Field Types

Example of a tab field

Tab fields typically segment the screen into separate areas, above and below. In general, the contents of the screen beneath a tab field will alter when you click on an entry in the field. For example, when you visit either the Add or the Edit screen, there may be sets of tabs. The screenshot in the example allows you to choose different areas of the screen within an ExtraView add or edit screen. When you click on any of these tabs, the area of the screen beneath the tabs refreshes with the appropriate fields and values for the data for the tab. One usability feature is that if you have a form within a browser window that is longer than the height of the window, and you choose a different value for the tab, ExtraView will place the new embedded layout to display at the top of the screen, thereby preventing the situation where the new layout may be hidden beneath the bottom of the window.  Tab fields may be presented to the user as individual buttons, as opposed to the tabs in the previous screenshot.  The functionality is the same as just described.  Then the tabs will appear like this:

A list field allows you to select a single member of the list, by clicking on the entry you want to select. List fields can be stand-alone, or they can form part of a relationship, where the members of the list either alter the contents of another list (i.e. the field is a parent of another field), or the members of the list are changed by selecting a value in another list (i.e. this field is a child of another field).

Some list fields may not have the value * None * in the list. In this case, you are being forced to select a value from the list, whether or not the field is required. The field defaults to the first value in the list which will be selected if you do not choose another value. Some list fields on add and edit screens may have the value * New * in the list. This allows you to add a new value into the field, without being an administrator. When you select * New * a window pops up, to obtain the values needed for the new entry.

Some list fields may be configured as multi-valued list fields.  In this case, the user may select and number of values within the list, by clicking on each one that is being selected.  The user simply clicks on a selected value and this will deselect it.

Some lists may have images associated with each value.  In this case you will see the images within the list, similar to the second screenshot.

Popup fields are a variant of the List display type field. Popup lists are typically used for large lists where the number of entries makes a standard list difficult to search through, or visually awkward within a browser window.

With a Popup field, you may either type in the entry for the list, or click on the icon beside the text entry box. When you click on the icon, a search window appears, allowing you to perform a wildcard search, or to drill down to the item you want to select. Click on the item to select, and its value will be placed in the field. Popup fields may have been configured by your administrator with an auto-complete function. Auto-complete, or type-ahead as it is sometimes known, works by having one or more characters typed into the list and then automatically presenting you with the most likely matches for the value you are composing. At any time you can select a value from those presented to you by clicking on the value, or you may continue typing in characters until you complete the value. As you type, the values presented in the list are refined to further match your entry.

Popup list fields may be configured as multi-valued popup list fields.  In this case, the user may select any number of values within the list.  You may select more values within the list than you can see within the field.  If you want to know all the values currently selected, simply place the mouse cursor over the button to the side of the field.  This will display a list of all the currently selected field values. The presentation of multi-valued popup list fields may be different, according to how your administrator has configured the field on your installation.  The presentation may be horizontal, with a semi-colon delimiter placed between each selected value or may be vertical, with each value appearing on a new row on the screen.

The multi-value field type allows you to select more than one item from a list. For example, the screen below shows two languages can be selected from a list, as indicated by the plus signs. Each item in the list is selected or deselected with a single click of the mouse. If you click on the * None * item, then the list is cleared. Note that the arrow character may be another character such as “+”. You may use a single click on a value, and then a shift key plus mouse click on another value in the list in order to be able to select a range of values in a list.

Your administrator may have enabled an option that groups together all the selected items in a multi-valued list. If this is enabled, then the selected values are shown at the top of the list, followed by the non-selected values. The list is automatically resorted when you first display the add or the edit screen, and when the screen refreshes for any reason.

Radio buttons can be presented in a variety of ways, as set by the system administrator.  The first example shows traditional round radio buttons and the second example shows a block style, offering a larger area for the user to click.

Day Calendar Popup

Date Calendar Popup with time

These all store numbers of various forms, but with slight variations. Numbers are generally used for numbers where high precision is not needed. Currency fields may display the currency symbol, and thousands separators in any of the world’s currencies, as set up by your administrator. Decimal fields are set up to store numbers where there may be a large number of decimal places, and where it is important to not lose precision. The administrator will have decided on how many decimal points are to be displayed for any decimal field.  All number fields can be totaled on column reports.

