Add Drop-Down to Form

Author: Ian Britz

Introduction

Within the Modeler, we can create Drop-Down objects. These Drop-Downs can then be added to Forms to give users the option to select cell input from a menu. There are four types of Drop-Downs we can define:

 

Member List - A drop-down menu that displays the members of any Dimension's Member List.

 

 

Hierarchy - A drop-down menu that displays the members of any Dimension's Leveled Hierarchy or Member List.

 

 

Calendar - A drop-down menu that allows you to select a date from a Calendar.

 

 

Dynamic List - A drop-down menu that's members can change based on the current filter selection. Discussed in more detail in this article.

 

 

Next, we'll look at how to configure these drop-downs and add them to our Form.

 

Note: It's important to point out that whenever a drop-down is used in a Form, users will only see members from hierarchies they have access to.

 

 

Configure Drop-Down

Example: Let's create a drop-down list in the Employee Type column below, to allow us to select from the options Salaried, Hourly, and Contract.

 

 

Step 1. Use an existing, or create a new, Member List that consists of all of the Members we need to include as options in the drop-down list.

 

 

Tip: In many cases it's best to create a parent Drop-Down Dimension for organizational purposes, and add all the Member Lists you use for drop-downs there.

 

Step 2. Navigate to the Forms node in the target Model, and open the DROP-DOWN tab. Then select Add  to create a new Drop-Down.

 

 

Step 3. Choose the type of Drop-Down to use and give it a name. For our purposes we could choose either Member List or Hierarchy. Choosing Hierarchy, however, would give us a more complicated drop-down menu than necessary for what we're creating, so Member List is likely a better option.

Then select the relevant Member List you want to use. The other two options, Attribute for Link and Alternate Display, are discussed in the sections below. You can leave them blank for now.

 

 

Step 4. Go to the Form and enter edit mode. We are going to add the drop-down list to the Employee Type column. Note that the column header Employee Type is a member in the Metric Dimension and unrelated to the Employee Type Dimension we used to create our Drop-Down Object with.

 

 

Step 5. Open the ADVANCED pane and select Add  in the DROP-DOWN tab. Choose the Drop-Down we created previously. We'll associate this drop-down list with the Employee Type member in the Metric Dimension we discussed above.

 

 

Step 6. Navigate back to the Form and the drop-down should be configured as above.

 

Note: Remember that a drop-down menu can only be added to input-enabled cells at the lowest-level of a Hierarchy.

 

 

 

URL Link Option

To add a URL to your drop-down menu, all you need to do is add an Attribute to the Dimension that stores the URLs you want to use:

 

 

Then specify that Attribute in the Drop-Down configuration menu.

 

 

Now your drop-downs will display an icon that when clicked, will navigate you to the intended URL in a new browser tab.

 

 

 

Display by Attribute Option

You can also configure which label is displayed in a menu that's created from a Drop-Down of type Member List. In the Drop-Down configuration window, simply select which Attribute to display for Alternate Display.

 

 

By default, the Member Name is the label used in a Member List drop-down menu, which in this case would be a list of the country names. However, as we've set it to the Local Currency attribute instead, we now see the currency code.

 

 

 

Add Calendar Drop-Down

Configuring a calendar drop-down as seen below is incredibly simple.

 

 

Create a new Drop-Down object of type Calendar and add it to your form in the same way as the above drop-downs.