Layout Cell Attributes

Adds a * New * value entry to list and popup field types, on ADD_PROBLEM and EDIT_PROBLEM layout types only. It modifies all user defined list fields, the PRODUCT_NAME field, the MODULE_ID field, the RELEASE_FOUND or the RELEASE_FIXED fields so that a value of * New * apprears within the list. When this * New * value is selected a modal popup window allows the addition of a new entry into the list. This has the same effect as an administrator using the list manager function to add a new entry to the list, but puts the ability in the hands of an end user without their requiring administrative privileges. This feature can be controlled by user roles.

If the behavior setting named AUTO_POPULATE_ALLOWED_VALUES is set to YES, the an allowed value relationship is created automatically when the user adds a new value, and the parent value has already been selected on the add or edit screen.

There is a single option available when creating this layout cell attribute.  There is a checkbox with the title Do not export values added by users when exporting data with the Metadata Export utility,  When checked, the new field values entered by users into the field will be flagged to not be exported with the Metadata Export utility.  Thus, the new values will not be migrated to other ExtraView instances.
 
See the section titled End-User List Management for more information on setting up this feature.

This will rename the screen title in the Data Dictionary to the value in the Field value, for the field in the Field entry. Note that if this is used in a screen layout, you can include HTML in the alternate title. If HTML is included within the alternate title, then the behavior setting of LABEL_WRAP_POSITION is ignored. This allows total control of the formatting of the label within the layout. However, if you access the field through the API or CLI then the HTML will be passed through to the output. As the text for the alternate field title is placed within double quote marks (“) in the HTML generated when the form is rendered, you should not use these within the alternate field title. You may use single quote marks (‘) however, and these are generally interchangeable. 

It is a best practice to create a title for all field without any HTML within the data dictionary, and to only use HTML within individual layouts.  This makes the fields easier to view under most circumstances, especially report editors and report output.

You should restrict the use of HTML <br> tags within Related Issue Display layouts as they may appear cut off at the bottom of the title.  The titles within a Related Issue Display are sized exactly to a single row, so that they may be frozen in position when a long list of related issues is scrolled.

Example: Within an organization, you may label issues as Defects, but you may want to label them as Issues for your customers. On the new attribute form, you would set Alternate field name equals Issue

Example: A field on the form has the particularly long title of “Target Software Release” that wraps in an ugly way on the screen using the system-wide default you have set with the behavior setting, LABEL_WRAP_POSITION. You can control where the line breaks occur by using something similar to “Target<BR>Software<BR>Release”

Example: You want to remove the title to a field on a layout. It is not valid to use a blank title. The solution is to use an alternate field title of &nbsp;. This inserts the character set value of a space into the layout.

• Target Business Area – This defines the Business Area that will be used for the add screen displayed when the button is pressed
• Target Project – This defines the Project that will be used for the add screen displayed when the button is pressed
• Check Required Fields – If you check this option, then all required fields on the parent issue will be checked for their presence before the child window is displayed. This can be extremely useful if you are going to push down field values from the parent to the child issue, and you want to ensure that the child window is always initiated with a value within a field
• Push Selected Attachments – When the user clicks the button, any selected attachments will be copied to the child issue being created
• Presentation – You may allow the user to create the child issue within a modal popup window, or with an inline operation, where a new row opens up within the related issue display, and the user enters the data for the new child issue within this new row
• After Submitting the Child Issue – This option allows you to select the action after the child issue is created. This applies to the modal popup option of the Presentation setting only.  You can either have only the related issue display that contains the newly added issue updated, or you can have the parent issue updated and the entire screen updated. The latter is only required when there are some business rules that triggered changes to the parent issue when the child issue was submitted.

