Picklists

A picklist is a list of options that users can choose from when completing a field on a form. You can link picklists to attributes and to bare fields on forms.

You can use picklists to provide users with:

• A list of cases or tasks from your application, such as a list of all Product cases or a list of Order cases associated with a particular customer. The items in the list are identified using a dataset.
• A list of pre-defined "static" options to choose from, such High, Medium, Low, and Not sure, or Yes and No.
• A combination of both, such as a list of existing Service cases together with a static option for Other or Not applicable.

You can create and manage picklists from the Picklists page in your Studio.

Tip:

Picklists based on datasets are populated automatically according to the cases or tasks in each DTAP environment. By contrast, when you add static items to a picklist, the same items are listed in each DTAP environment.

Picklists based on datasets

You can populate a picklist from a dataset to provide users with a list of cases or tasks to choose from.

Datasets can identify all cases of a particular casetype, cases from multiple casetypes, or a subset of cases. For example, you might create a filtered dataset that identifies all employees that belong to a subset of departments.

You can also apply a Current case filter to a dataset to filter the items in the picklist based on the case the user is viewing For example, you might want a picklist that lists all Claim cases opened by the Employee being viewed.

When you create a picklist based on a dataset, the following options are available:

• Name: The picklist name is used to identify the picklist you want to use for an attribute or form field. It is not displayed in your application.
• Description: Displayed in the Studio only.
• Enable HTML: Select this option to render any HTML included in the label or selection label of picklist items.
• Label: The text that will be displayed in the picklist to identify each case or task. Use an inline template to configure the label. For example, to display the value of the Name attribute for each case, type case. and then select the Name attribute from the list. To display the case reference, type casemeta. and then select Reference.
• Selection label: By default, when a user selects a case or task from a picklist the label is displayed. Use this option to display something different once an item has been selected. For example, you might want to display the Name attribute followed by the case ID. Use an inline template to configure the selection label.
• Value template: By default, selecting an item from a picklist stores the case ID or task ID of the relevant case or task in the attribute (or bare form field). Use this option to store a different value. For example, to store the email address of the selected customer, type case. and select the Email address attribute. The value must be unique within the dataset. Note that the value stored in the attribute is not updated if the value in the associated case changes.
• Activities: Give users the option to edit or delete a case included in a picklist. Users must have permissions on the relevant activities.
  • To allow users to edit a case, select the relevant form activity from the Activity - Edit list.
  • To allow users to delete a case, select the relevant close case activity from the Activity - Delete list.

Tip:

If you have applied a sort order to the dataset, this is applied when the items are included in the picklist. For more information, see Configure datasets.

Picklist static items

Static items allow you to define the options that a user can choose from. For example, if you are creating a picklist to use with a boolean attribute, you might create a picklist with two static items labelled Yes and No that are mapped to the values true and false.

You can create picklists that only contain static items, or add static items to a picklist based on a dataset. For example, you can use a static item to provide an option such as Other or Not listed. Any static items are always listed before items from a dataset.

To add static items to a picklist, either select an existing picklist or create a new picklist and just specify a name. Open the picklist and select the Static items tab. When you create a static picklist item, the following options are available:

• Label: The text that you want to display in the picklist for that item.
• Value: The value you want to store in the attribute (or form field) when the item is selected. The value should be in the appropriate format for the data type of the attribute or form field. For example, if you intend to use the picklist for an integer attribute, the value should be a whole number (for example, 1, 38 or 500, but not 3.14). Note that once you have set the value for a static item, you cannot edit it.
  • To use the picklist for a boolean attribute, create two static items with the values true and false.
  • To add a static item that represents "no selection" (such as a Not applicable static item for use in conjunction with a dataset), leave the Value field empty.
• Order: The order in which the static items are listed. If order values are not specified, static items are listed in the order they are added.

You can also import static items using an Excel spreadsheet. This is useful when creating large picklists, such as lists of countries or currencies. Include a column for the label, value, and order, and list each static item on a separate row.

Filter static items

You can add conditional logic to filter the static items that are included in a picklist based on attributes of the current case or a related case. For example, in a picklist that provides Experience level options, you might want to restrict the items that a user can select based on the type of skill they are editing (if some experience levels are not applicable to all skills).

To apply a condition to a static item, select the static item and open the Conditions beta tab. The following options can be used to apply conditions:

• Condition: Compare the values of two attributes and only display the static item if the condition is satisfied. You can select attributes from the casetype that you will use the picklist on or use an inline template to identify an attribute from a related case.
  Use the Operator field to choose how the two attribute values are compared. For example, if you only want to display the static item if the value in an attribute matches the value identified by a template, select is equal.
• Has role condition: Display the static item only if the current user belongs to the selected role.
• Condition list: Combine multiple conditions and specify whether all must be satisfied (AND) or only one must be satisfied (OR). You can use multiple condition lists to create more complex logic.

For more information about using conditions and the available operators, see Operators and conditions.

Add picklists to attributes and form fields

You can link picklists to attributes (including platform attributes) and form fields. When linking a picklist to an attribute or form field, ensure the picklist values are of the same data type as the attribute or field. For picklists based on datasets of cases, the data type should be Case ID.

You can link a picklist to a multivalue attribute. By default, users can only select each picklist item once. To allow users to select the same item multiple times and preserve the selection order, change the multivalue type to List. For more information about data types and multivalue attributes, see Attribute.

If you have linked a picklist to a platform attribute, you can override that setting for a particular casetype attribute: select a different picklist from the casetype attribute settings to override the inherited setting. Similarly, you can override the picklist setting for a particular attribute when you add an attribute to a form.

Change the picklist case base

When changing the picklist used for an attribute on a form, or adding a picklist to a bare form field, you can specify the case base for the picklist. This is useful for picklists based on datasets with a Current case filter.

To change the case used to filter the dataset, select an option from the Picklist case base field in the form designer:

• Current case to retain the default behavior.
• Parent to filter the dataset using the parent of the current case. This is the case from which the current case was created.
• Form field to filter the dataset using a case identified in another field on the form. If a the form field is empty, the picklist is also empty.

Fore more information about adding picklists to forms, see Configure forms.