Variant Designations

Variant management lets you describe product configurations — which variant codes a product individual includes — and filter documents and traceability through a chosen configuration. The Settings → Variant designations tab is where an administrator wires the feature up for a workarea: it picks which of the workarea’s item and document types play each variant-management role.

Enabling variants

The Variants enabled toggle controls whether the Variants section appears in the workarea sidebar and whether the variant-management pages are accessible. Designations below the toggle are preserved when the feature is switched off.

Variant management may require a plan that includes it — the tab shows an upgrade notice when your plan doesn’t.

The four roles

Role	Kind	Purpose
Variant code	Item type	The leaf values a configuration includes — usually just a title
Variant rule	Item type	Configurator logic: when these codes are present, emit / require / exclude those others
Feature	Item type	A selection group over codes with a cardinality constraint (exactly one, at most one, …)
Variant DNA	Document type	A document whose sections reference variant codes; one DNA defines one configuration

The type names are yours — designate any existing types whose names fit your terminology. If a role has no suitable type yet, the tab can create a default type for you, pre-populated with the schema fields the role needs (rules need when / emit / require / exclude reference fields; features need codes and a selection_mode).

Inheritance

Variant designations follow the configuration hierarchy per setting: a group can designate types for all of its workareas, and an individual workarea can override any single designation. See Workflow & Policy Inheritance for the merge rules.