  Note that if you select Inline for the presentation, the related issue display is not refreshed after the inline add operation.  The reason for this is that there may be a sort order on the display, and there may be many issues wiithin the related issue display.  If the newly added child issue does not appear in the spot where the user added it, some confusion may exist as to whether the child was or was not added

• Push Down Field List – Double click on the fields whose values you want to push down from the parent issue to the child issue. The selected fields are displayed in the right-hand list.  Note that you can use the Find a field … option to search for a field within the list
• Show Generate Script – This button is provided for advanced usage. It is possible to configure button actions that are more complex than can be done with the BUTTON ACTION utility. This option allows you to generate the JavaScript that is close to what you require. You can then copy this JavaScript into the ONCLICK_JS attribute, and modify it for your requirement. You should not save the BUTTON ACTION if you are using ONCLICK_JS and vice versa.

• The target field for this attribute must be a field with a display type of text
• All the fields names referenced in the format must exist on the layout
• The field should be read-only to users
• There is no checking of field dependencies. For this reason, the value on the rendered screen could become stale during the edit process, for example if one of the referenced fields changes values. Of course, this is not a problem on a report layout.

Example: You can set up a new field on a layout, modifying the ID field for display to be of a specific format such as PROJECT + ‘.’ + ID. The ID will be the standard sequence, but will show a value such as MyProj.12345.

To handle this behavior, the data dictionary attribute named DO NOT CLONE prevents the cloning of the field value for specific fields.  This attribute is set when the field is used as a mapping field in the integration daemon. Setting the DO NOT CLONE data dictionary attribute for a field means that the containing field’s value will not be propagated to any clone of an issue – its value will be null in the cloned issue.

The drilldown target layout must be a layout that was created with a usage of Embedded Report – Creates a layout that contains a report to be embedded within an Add or Edit screen.  There are four such layouts predefined, but you may create as many of these as you need.  The four predefined layouts are:

EMBEDDED_REPORT – Embedded Report
EMBEDDED_REPORT_1 – Embedded Report (1)
EMBEDDED_REPORT_2 – Embedded Report (2)
EMBEDDED_REPORT_3 – Embedded Report (3)

Note that you should edit any of these embedded layout types and make sure that you save an empty layout of that type.  See here for more information on embedded reports

Example: To create a text area field where the initial display height is 20 characters, add a HEIGHT attribute with a value of 20. Note that RELATED_ISSUE_DISPLAY layouts are automatically sized in height, according to the number of issues they contain, and the FIELD HEIGHT is the maximum height that a related issue display will occupy, before a vertical scroll bar is added.

This attribute is only supported on fields with a display type of List (including multi-value list, put not popup lists), Radio Button and Tab.

Example: To highlight the value of the ID of an issue, if the issue is a customer issue, you might apply a layout cell attribute to the ID field – HIGHLIGHT VALUE IF CUSTOMER IS NOT NULL.

Example: We want to highlight the title of the ID of an issue, if the issue is a Customer issue. To achieve this, set the element attribute of HIGHLIGHTED IF on the ID field, if the field named Customer is not null.

Typically this is used to bring up the full description, plus any other fields, of an issue for viewing, as a shortcut to the user having to drill down into the issue to see the key information.

The definition of the popup is valid on various, but not all buttons.  It works on VIEW_BUTTON, EDIT_BUTTON, DELETE_BUTTON, HISTORY_BUTTON and QUICKEDiT_BUTTON, on add, edit, report and related issue display layouts.

Example: A DISABLED HTML modifier to the attribute will disable the field. Most browsers would then show this field as “grayed-out”.  ExtraView has a special HTML modifier value that provides an enhanced rendering for fields that you want to disable.  If you enter the value as evClass=readonly then the disabled function is extended to work with all fields, not just input and list fields.  In addition a disabled icon will appear when the user places their mouse cursor over a field with this attribute.  The evClass=readonly value must be entered exactly as shown, with no spaces or other characters within the entry.

Example: Use the HTML modifier to call a user-defined JavaScript function or to call a pre-defined JavaScript function within ExtraView. The function resides on the server and is automatically included in the HTML that is generated for the layout. The syntax specified within the HTML modifier to call a user-defined JavaScript function will be similar to: onclick=’myFunction(param1, param2)’;

For a more detailed explanation of custom building JavaScript functions, please see the ExtraView User Custom Programming Guide.

