defined Controls feature. This allows you to add new fields and grids to any existing info center (like projects, employees, vendors, etc..) or even create your own new info centers from scratch.
Custom fields support all the data types you know from standard Vision like numbers, characters, dates, memo-fields, etc…
but you can also select any of the info centers (built-in and user defined) as data type which will allow you to link one record to another.
Sample
We will use a simple extension to the vendor info cenuter where we will create a specific user defined info center (UDIC) that will allow us to define geographical regions and then add a custom field to the vendor that will tie this record to specific vendors. We will later use this information in our custom report.
Step 1: Add Custom User Info Center
In Vision, go to Configuration – General – User Defined Controls and click on Create New Info Center
Enter these values into the dialog box
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Singular Name | Vendor Region |
| Plural Name | Vendor Regions |
| Info Center | Name: UDIC_VendorRegion |
By default the fields list show two entries: CustNumber and CustName. A UDIC must have at least one of these items (both will uniquely identify the record).
In our sample we remove the CustNumber row and only keep CustName. Then we will add the following items to the list:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Label | Description |
| Field Name | CustDescription |
| Data Type | Character |
| Length | 100 |
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Label | Sort Order |
| Field Name | CustSortOrder |
| DataType | Numeric |
| Decimals | 0 |
Step 2: Add reference field to Vendor Info Center
Pick Vendor from the info center dropdown and in the Fields tab add a field with the following details to the list:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Label | Region |
| Field Name | CustRegion |
| Data Type | Vendor Regions |
Final Steps
Now simply restart Vision and the new Info Center should appear in your menu list (if it does not please check the access rights of your role).
Enter a couple of regions and then go to the Vendor Info Center and pick a record. You will now be able to search and assign these new regions similar as you would for instance an employee record.
Additional Notes
All user defined fields, grids and info centers support Vision’s workflow engine. You can validate and calculate values in the same manner as you would do with the built-in info centers. We will see some of these techniques in a later article.