User fields can exist in several basic forms:

• As a drop-down select list, where you click on the name in the list to select it
• In a pop-up select list, where ExtraView presents a list of users in a pop-up box, allowing you to drill down into the list to find the user you are looking for
• User select lists may also be configured with an auto-complete option. The drop-down select lists are typically used when the list of names you are searching is of a modest number, pop-up lists can be used to search through thousands of users in an efficient manner. Auto-complete, or type-ahead as it is sometimes known, works by having one or more characters typed into the list and then automatically presenting you with the most likely matches for the value you are composing. At any time you can select a value from those presented to you by clicking on the value, or you may continue typing in characters until you complete the value. As you type, the values presented in the list are refined to further match your entry.
  Note: If your installation is configured to use an LDAP connection with the behavior setting named LDAP_USER_LOOKUP having a value of YES, when auto-complete is configured, only users that are currently stored within ExtraView are returned with auto-complete, as opposed to all potential users in the LDAP server.  This prevents a potential performance issue, returning a huge number of records from the LDAP server to ExtraView, whenever a user presses a single key
• If the administrator has configured the user field to display photographs of the users, these will be displayed alongside the user’s name within the select lists.  The form of the select list varies according to how the user field has been configured:

  Single Select User Fields		Multi-Select User Fields
  	Selecting values in a single select user field with images is very similar to their usage when no images are present.  Simply click on the input field and select the name of the user.  Note there is also a search box into which you can start typing the name of the user you are searching for and the list will be pared down to those that contain the characters you have entered.  You can then click on your selection. You can use the X at the right of the list to delete the user.		When you first view a multi-select list, you may either start to enter the characters of the name, or use the icon to the side of the list to bring up a search dialog.  As you enter the characters, a list of matching names that contain these characters will be displayed.  This is the second image to the left.  Select the first name.  To select further entries, click on the entry field again and search box appears into which you can start entering the name of the next user to add to the list.  Select the user by clicking on their name. You can use the X at the right of the list to delete a user.

• If the user field has a “user list” icon, clicking this will activate the popup window. This presents a search screen where you can find the name of the user. Searching may be accomplished by knowing all or part of the Last Name, First Name or User ID. Enter as much of the name as you know, and press the Search for Account button. The window will refresh, showing the names of all the users who match the information you offered. You can use a ‘*’ as a wildcard within your search pattern. When you see the details of the user you are searching for in the pop-up select list, click on the User ID and the name will be populated back into the screen from which you commenced the search.

Drop-down select list

Pop-up select list

A blank field value on input is considered as the same as ‘null’ or no input, and will be so treated. For example, a single blank value is not permitted in a required field. Trailing and leading blanks are significant when adding or updating and issue, and are stored in the database as they are entered. However, you cannot search for these rows using equality on the text field. Keyword search strings are always trimmed of leading and trailing spaces. Hence, entering “abc” into a field will effectively render that field non-searchable using that text field as a filter. Tab characters are filtered from text fields. Each tab character is replaced with a space character. Text fields and log fields (text fields that retains previous text, and add a date and time stamp to previous entries) have two small icons and beneath their label. These allow you to shrink and grow the length of the text box, giving you a smaller or larger area in which to enter text.

Text Field

If your administrator has configured the option, when you have reached the bottom row of the text field, the field will automatically expand, offering you more space in which to enter and edit text. The text will continue to expand until the preset maximum height is reached. A special property of text field is that if you enter a URL into the field, then when the field is rendered on a report, or the field is rendered in a read-only mode, then the URL becomes a hyperlink to the URL. For example, if you enter http://www.mycompany.com or www.mycompany.com into a text field, then it will appear as http://www.mycompany.com or www.mycompany.com on a report, and if you click the text, a new window will open at the address of the URL. This behavior is extended one step further. Assuming that the title for the ID field in your instance is ID #, then entering ID # 12345 into a text field, will provide a link on reports and read-only versions of the field, to the detailed report view of the issue with the ID of 12345. If the title to the ID field is Report Number, then you would enter Report Number 12345 for the same effect.

Comments (aka log area) fields are similar to text fields, with a single, important difference. You may only add new comments to a field; you cannot change an existing comment. In this way, you can instantly see on the screen a log of text being accumulated as an issue is processed. Along with each entry you will see a timestamp and the user’s name that made the comment. When you are adding a new issue, there are no preexisting comments therefore the field looks identical to a text field. If your administrator has configured the option, when you have reached the bottom row of the comment field, the field will automatically expand, offering you more space in which to enter and edit text. The text will continue to expand until the preset maximum height is reached.

