Composite Resource Types and Components
How composite resource types let you request a group of resources as one line, such as a semi or an audio rack, and how components are scheduled, varied and priced.
A composite resource type is a type assembled from other resource types, called its components. It lets someone request "a semi" without knowing it is a tractor, a trailer and a driver, while the people filling the request still work with the real parts.
Why Composites Exist
What a customer asks for and what you own are often different things. A customer orders a semi, but your inventory holds tractors, trailers and drivers. The knowledge that those three travel together would otherwise live in a coordinator's head, and a trailer could be booked with no tractor and no driver.
A composite writes that knowledge down. A composite is never held in inventory. Procurement asks for the composite, and its components are what get sourced, scheduled and filled.
Examples
A Semi is a composite of a tractor, a trailer and a driver. Requesting one semi adds a need for each of the three.
A Main Stage Rack shows the same idea with equipment. A rack that needs a mixing console, a microphone and an amplifier is one composite with those three components. The person requesting it asks for the rack, and each piece is sourced and scheduled on its own.
How Components Work
Each component has a Label, points at another Resource type, optionally at one Variant of it, and has a Quantity of at least one. A component cannot itself be a composite.
When a composite is requested, it fans out into one need for each component. The composite is covered as one unit, and its components share a schedule: you set the schedule once on the composite and it is applied to every component. The composite reads as unfilled until every component is filled.
Composite Variants
A composite can have variants, like any type. On the Variants tab, each variant can point a component at a different type or variant, change its quantity, or leave it out. A refrigerated trailer variant of a semi can swap in a reefer trailer, and a variant that does not need load straps can exclude them.
Pricing a Composite
A composite's cost always rolls up from its components. Each component is costed from its pinned variant's card, or else its type's default card, times the component quantity.
A composite's charge rolls up the same way unless it has a rate card of its own. A composite's card sets the charge only, and on its card page the cost side shows the rolled-up figure instead of Pay fields. On the composite's Rate cards tab, each card lists the variants it applies to, and a variant with no card is charged as the sum of its components. When a composite carries its own card, each component shows a dash for its charge, with a tooltip explaining that the composite replaces it, and the composite is billed as a single line.
Build a Composite
Create the type
In Resource Templates, add a resource type with the Asset kind and set its tracking type to Composite. A type that already has inventory cannot become a composite, and a type used as a component somewhere cannot either.