Setting Fields to Be Inheritable (Digital Resources Only)

When editing the structure of the Digital Resources folder type, you can specify whether a custom database field is inheritable. If a field is marked as “inheritable”, its value is propagated down the tree hierarchy from the parent folder to its children. In other words, a digital resource stored in the database receives the value of the inheritable field from the database record referencing its parent folder. For example, specifying the job number to be an inheritable field ensures that all digital resources found in a production folder will have the same job number.

The value of each inheritable field is automatically recalculated for:

New digital resource being added to the DSM database

Digital resource residing in the DSM database after its location has been modified/updated (for example, after the digital resource has been moved to another location)

Digital resources residing in the DSM database after its parent’s value of the inheritable field has been changed (for example, the user has modified the value)

For any particular digital resource, the user may edit and redefine the inherited value of the database field as needed.

All custom fields created to extend the default structure of the Digital Resources folder type may be set to be inheritable. In combined Digital Storage Manager, the inheritance mechanism is used to automatically populate custom-defined fields that need to share the same metadata associated with digital resources: if an inheritable field of a record referencing a folder is filled with data, the same data is automatically propagated to all children of this folder.

After selecting the Digital Resources record type in the Forms and Finds window, placing a check in the Inheritable Field column ( ) instructs the SQL Server database engine to propagate the same field value to all database records referencing digital resources that are in the hierarchy relationship “parent-child”. Clicking Save will save the changes you have made to the record type structure.

Note: File collection and memo fields cannot be designated as inheritable fields. Also, you cannot set a database field to be inheritable/non-inheritable if it is predefined for the record type, for example, all digital resources from the same job folder will always share the same archiving status, job number, etc.