For more information about IsPartial and how to implement partial items, see the Ariba Catalog Format Reference.

Partial catalog items are imported into Ariba Buyer through Ariba Buyer Administrator the same way fully-specified catalog items are. However, catalogs containing partial items must also include the IsPartial field in the header of the catalog file. Then, IsPartial must be set to true for each partial item in the file. The IsPartial flag tells Ariba Buyer Administrator to allow the item to pass validation with values missing from some fields. (A catalog file can contain both fully-specified and partially-specified items.)

When viewing the contents of partial items in the Catalog Manager, you might see items containing blank fields. As long as the IsPartial flag is used, even "required" fields can be blank. Certain mandatory fields such as commodity code, description, and supplier part ID cannot be missing.

If Ariba Buyer Administrator flags an error on a catalog item that appears to be a partial item, first verify that the original catalog file specifies IsPartial is true and then check for other types of errors on the item.