Dropdown Control

The Dropdown control presents a list of values and captures the single value the user selects.

It consists of a select list and a label. Use it whenever an answer should come from a fixed set of choices rather than free text — a status, a category, a department. Because the answer is always one of your options, it reports and filters cleanly, and it makes a reliable basis for Conditional Logic.

To let the user pick more than one value, use the Multi-Choice control instead.

Add to the Template

The Dropdown control can be added from the controls toolbar in the Template.

Once you have added the control you must set the label text that will be displayed above the dropdown. The label is required — it is also the name used to identify the control elsewhere in CheckFlow, such as in reports and dynamic values.

Building the Item List

When the Dropdown control is first added it has no items, and a blank text box is shown. Enter the text for your first item in this box.

• To add an item, press Enter while an existing item is selected. The new item is created below the current one.
• To delete an item, clear all the text in its box and then press Backspace or Delete.

You can create an unlimited number of items.

Required

Tick the Required checkbox if the user must select an item before the parent task can be completed.

Populating from a Data Set

Instead of typing the items yourself, you can link the Dropdown to a Data Set so that its options come from a maintained table of reference data — clients, sites, products, and so on.

Click Link to Data Set beneath the item list (or choose it from the control's settings cog) and pick a Data Set, a View and the field to display. The manual item list is replaced by the Data Set's records.

Linked dropdowns read their options live, so adding a record to the Data Set adds the option to every checklist that is already running. The other fields of the record the user selects can be used elsewhere in the checklist with Data Set Dynamic Values.

See Linking a Data Set to a Control for the full walkthrough.

Use in the Checklist

The user sees the label with the select list beneath it, and picks one item. The selection is saved automatically, and the control records who last changed it and when.

Validation

When a Dropdown control is marked as required, validation is performed when the user completes the task. The task cannot be completed until an item has been selected.

Validation error messages are shown below the dropdown.

If you try to complete a task outside of the checklist (e.g. from the Dashboard) and it fails validation we will notify you of the validation failure via a pop-up message.

Conditional Logic

A Dropdown is the most common way to drive Conditional Logic — showing or hiding tasks and controls based on what the user picked.

The available conditions are is, is not, has no value and has any value. When you choose is or is not, the value to compare against is itself presented as a dropdown of the control's items, so you cannot build a rule against an option that does not exist.

If the Dropdown is linked to a Data Set, the value list in the Conditions dialog is populated from the linked View.

A Dropdown control can also be the target of a rule, so it can be shown or hidden by a condition driven by another control.

Dynamic Values and Parameters

The selected item can be reused elsewhere in the checklist as a Dynamic Value. When the Dropdown is linked to a Data Set it contributes one dynamic value per Data Set field rather than a single value, so any part of the selected record can be used elsewhere — see Data Set Dynamic Values.

The control can also receive a dynamic value, through a Dynamic Value Binding set from the control's Content Settings cog. It can only be bound to the value of another control in the same checklist — the global dynamic values are not available to a Dropdown. See Dynamic Values.

The control can also be bound to a Template Parameter of type String, so a selection is made automatically when the checklist is created. A parameter can either select one of the existing items, or supply the item list itself.

Linked Checklists

A Dropdown control can be either side of a Linked Checklist control mapping, so a selection made in a parent checklist can be carried into the child checklist it creates.

Reporting

Dropdown answers are available in Reports and can be added as a column. Because the answers are constrained to your item list, they group and filter neatly.

Control columns are only available in a report when a single template is selected. Add the column from the Columns dropdown, under Tasks & Fields. See Report Columns.

Limits

Limit	Value
Number of items	Unlimited
Selections	Exactly one. Use Multi-Choice for more than one.
Records from a linked Data Set View	No cap on the View itself. Bounded by the 10,000 record limit per Data Set.
Maximum item length	500 characters

note

This is a storage limit rather than a validation rule. Nothing in the interface stops you entering more, and no warning is shown as you type — a longer value fails when it is saved.

Related Pages

• Multi-Choice — when more than one option can apply.
• Conditional Logic — the most common way to branch a checklist.
• Linking a Data Set to a Control — the full walkthrough for taking the options from managed data.
• Data Set Dynamic Values — how to use the other fields of the record the user picked.