Part / Item "Alias" or "Alternate ID"

Question

When it comes to a PART definition in Aras, does anyone have any recommendations as to the concept of "Alias" or "Alternate ID". My use-case is that when a PART is defined in my world, there are multiple "alias" or alternate ID's that are used in different world areas. So, Part number xxx-123456 is its' global definition but in Europe it's known as yyyxxxzzz. This issue is related to legacy codification of parts along with ERP limitations or features. A Bill of Material could contain yyyxxxzzz or xxx-123456 and still be valid. 
 If you add the idea of "context" then when I'm in the US Context I always see xxx-123456, when in the EU context, I see yyyxxxzzz. 
 Any ideas?

Christopher Gillis · Answer

Hello, 
 Parts out-of-the-box have a "Part Alternate" relationship, but this is more intended for separate parts that can serve the same purpose. 
 One custom approach you could take is to add a null relationship called something like Aliases or AKA that holds two pieces of information: the other name of the part and the region in which it has that name. If you're new to Innovator, you can check out this blog post for steps on how to add this kind of relationship. 
 With this relationship, I could imagine taking this one step further and introducing the "context" you mention. Perhaps every user has a "region" associated with them, and you can use an onAfterGet server event on Part to replace the name with the region-appropriate one based on who's making the request. 
 There are numerous other ways you could handle this. This is just one suggestion that I think would be pretty easy to implement based on the description of the use case. 
 Chris 
 
 Christopher Gillis 
 Aras Labs Software Engineer