Populate Rack, Device, and Port Fields

Fiber facilities that have ports (patch panels, devices, splitters, etc.) follow a grid configuration to determine the location of each port.

For example, a patch panel card might have 24 ports. But, how are they arranged? Is is 12 x 2? 6 x 4? 8 x 3? The answer lies in the grid configuration, not just for the card, but for all the parent devices as well. In addition to the information below, see the Fiber Manager Configuration guide topic Wavepoint Rack View Configuration for more information.

Rows, Columns, Port Positions

To help explain, let’s start with a patch panel on a rack. This example has 1 panel with 2 cards stacked on top of each other. In order for the cards to appear on top of each other (as opposed to side-by-side horizontally), the patch panel is configured to have 1 column and 2 rows:

In the ArcFM Attribute Editor, the same panel looks like the following image:

One level down, the cards that fit in the panel have 24 ports in a 12 columns x 2 rows arrangement:

In the ArcFM Attribute Editor, the same card looks like the following image:

Down another level, each port on the card bears a port position that corresponds to the grid. In this arrangement, the port positions range from 1 to 24:

In the ArcFM Attribute Editor, each port is assigned one of the port positions.

Rack Display Inconsistencies

If you fail to populate these grid and port fields in your data, you may receive an error in the Wavepoint rack views:

The same lack of required data may also result in unexpected and incorrect rack display results:

The solution to both of these potential problems lies in the grid and its configuration.

First, the numbers assigned to any of the row, column, or port position fields need to make logical sense. If you have a patch panel card with 24 possible port positions, but a port is assigned to position 32, that breaks this logical rule. Wavepoint places such an errant point in the bottom, right-most corner of the patch panel following a “best fit” approach, but a much better approach would be to correct the underlying data error.
Second, these fields also need to have the appropriate field model names assigned. Missing field model names also result in incorrect rack displays. See the help topic Configure Model Names for a full list of class and field model names that need to be assigned for proper functionality.

Keep reading the following subtopics to understand these settings for common fiber facilities.