Choice column

The choice column allows an administrator to define a predetermined list of values. When building iSheets, you may need to trigger actions based on the values entered in specific columns. These actions could include making another column appear or disappear, or sending an email alert, based on a particular value being entered. To successfully implement such behaviours, you should use a Choice column to ensure consistent data entry.

The first step in creating a Choice column is to add the values your users can select. To do so, click the

Add

button to add a choice. Each choice will be presented as another row in the table, as seen below. Enter the choice values by left-clicking in the first field titled the

Enter choice

column. At least one choice is required; you may add as many choices as needed. The same value cannot be entered twice in the list of choices.

Values in the list of choices can be removed by selecting the checkbox next to the value and clicking

Remove

. However, a value cannot be removed if any existing iSheet items include that value. Those items must be deleted or the value in that column for those items must be changed first. Values in the list of choices can be modified later, for example, if there was a spelling error in the original list. In that case, the changes will propagate to any items that had included the original value.

Formatting can be applied to each of the choices you create. Each choice can be assigned a colour, which will be applied to the value once it is viewed in the iSheet table view.

Left-click the colour square to access the picker, or alternatively, left-click in the text field next to it to enter a hexadecimal colour value.

In addition to applying colours to choice values, you may also add images to display alongside them in the iSheet module. Such images serves as a visual indicator when reviewing data in the iSheet. iSheets has its own image library. The iSheets image library is located in System Administration (

System admin

>

iSheet admin

>

Image library

), a user needs system administration access to add images to this library so can be assigned to choice values.

Once a System Administrator has added the desired images to the iSheet image library, Site Administrators can assign them to choices by clicking

Browse

to the right of each choice, and then selecting the image to assign. Once the image is selected, select

Done

to confirm the action.

You can either add a new Choice column or 'upgrade' a current Choice column. Click on

Manage Columns

in the iSheet and then click on the Choice column. Change the Column Type to

Score

.

The order in which the choices appear can be changed by selecting the checkbox next to the item and using the up or down arrows to move the choices up or down in the list.

Once you have created the choices, you can choose one of three methods to display them to your users:

The Choice options will be displayed in a drop-down list and a single selection can be made. This option should be used if you have many values to display, as this will be a better use of space in the input form.

Radio buttons allow you to display each choice vertically. As with the drop-down menu, only one value can be selected. Once a selection has been made there is no way to deselect all values as you can in a drop-down list that can be set back to none.

Checkboxes allow a user to select multiple values from your choice list. Use this option if you want to allow users to select multiple applicable values.

Checking the include

Other

option presents a text field that allows the user to type an alternate value.

The default value appears in most column types, but can be used to good effect in a Choice column. If a Choice column has several statuses (Requested, In progress, Complete), you may want to make that column visible, but not editable to users, as it is for the Administrators to determine the appropriate status based on the current stage of the task. However, if a user is creating the new record, this would mean that the status choice column would not have any value in it. By setting a default value, you predetermine the value of the field when the record is created, and in this way can trigger any email alerts or column conditions based on that value.

You can decide if a choice column is included within the iSheet search, and the way your users can search choice column values. By default,

Allow search

and

Multiple selection in search

are selected.

If searching multiple selections is allowed, users may run an advanced search from the iSheet module and select one or more choice values for their search results. In this example, the user would retrieve any items that had either

Administrative Assistant

or

Executive Assistant

as the value selected for

Position

.

However, if

Single selection in search

is selected, users may only choose one value at a time to search.