If you want to add a style attribute to a layout element, you should use the style (rather than the html modifier attribute) otherwise your cell element may have multiple style attributes, which is invalid HTML syntax. A reference providing a list of all valid CSS styles may be found at http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp. Note that this layout cell attribute only works when used within a layout that is rendered as an add or edit screen.

Example: You want to embed a different layout, with a different set of fields on an edit screen, dependent on whether the user selects a Category of Software or Hardware.

Note: If you are creating layouts which are selected according to a list or tab value, it is highly advisable to set a default value for the list or tab field. If you do not do so, and the field does not have a value, no embedded layout will be selected.

The precise steps necessary to implement embedded layouts are documented in a following section, entitled Adding Embedded Layouts.

Example: Setting an attribute of MAXLENGTH equal to 25 on a field will restrict the amount of characters that can be entered into a field to 25 characters.

Example: We want to display the Customer name within the field named Customer on an edit layout, if the Customer has already been added, but make the field read / write if there is no value so the user can enter the Customer name. To achieve this, add an attribute of FIELD READONLY IF Customer is not null. If you place a FIELD READONLY IF attribute on a layout cell that contains an embedded layout as opposed to a field, then all the fields on the embedded layout will be made read only, according to the conditions set with the logic of the attribute.

Using a setting from the table, or a value expressed with em has advantages as the font generated is then relative in size to the user’s personal text size setting (small, medium or large).  See here for more information on embedded reports

Example: The field on a form named CUSTOMER_NAME may become required if another field named CUSTOMER_ISSUE has a value of Yes. To achieve this, add a layout element attribute to the field named CUSTOMER_NAME. The value will be Yes, the field will be CUSTOMER_ISSUE and the equivalence will be equals.

Note that there are two special values in field lists:

• * Value from issue * – This indicated that the filter will use the value that the user sets into the parent field when they are entering data. Consider this to be a dynamic filter. This special value appears for fields with display types of List, User and Popup. If you want to use this feature for other data types, you can enter $$<ddName>$$ in the field
• * Mapped Field Value From Issue * – This is similar to the precious setting, but allows the mapping of the value from a different field.

• The layout may only be formed with a single row of fields
• The Quickedit button is not supported on the layout
• Only text contained within the cells on the display is filtered.  Date fields, number fields and the like are treated as text
• The layout does not support inline add
• The layout does not support repeating row fields
• When using a SIZE layout cell attribute in conjunction with this attribute, the sizes are measured in pixels, not characters
• The following layout cell attributes are not supported on the layout when this attribute is configured: AGGREGATE EXPRESSION TITLE, ALTERNATE TITLE, COLLAPSE REPEATING ROWS, GRIDEDIT BUTTON, RID FIX TITLES, RID PAGE SIZE, RID THRESHOLD, RID TRANSPOSE LAYOUT
• If a user clicks on a field column title to resort the report by that field, the entire results set is refreshed.

It is not recommended that you place SIZE layout cell attributes on the fields contained within the Related Issue Display layout when you use this attribute.  The best results are obtained when the browser sizes all the columns and column titles.

• FIELD STYLE: Visible if ID = -99
• LABEL TAG: style=display:none

See the example here for use of this attribute.

Creating a title for related issue displays

• Create the field from the Label tab of the data dictionary
• Provide a fixed name for the button
• Provide a title for the button – this is used to define the text that appears on the button when rendered as part of the related issue display
• The display type must be Button
• Other field attributes can be defined such as permissions, according to your requirements

