Dynamic Fields

A dynamic field is a type of field in which the value of one field controls the values that a user can choose in another field. In a dynamic field, selecting a value for a "parent" field determines what value are available in the "child" field(s).

Example: Your repository might use a dynamic field for an address. Your administrator could choose to configure your template such that the values selected for the "Country" field would determine what states, provinces and territories would be available in the "Region" field. If a user selected "United States" as the country, the "Region" field would list all US states, but would not allow the user to select "British Columbia." If a user selected "Canada" as the country, they would be able to select "British Columbia," but not "New South Wales," and so on.

Dynamic fields are set or modified just like List fields: select a value from the field's drop-down in the Fields tab. (See Viewing and Modifying an Entry's Fields and Template for more information on setting field values.) When selecting values for dynamic fields, you must assign values to them in order. In the example above, if a user tried to select a "Region" before selecting a "Country," there would be no values available for selection. In some cases, additional fields may depend on more than one parent field (such as a "City" field that depends on both "Country" and "Region"), in which case all of them must be filled in.

If a dynamic field is configured such that only one value is possible once the parent fields have been filled in, that value will automatically be input into the child field. For example, if you have an "Employee ID" field bound to the "Employee Name" field, and only one employee with a particular name is in the list, the "Employee ID" field will automatically be filled in with that employee's name.

Dynamic fields are configured in the Laserfiche Administration Console. Administrators can choose exactly what values they want to include and how they want those values to be constrained or bound. Any type of field can be configured as a dynamic field.

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