Extra Information Types are defined using descriptive flexfields. You can set up any number of different EITs for:
Location
Job
Position
Person
Assignment
Organization
Element types
Previous Job
Contacts
Role
Note: EITs for Organization are different because you can define which organization classification the EIT is available for.
For each EIT you can define up to 30 fully validated segments of information (or 20 for organizations).
Note: Oracle HRMS provides some predefined EITs. You may add your own information types, but you must not change the definitions of the delivered EITs.
For information about predefined EITs for positions, see: Position Extra Information Types
Unlike the usual descriptive flexfields, EITs are child entities with separate tables to hold the information you enter. This means that you can have multiple instances of an EIT for each main record. When you define the EIT, you can specify whether you want to allow multiple instances. With the exception of organizations, EIT data is viewed and entered in a separate window which you can task flow.
The windows for all the EITs have the common look and feel of all the descriptive flexfield windows. This means that you can use your new EITs as soon as you save your definitions. Since flexfield definitions are preserved through upgrades, EITs do not require expensive recoding of configured forms with each new release.
EITs are very similar to Special Information Types (SITs). For analyzing people's attributes and job requirements, Oracle enables you to choose whether to set up extra or special information types, or both. Both types of information use flexfields to define the structure and validation of their segments.
However, SITs are stored in a key flexfield combination table where the combination of segments must be unique - a feature of all key flexfields. EITs are stored in a descriptive flexfield table where the combination of segment values do not need to form a unique key.
This means that EITs have performance advantages in large scale, or global implementations where you may want to transfer large volumes of information between separate installations.
EITs are not datetracked. Even if the parent entity, for example People, is datetracked, the extra information is not. However, if you want to track changes to specific EITs you can define date segments for Start and End Dates and use multiple rows of the EIT to track changes.