Lists manager

Note: Access to the Lists management screen requires the role 'Dataflow/Lists' (see Roles).

Lists are user-defined collections of data in Dataflow. They can be used, for example, to create dropdown lists in document templates. Each item in a list contains one default data item (the 'Value') - which is termed a property - and additional user-defined properties can be added.

Note: Property data in lists are not related to 'properties' as document-level variables defined in documents.

For information about using lists in document type templates and in variables, see Lists.

To access the Lists manager, click the CONFIGURATION  button at the top left and select Lists.

The Lists interface shows the available lists on the left. You can search for list names using the Search lists box at the top left.

To edit a list, click its name. The list is opened in the edit panel on the right.

Create a new list

You need to add a new list by giving it a name, and open it for editing. Add properties to hold the required information, and then add list items and input their property values.

  1. Click the + New button, input the Name in the dialog, and click Confirm. The new list name will appear on the left, and the list will be open for editing on the right.
  2. When you open a new list, it will be empty. The Value property is basic for every list and it holds the name for each list item, which must be unique within that list.
  3. Click the Properties Add button, and enter the Name and Type for the new property. The available property Types are: Text, Numeric, Boolean, and Date.
  4. Add further properties as needed.
  5. To add the first item to the list, click the List Items Add button.
  6. Click the input cell in the Value column and enter the item value. Click the other cell(s) to enter values for the properties.
  7. Add more List Items as required.
  8. You must click the Save button to store the changes that you have made to the list.

Editing a list

To change any list item, click in the required input cell.

To delete a list item, hover the mouse at the left-hand end of the table row; a red Bin button appears; click this button to delete the list item.

To delete a property, click the Remove button; in the Remove Property dialog, select one or more properties and click Remove. Note there is no confirmation step before deleting the property.

Note: When a list property is being used to configure a filter in a document template, or a variable definition, then you will not be able to delete that property.

List Item ordering

The order of items in a list in the Lists manager determines the order of menu items as they will be seen by users in dropdown menus in the Dataflow UI.

There is a 'natural' order of list items which you can change by using the 'drag' button in the Value column, to drag each item to the required place.

You can override the natural order by using the column ordering function. Click in one column header to apply ascending or descending order based on the contents of that column. You can also do multi-level ordering by applying ascending or descending order on two or more columns: in this case use SHIFT-Click when you click in each column header. To return to the natural order, click in the column header(s) until the Ascend/Descend settings are all turned off.

The list item order (natural or column-based) will be stored whenever you save a list and this will be applied to dropdown menus in Dataflow wherever that list is being used.

Export a list

To export the contents of a list as an XLSX-format file, click the list name, then click the Export button.

Import data to a list

To import data to a list from an XSLX-format file, click the list name then click the Import button. The import works by modifying existing list items or adding new items, based on the imported data. This is equivalent functionality to the 'Import List Data' tool in Version 16.5; however it is not possible to process multiple import files at the same time.

In the Import List dialog, click Choose xslx file... to select one XSLX file for import data. In the Column Mappings which will appear, the names on the left are the columns found in the XSLX file; for each one use the dropdown selector to identify the list property that will be mapped to.

Finally use the Key Column selector to identify the unique key column for the list. By default this will be the 'Value' column. Click the Import button in the dialog to start the import process.

After the import an Import Status column shows the status for each list row, either 'Modified' (changed by the import data), 'Unchanged' (original data and import data are the same), or blank (there was no import data with a key column value that matched the original data). To accept the import changes click Save, or you can make manual edits before saving, or you can reject the changes by clicking a different list name to close the current list.

Delete or Rename a list

Click a list name on the left, then click the Delete or Rename button.