After defining the global Characteristics and Units, you must create COA characteristic and unit matching variants to define various alternate terms and units of measurement to improve the accuracy of field value ingestion for COA inspections.
Note: This feature is currently available only to Early Adopters. Contact your Veeva Representative for more details.
About Component Matching Variants
COA Component Matching Variants informs Vault that there are similar terms (synonyms) that different languages, materials, suppliers, or supplier manufacturing sites use to define one (1) component. Matching the variants to its component helps to generate test results more accurately for each inspection plan requirement.
The Component Matching Variant object has two (2) object types:
- Characteristic Matching Variant: Stores information about characteristic matching variants.
- Unit Matching Variant: Stores information about unit matching variants.
Component Matching Rules
There are four (4) component matching rules you can use to define the logic to use to interpret data when creating a component matching variant:
- Exact Match: Used to map an exact value of a defined characteristic. Exact Match values are not case-sensitive.
- Contains: Used to map to a defined characteristic that comprises specific values.
- Starts With: Used to map to a defined characteristic that begins with specific values.
- Ends With: Used to map to a defined characteristic that concludes with specific values.
Note: In Vaults created prior to 22R1, the Component Matching Rules picklist may be labeled Matching Type.
Characteristic Matching Variant
You may need to create and manage characteristic matching variants to map synonymous supplier characteristics to the global Characteristic you defined.
For example, one (1) of your global Characteristics for the Material “Sugar” is “Moisture”. Supplier A uses the synonymous characteristic “Water Content” and Supplier B uses “Water Cont. %”. Knowing that both suppliers are implying “Moisture”, you could create two (2) characteristic matching variant records to map “Water Content” and “Water Cont. %” to “Moisture”.
About Exact Match for Characteristics
Vault can match exact variants from the COA files to the global Characteristic in a specific order. The following order is based on the following Exact Match criterias for a particular Characteristic:
- Exact match (inspection plan requirement) to the characteristic found.
- If criteria 1 is not executed (no exact match is found), match variants where all four (4) fields are filled out: Language, Material, Supplier Name, and Supplier Manufacturing Site.
- If criteria 2 is not executed, match variants where three (3) fields are filled out: Language, Material, and Supplier Name.
- If criteria 3 is not executed, match variants where two (2) fields are filled out: Language and Material.
- If criteria 4 is not executed, match variants where one (1) field is filled out: Language.
- If criteria 5 is not executed, match variants where no field is filled out and only the Variant Text is found.
In the case where there are two (2) characteristic matching variants that meet the same criteria, the matching variant record is chosen randomly between the two (2) for the match. You must configure the layout for the Characteristic and Component Matching Variant objects to use this feature.
Note: Vaults using the legacy data model (prior to the 21R2 release) use the Product Version (product_version__v) field instead of the Specific Product (specific_product__v) field.
Configuring COA Characteristic Matching Variant
To configure COA characteristic matching variants:
- Navigate to the appropriate Characteristics.
- Click Create in the Component Matching Variants section.
- Select Characteristic Matching Variant and click Continue.
- Enter the Variant Text.
- Optional: Select a Component Matching Rule.
- Optional: Select a Material.
- Optional: Select a Supplier Name.
- Optional: Select a Supplier Manufacturing Site Name.
- Click Save. To create another characteristic matching variant, click Save + Create.
Unit Matching Variant
You may need to create and manage unit matching variants to map synonymous supplier units to the global Unit you defined. Unit records can have duplicate names (in the UoM field) as long as the Type of Measurement picklist value is different.
For example, one (1) of your global Unit for the Material “Sugar” is “kilograms”. Supplier A uses the synonymous unit “KG” and Supplier B uses “kilo”. Knowing that both suppliers are implying “kilograms”, you could create two (2) unit matching variant records to map “KG” and “kilo” to “kilograms”.
Configuring COA Unit Matching Variant
To configure COA unit matching variants:
- Navigate to the appropriate Units.
- Click Create in the Component Matching Variants section.
- Select Units Matching Variant and click Continue.
- Enter the Variant Text.
- Optional: Select a Component Matching Rule.
- Optional: Select a Material.
- Optional: Select a Supplier Name.
- Optional: Select a Supplier Manufacturing Site Name.
- Click Save. To create another unit matching variant, click Save + Create.