Add button on a related issue display

Refresh button on a related issue display

Submit button on a related issue display

1. MEMBERS – This is the default value for this attribute if you do not override it with one of the other three possible values. In this case the RELATED_ISSUE_DISPLAY will show all the members of the group(s), containing the reference issue, i.e. the reference issue’s parent’s, children, and other issues not specifically related to the reference issues in the group(s)
2. CHILDREN – The related issue display will only contain issues that are the children of the reference issue
3. PARENTS – The related issue display will only contain issues that are the parents of the reference issue. Note that in the ExtraView data model it is possible to define more than one parent issue for a specific issue. See the section on Relationship Groups for more information
4. RELATED – In this instance ExtraView will display the parents and the children of the reference issue within the specified group(s), within the RELATED_ISSUE_DISPLAY. The parents and children of these related issues will not be displayed. You may create and use related issue display layouts as long as the name begins with RELATED.
5. SIBLINGS – ExtraView will display all the issues at the same level in the hierarchy. For example, if a parent record has five children, and you create a related issue display with all the children, using a relationship group relation type of SBLING, then you will see the four siblings to the current one.
6. LINKED – This type does not use a relationship type per se, but relies on the Related Issue Display filters to retrieve the associated issues. For example, you might have a filter that selects all the open issues for a particular product, and display these on a related issue display of each issue that you call up.

• the layout named LAYOUT.RELATED_ISSUE_DISPLAY or any other layout where the name begins with RELATED. For example, LAYOUT.RELATED_CUSTOMERS is a valid name for a relationship group name
• the field named RELATIONSHIP_GROUP_PARENT, or
• the field named RELATIONSHIP_GROUP_CHILD.

It will be ignored on other cells. It refers to the name of the relationship group that is to be used for the field. In case a), it defines the relationship group(s) to search for the related issues; in cases b) and c), it defines the relationship group in which the new relation is inserted. In case a), the relationship group name may be the wild-card “*”, which signifies ALL relationship groups. If you do not provide the attribute on a), ExtraView will search ALL relationship groups (as if the value were “*”); for b) and c), ExtraView will substitute the relationship group name stored in the behavior setting named RELATION_GROUP_DEFAULT, on the Workflow Settings screen. In any case, non-wild-card relationship group names must denote an existing relationship group.

1. The field name to order by
2. The rank of this field in sort order (relative to other sort orders in this attribute)
3. The direction (ascending or descending) of the sort order

To specify ordering by more than one field, insert multiple Relationship Group Sort Order attributes. To specify where a sort order field appears in the sort priority, use the rank number. For example, two attributes may be:

As usual, the sorting is done on SORT_SEQ within the field’s definition, and then the title of the field value.

You can also optionally aggregate values while grouping together values within a field, and providing sub-totals or other attributes for each group.  Set the Group By field to a value of Y to enable this feature.  Now you will generate subtotals as well as a grand total. Clicking on a field title at the top of the related issue display will cause a refresh of the display, change the sort order and the sub-totals

• Most commonly, this will add a SIZE=nnn attribute to the HTML display tag for the field. The default is 11 characters if no attribute is set. Example: You may want to alter the width of a text box on the screen to be narrow. You would achieve this with an element attribute of SIZE=30 or similar
• If this attribute is added to the layout named LAYOUT.RELATED_ISSUE_DISPLAY or other layout where the name begins with RELATED, and this is embedded on an add or edit form, then the value represents the width of the embedded related issue display. Again, this is measured in characters. The default width of a RELATED_ISSUE_DISPLAY is 125 characters. Example: The screenshot shows where the SIZE attribute is used on the related issue display
• When adding this attribute to a layout RELATED_ISSUE_DISPLAY layout which also has the layout cell attribute of RID FILTER RESULTS configured, the measurement is in pixels, not in characters.
• Note that as the SIZE attribute generates an HTML tag of the same name, it cannot be used with fields which use dynamic HTML for their generation.  This most significantly affects list fields which have an image associated with each value.  For these fields, use the layout cell attribute, or a global attribute set in the data dictionary of STYLE with a value of width:nnnpx where nnn is the width in pixels of the field.

It is recommended that you add a style attribute to a field, rather than use the HTML MODIFIER attribute with a STYLE tag. This prevents the possibility of the field having two style attributes, which is invalid HTML syntax.  Only one of these attributes will be recognized in the user’s browser.  It is helpful if you will have a reasonable understanding of HTML tags, attributes and CSS to use this layout cell attribute.

