Adding Input Fields

A workflow stage usually collects information from the user. In many ways the workflow features in WorkflowFirst focus on assisting in a process of gradually filling out a form.

 These are called "Input Fields" and they make up the form that is your workflow stage. All you do is specify the fields you need, and WorkflowFirst will lay the form out for you.

There are several ways to specify the fields that should be collected at a particular stage.

 When you are entering a new stage, you will see an 'Input Fields' link which you can click for each field you want to add.

 Alternatively, from the flowchart you can access the fields associated with that stage by clicking the second toolbar button:

 If you go to the input fields list this way, you can then click the plus icon to add a new field.

Once you are on the form for adding a new field to collect, you will see something like this:

Usually here you will just enter in "New Field Title" to specify the name of the field to request from the user, and optionally change "New Field Type" to select the type of the field to request.

Here's some more details of what you can specify: 

New Field Title

Just enter in a new field title here. If the field doesn't exist, it will be created for you automatically when the stage is created, and it'll then be available to select as a 'Field Reference'. Also, the next time you view this entry, you'll notice that the field will be selected in the 'Field Reference' automatically. 

New Field Type

If the previous entry was used to create a new field, then you can specify the data type (that is, the type of data it will hold) using this dropdown. You can review the different data types in Specifying a Data Type 

Field Reference

Here can you select an existing, previously created field in this record, or in a sub-record. If you've already created some fields, you can select one here.

After creating the stage, you can also click on the Field Reference link to go to the actual field definition, where you will find a multitude of additional options to modify the behavior of the field. See Creating and Editing Field Definitions for more information. 

Link

If you want this field to show a dropdown list linking to other data in your application, then select the application tab or nested list in this field. 

If you expand the "Other Field Settings" area, there will be additional options you can specify:

Is Mandatory

Specifies whether this field will be required to be entered by the user. If this is set and the user does not enter this field, an error will be displayed. 

Ask User

Specifies whether this field should be included in a form so that the user can enter the value. If not, then the next field will be used to seed the value for the field, instead of it being asked of the user. 

Store Value

Indicates if this field will be stored in the record. If not, it will still be collected from the user and can be used by a script. 

Value To Use

The value to assign to this field if 'Ask User' is set to No. If this value starts with an equals sign (=), it can contain a DbfScript expression that will be used to calculate the value for the field when the workflow stage is submitted. 

Initialize

Indicates how the field should be initialized. By default the value is empty, but you can specify a default value or to use the existing value in the database. 

Default Value

If initializing with a specific value, indicates the value to use. 

New Group Title

Allows you to specify a field group title for this field, starting a new field group. 

Separate List Tag

Allows you to record this field value in a sub-record. This is a powerful feature and is discussed in the next section.

 Let's look at an example of some input fields:

 


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Up Since 2/29/2024 12:02:23 AM