User codes

User codes (user-defined codes, or UD codes) are small, company-specific lookup lists that you maintain yourself in User Codes Maintenance. Each list has a code type (the list) and any number of codes (the entries). Because they are plain data, anyone with access can add or retire an entry without a developer, a data model regeneration or a new release of a customization.

The tables

Table	Holds	Key fields
Ice.UDCodeType	One row per list (the parent)	Company, CodeTypeID, CodeTypeDesc
Ice.UDCodes	One row per entry in a list (the children)	Company, CodeTypeID, CodeID, CodeDesc, IsActive

Join UDCodes to UDCodeType on Company and CodeTypeID. Both are company-specific, so a list created in one company doesn’t exist in another.

What they’re good for

Drop-down lists. A Kinetic combo box can take its options straight from a user code type, so users pick from a list you can change without touching the layer. See Combo boxes.

Filter lists for BAQs and reports. Instead of hard-coding a list of part numbers, product groups or customers into a BAQ’s criteria, keep them as codes in a user code type and join or subquery against UDCodes. When the list changes, someone updates the codes and the BAQ follows.

-- Parts whose number is in the XX_WATCHPARTS user code list
SELECT p.PartNum, p.PartDescription
FROM Erp.Part p
WHERE p.Company = 'EPIC06'
  AND p.PartNum IN (
      SELECT c.CodeID
      FROM Ice.UDCodes c
      WHERE c.Company = p.Company
        AND c.CodeTypeID = 'XX_WATCHPARTS');

Email distribution lists. A BPM or function that emails a report needs to know who to send it to. Two ways to store that in user codes:

• one code per recipient, with the address in the description, when you want to add and remove people individually, or
• a single code type whose description holds the whole semicolon-separated list, when the list is maintained as one unit.

Counters and settings. A code’s description can hold a value that code reads and updates, such as the next number in a sequence. See Auto-number customer and supplier IDs.

When to use something else

• If the value belongs to a record (a part, an order), it is a field: add a UD field.
• If the list needs several columns of data per entry, a UD table is a better fit than squeezing values into a description.