Basic Of Descriptive Flexfield In Oracle Apps (DFF)

I will offer some basic Questions and answers, then I show you how flexfields are configured. Question: What is DFF? Answer: DFF is a mechanism that lets us create new fields in standard forms that are delivered by Oracle. Question: Are these new fields will added without any modifying/customization of the form?. Answer: Yes,. Only some setup is needed, but no programmatic change is needed to setup DFF. Question: Are these DFF’s flexible? Answer: A little flexible, for example, depending upon the value in a field, we can make either Field1 or Field2 to appear in DFF.

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Question: huum, we create new fields in existing screen, but why the need of doing so? Answer: Oracle delivers a standard set of fields for each screen, but different customers have different needs, hence Oracle lets us create new fields to the screen. This is to force the customer to be out of forms customization, specially the standard forms Question: Are these new fields that get created as a result of DFF free text? I mean, can end user enter any junk into the new fields that are added via DFF? Answer: yes all available fields are varchar data type but you can restrict the user entry using value set. Question: Will the values that get entered by the user in DFF fields be updated to database? Answer: Indeed, this happens because for each field that you create using DFF will be mapped to a column in Oracle Applications. Question: Can I create a DFF on any database column? Answer: No. Oracle delivers a predefined list of columns for each table that are meant for DFF usage. Only those columns can be mapped to DFF segments. These columns are named similar to ATTRIBUTE1, ATTRIBUTE2, ATTRIBUTE3 ETC. Usually Oracle provides upto 15 columns, but this number can vary, some table contains 30 attributes. Question: Can I add hundreds of fields to a given screen? Answer: This depends on the number of attribute columns in the table that screen uses. Also, those columns must be flagged as DFF enabled in DFF Registration screen. Question: Hmmm, I can see that DFFs are related to table and columns… Answer: Yes correct. Each DFF is mapped to one table. And also each attribute is mapped to one of the attribute columns in that table. Question: I want these fields to appear in screen only when certain conditions are met. Is it possible? Answer: Yes, we have something known as Context Sensitive Descriptive Flexfields. In Order to do this, we will follow the below steps(screenshots will follow) :-

1. 1. Navigate to the DFF Registration screen in Oracle Apps and query on Table “Additional Personal Details” Now click on Reference Field.

1. 1. Navigate to DFF Segments screen and query on the Title of the “Bank Branch” and Unfreeze the Flexfield and add segments as to Section “GLOBAL Data Elements” as shown in screenshots

Now you can select from below structure based on employee gender for example.

Hope that this article gave you good information.