About Phantoms

The Phantom functionality allows you to create records in Infor M3 DMP that do not exist in Datasets imported from M3 BE. You can create phantom records and assign key values to all keys. The Phantom functionality also allows part of or entire seasons or product groups to be easily copied, including extra keys, key state, budgets, and all or part of the data. This makes it easy to start budgeting or forecasting for new releases using demand or statistics from source items or styles possibly in other business chains or in earlier seasons without creating any data or item structures in the ERP system and without knowing the exact item or style names as these can be changed later when the forecast or budget has been prepared, ready for implementation and the item structures have been specified in the ERP system.

A phantom has the same characteristics as the records in the imported M3 BE Dataset. The difference is that phantoms are marked as records that do not exist in M3 BE. Despite the fact you can work with phantoms in the same way you work with other records in your Dataset. You are able to assign values to all or just some keys. You can assign numerical values and make changes in phantoms records as in other records.

A phantom record is only exported back to M3 BE with the other records in the Dataset, if you have selected the phantom for export in the Phantom Manager and it is checked in the Select Data to Export panel in the Export to M3 BE procedure. If selected, the phantom record is exported with other records of the Dataset to the budget file, then the phantom maintains its phantom status until it has been exported to M3 BE and then imported back to M3 DMP. Also note that phantoms cannot be disaggregated into item forecast if not established in M3 BE.

You can access the Phantom Manager from the Datasets menu. The already existing Phantoms are marked with status Valid.

The Phantom Manager allows you to complete any of these actions:

  • Create a completely new phantom
  • Copy a phantom using the Add function. The Add function allows data types to be copied.
  • Rename a phantom or reclassify it using the Update function
  • Mark a Phantom for Export for the next export action to send the budget or forecast to the ERP system.
  • Delete a phantom
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