The Add-on Data feature is a generic mechanism for showing non-IRM file-based data in the IRM Web Client. It is useful for cases where you want to be able to conveniently see some additional data in IRM, but without transferring ownership of that data into IRM. One can imagine this as essentially a temporary attachment of data.
The source of the data is an Integration Service - for example, the Linkware Desktop application (there is another one for arbitrary CSV files). For the purpose of explaining how this feature works, let's assume the Linkware Desktop App is the selected Data Source for the add-on data. The Linkware Desktop application is fairly simple as a source of add-on data, in that it only supports one kind of object: Cable.
The following is a basic description of how the add-on functionality works for the Linkware Desktop Data Source:
The Linkware Desktop App generates special .flw files that IRM can make use of
IRM knows that for Linkware Desktop the add-on data will be for Cables.
In the IRM Web Client, there is a new “Add-on Data” tab in most Properties dialogs including Managed Objects and their corresponding Types. This tab is populated when the user clicks on it after uploading Addon Files that support the kind of object being edited and which are visible to the current user. For our example, the tab lists Addon Files that support Cables. For each Add-on File source, an accordion section in the “Add-on Data” tab is created, using the names of the Add-on Service (like “LinkwareDesktopDataSource - building1.flw”, for example).
For an example of the tab, please refer to the following section that describes a practical use case of using this feature with another Integration Service.
For arbitrary CSV or similar types of files, the support is similar, except that when a given add-on file is uploaded, the app (say CsvDataSource) would examine the contents and determine what the supported object types are.
