Field List Values

List values are maintained from one of several places - the Manage List Values administration menu, the List button by each list type field in the Data Dictionary, and by using your mouse to right-click on a list type field within the Design Center. This screenshot shows the Manage List Values screen as seen from the Manage List Values and the Data Dictionary. From within the Design Center you access the maintenance screen for each individual field directly:

Managing field lists

Note that once you have one or more values entered against any list type field by adding or updating issues, you are not able to delete the list value. If you want to remove a value from a list after data has been recorded against the value, most lists allow you to disable the value, so it will not appear in the add or edit screens. This allows reporting to show the historic data, even though the value is not currently being used. If a user edits an issue which has a disabled value in a list, they will see a message similar to this:

Warning when viewing a disabled value

The user may either update the record with the out-of-date value, or choose a new valid entry from the list. If the out-of-date value is removed from the list and the record updated, no user will be able to choose that value again. The behavior setting named IGNORE_DEACTIVATED_USER_FIELDS may contain a delimited list of fields with a display type of USER. Users will not be warned if they edit an issue which has a field in this list with a deactivated user. If a USER field does not appear in this list, the user will always be warned if the field has a deactivated user, when they edit the issue. There are a few lists which are managed differently:

  • Business Area and Project lists. These are used to set up and maintain the business areas and projects within your system. Values within these lists may not be disabled. Security permission keys exist to turn Business Areas on and off for different user roles
  • Values within the Category, Priority, Product Line, Status and User Role lists may not be disabled. Note that there are security permission fields that can be used to disable and enable the visibility of the Status field values
  • The Product and the Module fields work together, and the Module field administration will ask you to select a valid Product before you maintain any modules. Module field values may not be disabled.

To add an entry to the list, press the Add button. To edit an entry, press the Edit button by the value you want to edit.

Editing a list entry

As a departure from the above screen, if the administrator is adding a new value to a field, and an interest list is enabled on the field, then the administrator may create an interest list for the field value and assign one user to the interest list. If more sophisticated processing of an interest list for the value is required, then the administrator should use the Interest List menu under the Notification tab of Administration. From this screen, you can edit the title to display, the owner of this value (who will be notified when entries are updated within issues) and a sort sequence for the value. Note that you may not enter duplicate values to a list. All values must be unique within the list. When you have altered the values, click Update to save.