Grouped components

Grouped components simplify the task of recording cumulative reading values, such as running hours or fuel used, in your maintenance routines by allowing your crews to apply one set of values to all the components in a group, instead of entering the values for each component one-by-one.

You can group any components that make sense for you and your workflows. Let's say you want to keep granular maintenance records for an engine. You could create a group that contains the engine and its associated sub-components. When recording the running hours or fuel used or other cumulative reading type for that engine, your crew members could either enter the value for the engine and each of the sub-components, one at a time, or they could enter the value for the group and then click once to apply the value to each component in the group.

How to group components

You can group components on any of your maintenance templates, either by building a new template or editing an existing one. For more about building a maintenance template, check out this lesson.

When grouping components, you have two options:

• Automatically enter components You can select a component to be the "parent" component for the group, then automatically populate the group with its related sub-components, based on the layout you built on the Assets tab in Assets, on the Management menu. For more about component layouts, take a look at this lesson.
• Manually enter components You can add individual components to the group by dragging Cumulative Reading items over one at a time.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Grouped categories are very flexible. A group can contain any components you need, even if they aren't from the same area of a component layout.
• To rearrange the items in a group, grab an item by the little handle icon and drag it up or down.
• If you delete an item by mistake, simply add it again by dragging over another Cumulative Reading item.
• By default, any item you add will be required. To change this setting, click the Required icon to the right of the item.
• If your component layout has multiple levels, you won't see the indented levels in the group. All items in a group are displayed at the same level.

To enter grouped components automatically

1. In a maintenance template, drag a Grouped Category item from the list on the left and drop it onto the template.
2. Enter a description for the grouped category.
3. To the right of the description, select the parent component for the group, then click Populate to automatically populate the group with its related sub-components.

To enter grouped components manually

1. In a maintenance template, drag a Grouped Category item from the list on the left and drop it onto the template.
2. Enter a description for the grouped category.
3. Drag a Cumulative Reading item from the list on the left and drop it onto the grouped category.
4. Enter a description and select a component from the list of available components.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 to add all the components you need into the group.

How to enter values for a grouped category

Once you publish a maintenance template that contains a component group, your crew will be able to use it when they fill out a maintenance routine based on that template.

To enter running hours or any other cumulative reading type value for a grouped category

1. In an open maintenance routine, enter the cumulative reading value in the Add field in the header of the group.
2. Click the Apply to group icon to apply the value to the Add fields for each component in the group.

A few things to keep in mind:

• The Add field in the group header applies data into the Add fields of the items below. You can't use it to enter data in the Total fields.
• If the group contains a parent component and its associated sub-components, you'll see the parent component as a item in the group of components.
• This field is where the values for the parent component are actually recorded. The field in the gray header above is a simply data entry tool.
• If you enter the wrong number in the Add field in the header and apply it to the group, you can still fix the mistake, either by manually editing each component or by entering the correct value in the group header and clicking Apply again.