When an issue has existing comments, small arrows appear by the user name and timestamp of the first comment.  Use these arrows to sort and resort the comments.

A special property of text field is that if you enter a URL into the field, then when the field is rendered on a report, or the field is rendered in a read-only mode, then the URL becomes a hyperlink to the URL. For example, if you enter http://www.mycompany.com into a text field, then it will appear as http://www.mycompany.com on a report, and if you click the text, a new window will open at the address of the URL. This behavior is extended one step further. Assuming that the title for the ID field in your instance is ID #, then entering ID # 12345 into a text field, will provide a link on reports and read-only versions of the field, to the detailed report view of the issue with the ID of 12345. If the title to the ID field is Report Number, then you would enter Report Number 12345 for the same effect.

Your administrator may have configured a field on a screen to accept rich text / HTML as it will be rendered on reports. This field can be used to store text, images and to embed entire documents or images similar to a word processor.  The field type looks like this on the screen:

HTML Area field

Your administrator will have configured your system so that the toolbar buttons are either visible or invisible when the

As you enter text / images into an HTML Area field, it will grow in height to allow you to see as much of the information as possible, to a maximum height which is set to be a little less than most screens.

Images may be pasted from your computer’s clipboard into the HTML Area field.  If you paste an image, it is seen in its actual size.  If you paste a file, so that it is being embedded within the field, then an icon represents the file.

The toolbar may have been configured by your administrator to offer a different range of buttons.  This may include a much more limited set of buttons as well as some buttons that are not depicted in the screenshot.

For full information on how to use the HTML Area field type, please see Appendix B to this guide.

Checkbox fields are set with a single click of the mouse. When set, a tick mark shows in the box, when not set, the box is empty.

Example checkbox fields

The default is for a title of Y to appear on reports if the box is checked on an add or edit screen, and N to appear if it was not checked, although your administrator may have altered these titles to Yes and No, On and Off or similar.  Note that if a checkbox is never set to being checked or unchecked by a user, and has never specifically been set via a default value or a business rule, then the checkbox actually has a null value, and nothing is stored in ExtraView’s database. This is an important distinction, as a null value is not the same as a N value. Querying for a null value with * None *, will give different results to querying for N values.

Attachments are files of various types that are uploaded from your local computer to be held as part of a specific issue within ExtraView. 

Attachment section of the Add and Edit screens

Your administrator may have imposed restrictions on the types of files that may be uploaded.  image files are represented by a thumbnail-sized image of the file you upload.  Files such as Microsoft Excel, Adobe PDF and text are represented by an icon that shows the type of file.  Files may be downloaded or viewed by clicking on the View button or clicking on the thumbnail or image.  The metadata associated with the attachment, such as it’s original file name and size are typically displayed.

You will typically automatically send email notifications after you add or update issues.  Note that if you are the person adding or updating an issue, you will also receive the notification, unless you disable this option within your personal options screen

Email Notification section of the Add and Edit screens

Others, whose names appear in the user name fields, such as owner and assigned to, will also receive email notification. You may join the interest list for the issue by clicking on the checkbox with the label Include self on interest list. With permission granted by the administrator, you may also add others to an interest list for this issue. You can also enter other email addresses in the CC Email field for copies of the notification to be sent to those people. These people need not be ExtraView users as long as your organization has the appropriate license for its ExtraView software.

This field is important in most installations of ExtraView, and special rules may apply to how it functions. For example, your administrator may have determined that issues may only be moved in a particular pattern, or workflow. The administrator may also have decided that these workflow status rules are different for different user roles within your organization. For example, these are valid rules:

• Engineers may open and fix issues, but they may not close them.
• QA personnel may open and close issues, but they may not fix them.
• Administrators may do anything

The status field may appear with different entries at different points within the process. For example, on the Add Issue screen, there may only be a status of new, whereas on the Edit Issue screen, there may be some combination of open, fixed and closed, depending on your role. ExtraView makes certain that users follow the process required. The status field may appear as a normal list field, or may appear as shown in the following screen shot, where a more graphical representation is used to show the status list to which you are allowed to move the issue.

There may also be an area of the screen that shows the key points about the workflow as it transitioned through various stages.  This will show the status at that point in the workflow, along with the date of the transition, and the person who updated the issue within the workflow.