New Custom Lists are used to create a brand new list to be used in one or multiple forms.
See Also: List
Or Jump to: VisualAppend: formula
List contents have the ability to be modified on the fly when the form is open. An example of one would be a crop list. For a crop list you can add crops to the list and then they are there to select everywhere that list appears no matter what form it appears on.
To create a new list, first hover over File
Click New Custom List
There are many things that can be done with lists. I will walk-through the steps of creating a simple list with 2 fields of information to store.
First we will place 2 text Boxes in the design panel.
Select the first text box and name it. This is going to be the most important box. For our example, I am going to name it "InspectorName." We also want to set this as the Target Control
Important Notes about giving names to the data entry fields in lists:
- If you give a name to an item that contains a space, the space is not able to be recognized by the program and will be removed once saved.
- The name will also be what the column will be named when you open and add data to the list.
- Avoid using special characters and punctuation in any name such as "/,.><}{-+_()&^%$#@! etc. these have been known to cause issues and errors on the forms themselves. This rule also applies to naming forms, lists, and grids.
- The names of these fields are what is able to be sorted and filtered in the Forms Manager.
Target Control will determine what text box is the one that drops down on the form and gives the list to select from. Only one field in a list can be the Target Control
Do the same thing to the 2nd textbox. Select it and change the name field in the properties panel to "IDNumber"
You will want to know what these fields are for when you start entering the data for the list.
The easiest way to do this is to place label next to the corresponding field.
Lets place one more field that is named PhoneNumber and a label with the words "Phone Number" as the text.
Now we should set the Tab Index's because this will set the order in which the columns appear in the list's grid view. Number them low to high to be placed left to right respectively. See Set Tab Index's
Now lets save our list as Inspector List with Company wide access. See Save As
Once it is saved, it will now appear on the Custom lists and be able to be placed on a form or grid
Here is what this specific list will look like when used on a Form.
The edit pencil icon will appear when clicking on the field we assigned as the Target Control
After Clicking on the pencil, you will see columns that pull their labels from the names of the text boxes in the list.
Click on the plus button to start entering data.
Here you can see that this is formatted exactly the same as how we formatted the List in the design area.
Fill in the information and click save.
You will now be able to select the information from that Target Control text box, in this case Inspector Name
After selected the rest of the information in your list will fill in automatically.
VisualAppend:
In some situations you may want to append or add other list information from a non-target control to the target control drop-down. This is done by using the VisualAppend: command within a formula and is specific for use with list data.
In this example, I will add the ID Number contained in parentheses after the Inspector name in the drop down.
First let's open the list back up with File>Open List.
Then click on your target control which is text box that becomes the drop-down on the form.
In the text property, type the equals sign (=) to start the formula and then type out
=VisualAppend:if(IDNumber<>null){" (" + IDNumber + ")"} else{''}
Breakdown of formula
=VisualAppend:
Visual Append: is the part of the formula that tells this value to append or add on to the end of the target control and is specific to lists.It must be placed at the beginning of the formula.
if(IDNumber<>null)
if the field called IDNumber doesn't contain a null value (contains something), then perform the following action in curly brackets{ }
{ " (" + Quotations indicate to add a literal value which in this case is a space and a open parentheses. and then add with actual addition or if the values are not all numbers then concatenate whatever is typed next.
IDNumber
The name of the field that we are pulling data from.
+ ")"}
Finish by adding a literal closed parentheses to be shown visually. as well as end your if statement command with the closed curly bracket.
Save the List (File>Save)
Then open the form that you would like to use it on.(File>Open Form)
Delete the old list off of the Canvas and add a the Desired list again. See: Forms Designer - Delete
Save and Publish the form the open to test the results.
Here is what out form looks like when generated. Notice the Id number is now appended to the list drop-down.
See Also: