ChilliDB Custom Fields provide a powerful solution to allowing you to customise the data fields on any screen through ChilliDB, giving you the ability to define what data you capture and how it should appear.
Custom Fields can be aligned in a number of Layouts include expand/collapse, tabs, and now grids.
Grid Layout allows you to define a collection of fields which are related to each other. An example of this may be for tracking Services that your Organisation’s in ChilliDB deliver along with the days of the week for which that Organisation will provide that service.
For example, you could capture something like this:
This way, you are holding this “grid” of data against the Organisation. For this reason, Grid layouts appear as a tab on the module you place them onto, for example, on the Organisation Display page. You can view, add and modify each row of the grid of data from the tab on the Organisation Display page.
This guide show you how to create Custom Field Section with a Grid Layout which could be used to represent the example of a Service Directory detailed above.
Creating a custom field grid layoutFrom the System menu, under Custom Fields, select Create and Maintain to open the Custom Field management screen.
Select Organisation as the module for this example
Choose the Add New Section link to create a new Section of Custom Fields.
Give your Section a name, for instance Service Schedule
Specify if the new Section is going to be visible to certain types of all types. I have selected All Types for Visible for Types
Specify the Section Order which controls it position on the page in relation to all of the other Sections.
Set the Section Appearance to Grid for your new Section.
You may choose to add a Description or set security role permissions for your Section, I choose to leave them all as defaults.
Select the save icon to save your Section
Next you need to add some fields to your section
Note: The first field is the most important and it needs to be a required field. This will allow ChilliDB to use it for linking from the grids
I am going to make my first field, a lookup field which holds a Service that my Organisations will be delivering.
Set the Field Description to Service
Set the Field Type to Lookup List / Checkbox List
Set the Is Required field to true by checking the box
I am going to leave all of the other options as default.
Add some Meta Data Lookup Values which represent the services being delivered and then select Save to save this field.
I will next create seven (7) simple Custom Fields of type Yes / No which will represent the days of the week that I will be tracking my Service against. Each of them will look like the following, with a different Field Description for each day of the week.
The completed section should look like this:
Using your custom Field Grid Layout
If you go to an Organisation in your system, using the Search for instance, you will now see a Tab called Service Schedule on that Organisation display screen. On the tab, you will see a Create link to add new items.
Select the Create link to bring up a form to enter all of the information that you defined for your section of Custom Fields. Select the Save button to save your record.
You can repeat this process of creating Service Schedule records as many times as you need to for this any Organisation in your system.
You will now see one row for each set of information held in your Grid based Section of Custom Fields. If you have a lot of fields, not all of them may appear in your grid.
If you click on the value in the first column of the grid, it will pop up a display page to show you all of the information you have defined for your Service Schedule Custom Fields. You can use the Edit link to modify this information.
From the Edit screen, you can make any changes or Delete your Service Schedule record, which will remove a row from the grid on the Service Schedule tab.
