Blog Post

What is a Reference Field?

Introduction

Reference fields represent relationships between objects of the same type, such as employees and their managers, and objects of different types, such as contacts and accounts.

Procedure

Do one of the following:

1. In the Fields tab, click Add a Field or Field Group.
2. In the dialog used to select a method for adding fields, click No thanks, I’ll add fields manually.

The Add a Field or Field Group dialog appears and takes focus.

In the Name field, type the field name.

In the Type list, select Reference.

In the Refers to Model list, select the model to be referenced by this field. Your selection cannot be changed once the field is in a published version of the model.

Prerequisites:

1. Create a Repository.
2. Create a source.
3. Create two models (while creating the fields select the datatype of a field as ‘Reference’ type and select the reference model as shown in the above steps).
4. Attach the source with the model and add some data quality steps.
5. After configuring the model Publish and Deploy it to the Repository.

Emp Model:

As you can see above I have taken the Manager field as a Reference field which is linked with the Manager model.

Manager Model:

Let’s jump into the platform and follow some steps to use Reference fields in Boomi MDH.

Steps:

Step 1. Go to platform.boomi.com

Step 2. Login by giving your valid credentials (Username and Password).

Step 3. The home page will be displayed, now click on “Integration”.

Step 4. Click on the “Create New” button.

Step 5. Select “Process” and click on “Create”.

Step 6. Click on the “No Data” option and click on “OK”.

Step 7. Drag and drop a Message shape.

Enter this message into the Message section:

empid, empname, phone,manager

106, Arup, 09876543,101

107, Achin, 987654456,102

108, Gourav, 4567876,103

109, Priya, 8765456,104

110, Shamik, 8975325167,105

111, Adrish, 7834526178,101

112, Yuvraj, 4546565,102

Step 8. Add a Boomi Master data Hub connector. To configure the connection click on the “+” icon.

Step 9. Give the URL, UserName and Token.

URL: Go to Atom Management à Click on “Test” atom cloud à Click on Shared web server à Copy the Base URL à Add “/mdm/” at the end.

Username and Token: Go to MDH à Select the Test repository à Configure Tab à Copy the Username and Auth token.

Step 10. Save and close, select the Action as Upsert, and then configure the operation.

Step 11. Click on Import operation.

Step 12. Select your Atom, give the Source ID, and click on “Next”.

Step 13. Select your Model and click on Next.

Step 14. Click on Finish.

Step 15. Drag and drop one Mape shape and inside map component add two profiles. In the source side add the Employee profile and in the Target add the MDH upsert request profile.

After mapping each field click on Save and close.

Step 16. Add a stop shape at the end. The process should look like this now-

Step 17. Save the process and test.

Step 18. Likewise, follow the same steps to upsert records to the Manager Model.

You can use below sample records:

id, name, phone,age

101, Apurba, 8975325167,23

102, Adi, 7834526178,45

103, Steve, 4546565,56

104, Akash, 435655,34

105, Sourav, 876544,45

The Mapping should look like this:

If everything is done, save the process and test it.

Now we will go to the MDH and see how the reference field works.

Step 19. Go to MDH service à Stewardship à Golden records à Select the Emp model.

As you can see the values for the Manager field are hyperlinked, if you click on any manager, it will redirect to that particular manager record.

Step 20. For example, I clicked on the manager for Employee 107, it helped me redirect to the manager details of Employee 107.