Example: You may want to display a field on a report with a background color of light blue and in bold.  To achieve this, add a STYLE cell attribute of:

background-color:#ddddff;font-weight:bold

The default is that the search uses the contains operator.

There is an option to Ignore Required Fields with this attribute.  This allows the update to the parent issue to ignore any required fields when the child is updated and not all fields on the parent record may have been completed.  The UPDATE MAIN ISSUE could not complete if required fields existed and were not filled in, but the expectation is the user will fill in these fields before completing the update to the parent issue.

The entire sequence is most often configured when the Related Issue Display layout is configured with inline add capability.  The button defined in the data dictionary that is placed on the preheader of the RID initiates the inline add, will use the option within its configuration to Update Parent & Refresh Entire Screen in the After Submitting Child Issue option

To set the attribute for any individual field(s) within the embedded layout, simply add the attribute to the field within the layout. If you place a VALIDATE_HIDDEN attribute on a layout cell that contains an embedded layout as opposed to a field, then all the fields on the embedded layout will be subject to the VALIDATE_HIDDEN logic.

Note: There is an important interaction between Validate Hidden and fields that have a Visible If attribute. If a layout element has a VISIBLE_IF condition, and if the element has the VALIDATE_HIDDEN attribute, a validation between tabs must be performed. ExtraView will automatically perform this check.

Note: If the Required If attribute is used within the same field as the Validate Hidden attribute, then it must be specified after the Validate Hidden attribute, so that ExtraView processes the attributes in the correct sequence.

This allows the administrator to add a new attribute to the HTML <TD … tag that surrounds the value of the cell. This can be used to provide a different style for the value, or to inject any other valid HTML into the cell value tag. It is likely that you will need a reasonable understanding of HTML tags and attributes to use this layout cell attribute.  This tag is supported on add, edit, detailed report and Quicklist layouts.

Note that if you use the greater than or less than operators, they only work with numeric comparisons. If you place a VISIBLE IF attribute on a layout cell that contains an embedded layout as opposed to a field, then all the fields on the embedded layout will be made visible or not visible, according to the conditions set with the logic of the attribute. This is the simplest method to create several embedded layouts which are to be made visible or invisible according to the selected value in a driver field. Conditional attributes such as FIELD REQUIRED and VISIBLE IF can be applied multiple times to a single field. When you use this functionality, the validation uses ‘OR’ logic. For example, you may set two VISIBLE IF rules, such as:

1. The field named action is visible if Status equals pending
2. The field named action is visible if Status equals fixed

With this rule, the action field will be visible if (a) or (b) is true.

When you use a VISIBLE IF layout cell attribute within a Related Issue Display layout, or a report layout, the field referred to as the condition for visibility must also be present on the same layout.  Further, the VISIBLE_IF layout cell attribute only works on the EDIT_BUTTON, VIEW_BUTTON, DELETE_BUTTON and HISTORY_BUTTON within these layouts.

Note that if you configure this attribute, you may not then configure a FIELD HIDE VALUES attribute on the same field. This attribute is only supported on fields with a display type of List (including multi-value list, put not popup lists), Radio Button and Tab.

• When the user clicks on the EDIT_BUTTON on the related issue, the edit session for the related issue is set up in the current window, replacing the edit screen of the current issue. To achieve this, set the layout cell attribute to a value of UPDATE_MAIN_ISSUE
• When the user clicks on the EDIT_BUTTON on the related issue, the edit session for the related issue is set up in a modal window on top of the edit screen of the current issue. To achieve this, the layout cell attribute named EDIT_ISSUES_IN_MODAL_WINDOW must be set to a value of YES. The layout cell attribute should be set to a value of UPDATE MAIN ISSUE
• There is no layout cell attribute of UPDATE MAIN ISSUE set. This is the default behavior, and no check for concurrency errors is made. The edit screen for the related issue appears in a new window. Use this default setting if there is no interaction of rules on the related issue with the current issue.