Globalizing local items

When a global type is linked to a project you can create local items of this global type. This is necessary if you cannot find the proper item in the already linked tables.

For example, you have linked to your project the Dutch cities table of the global type City and you want to assign the value London to the City property of a particular step. Since you cannot find the linked table you decided to create a local item London of type City. Then, you extensively assign London to steps in many processes of your project. At certain moment, the Tables manager decides to create a new table called English cities of the type City and he includes London there. Then, you decide to link this new table to your project because you want to make use of other items there like Liverpool or Sheffield. But now, you have a global item London in the linked table and the local item London that was created before. Apparently, this is the same city so you can get rid of the local item. But, this item is already used in many processes. If you just delete it, all the references to it will be removed as well. So, it seems that you have first to go over all these references and replace them by the references to the global item London.

In order to simplify these actions, we have introduced the Globalize operation. Select the table that you want to globalize (English cities in this case) and press the Globalize button in the Tables tab. First, the Engage Process Modeler will look for all local items of the selected type (City) that have the same name as the items in the selected table (thus, London will be found as a candidate for globalization).

The following dialog appears:

Select the items that you want to globalize and press OK. All references to the selected local items (local London) in all processes of the project will be replaced by references to the corresponding global items (global London). Finally, the local items of the selected global type that are no more used can be deleted. Thus, the following question appears.

Now, you can decide what to do with the not used local items. Press Yes or No, depending on your choice. In both cases, the project will be reloaded. This means that the Globalize operation cannot be undone.

If you yourself are in the Table Manager role then you are allowed to create new global table items. So, you can even globalize those local items that do not have their counterparts in the selected table. In this case, you will be able to select for globalization any local item of the corresponding type. If it is not in the global table yet the following question will appear.

If you answer No, then the item York will not be globalized.