From the Administration menu in the Desktop, click on the Control Sets toolbar button to display the Control Sets search screen. Click on the New button at the bottom of the screen.
Title: Give the control set a unique name that clearly identifies it
Entity Types: Select and check from the drop-down box all of the entity types that the control will be allowed to be linked with. Control sets can be linked to Clients, Sites, Assets and Jobs. Note, checking entity types here does not automatically add the control set to those entity types, it just makes it possible to do so.
Category: Select from the drop-down box the category of the control set. This is a mechanism for grouping and makes searching and filtering easier. The values in this category drop-down box are administered via the System Codes screen.
Web Enabled?: This checkbox, when checked will allow the control set to be visible via the web portal.
The Control Set screen has 4 tabs:
Designer: This tab is used to create the definition of the control set. This is where you add individual fields, set their properties and configure their values
Preview: This tab will show a preview of the control set as it will be rendered via the Desktop edition of HelpMaster. This tab is useful for testing, and fine-tuning the design and layout of the control set
Information: This tab is used to specify additional information about the control set that will be displayed to users both in the Desktop and the Web Portal
Properties: This tab is used to display meta-data and notes about the control set
The following field types are available:
Checkbox: A binary-state control. It's on or off, true or false, 1 or 0. etc. 2 options only.
Tri-choice: A tri-state control. Useful for Yes-No-Maybe style data where there are 3 options.
DropDown: A standard drop-down pick-list style control. Add as many values as you need
Date: A date-picker control
Text: A standard single-line text box
Text Multiline: A standard multi-line text box.
Number: A "spinner" type control that can set a number. Can be positive, or negative.
Currency: A currency control used to store financial values
Label: A simple label control. Used to display information
Separator: A line. Used to separate blocks of information, or provide a visual break in information
Client Selector: A control that allows you to select an existing client within the HelpMaster database. The type of client can be limited to various types as follows:
The Properties section of the Designer tab displays all of the properties for the selected control type.
Background Colour: Sets the background colour of the control
Bold: Separator control only. Changes the boldness of the separator line
Display Type: Sets the style of the control. Choices vary depending on which control is selected
Caption: The caption that will appear to the user.
Items: Dropdown controls only. Click the ellipsis button to display the values that will be listed in the drop-down. Create new items by entering new values - 1 per line.
Name: The internal name of the field. This can be changed, or left as the default.
Placeholder: Text controls only. Text entered here will be displayed in a grey text as a placeholder in the control. When the user starts typing, the text will disappear and replaced with what they type. This is useful as a guide for the user.
ToolTip: Text entered here will be displayed as a tooltip if the user hovers over the information icon that will appear next to the control.
GUID: Read-only. An internal unique identifier of the control. Used by HelpMaster.
Type: Read-only. Displays the type of control being used
Regular Expression: Text controls only. Select a regular expression that will be used to validate the value the user inputs into the control.
Required: Sets whether the control value needs to be specified.
Cascading controls refers to the behaviour where a new control is displayed to the user if they select a certain value in a checkbox, tri-choice box, or a drop-down box. This allows for further clarification, or data input from the user because they selected a specific value.
For example. You might have a checkbox called "Would you like us to contact you?" that contains the following values:
If the user selects "Yes", you want to display a drop-down box entitled "Contact method", which contains the following options:
Now, based on the selection the user makes, you either want to display a text-box for the email or SMS option, or a number box for the phone number
In order to build such logic into your control set, you'll need to cascade some controls by doing the following:
See also
Web Portal
Web Enabled Control sets (Linking controls sets to a Job Template for use on the web portal)