Question: How do I create or edit cascading dropdowns for custom tables
Product Details:
Product Family: Act!
Product: Act! Premium Plus (desktop version only)
Version: v20.1 or later
Answer:
Note: Cascading dropdowns cannot be created or managed in a remote database or offline client.
Creating cascading dropdowns
Note: Before you can configure cascading dropdowns, you must first configure the custom table dropdown fields you wish to use. For information on creating custom table fields, refer to the following knowledgebase article:
How to create and manage custom table fields
- Click Custom Tables > Manage Custom Tables
- From the Load Table drop-down, select the custom table you want to create cascading dropdowns for
- Under Field Management, click Cascading Dropdowns
- Click Add cascading dropdown
- Select the source field and the target field, then click Next
Note: Once the association has been made, the target field will be the field whose available options depend on what option was chosen in the source field.
- Select a value in the “Source field value” column
- In the Target field values column, choose “Display all values” or choose “Display selected values”, then ensure only the options that are relevant to the Source field value are checked
- Repeat steps 6 & 7 for all Source field values, then click Next twice
- Click Finish
If desired, you can create an additional cascading dropdown using the target field in the steps above as a Source field, and a completely different field as a target field. This allows you to have multiple cascading dropdowns that rely on each other. For example:
If the source field for the steps above is called “Phone Carrier” and the Target field from the steps above is called “Brand”, you can create another cascading dropdown and use “Brand” as a source, then introduce a different field called “Model”. This would mean that the options you chose in the Phone Carrier and Brand fields would decide what options are available in the Model field.
Note: In order to use the cascading dropdowns, you must make sure that each field used by cascading dropdowns has been added to the custom table layout. For information on adding custom table fields to the layout, refer to the following knowledgebase article:
How to create and manage custom table layouts
Editing or deleting a cascading dropdown
Editing a cascading dropdown
- Click Custom Tables > Manage Custom Tables
- From the Load Table drop-down, select the custom table you want to edit cascading dropdowns for
- Under Field Management, click Cascading Dropdowns
- Select the cascading dropdown you wish to edit, then click Edit cascading dropdown
- Follow the same configuration steps from the “Creating cascading dropdowns” section of this article
Deleting a cascading dropdown
- Click Custom Tables > Manage Custom Tables
- From the Load Table drop-down, select the custom table you want to delete cascading dropdowns for
- Under Field Management, click Cascading Dropdowns
- Select the cascading dropdown you wish to delete, then click Delete cascading dropdown
- When prompted if you are sure, click Yes