A characteristic is typically a measure that you want to input via Web Data Entry and then later plot on an Quality Control chart. 

1. In Enterprise Manager's System View , choose the folder/create a folder where you'd like to create a characteristic.

2. Right click on the folder and click on 'New Characteristic'. Give the characteristic a name, optionally add a description and reasonable limits and choose the chart type you would like to plot. 

3. Review the options by expanding the + sign next to the characteristic. Optionally enable number of decimals for input validation, if desired.

Optionally choose a Product traceablity role if the characteristic will belong to a Data Entry Setup that participates in Product traceabilty. Optionally, if you want to specify more options such as :  Variable Sample size then click on more options  | choose keyword "VariableSampleSize" from the drop down list and set its value to 1. 

4. Commit the change.