I think it would help the user understand the issue but I do not see it as being mitigated. As Scott mentioned above, the blank does not affect the performance of the form, it is just annoying and would be great to filter out rather than simply filtering in.
Conversely, it would also be great to filter if equals blank as well. For example, lets say I have equipment number in 1 column and status in column 2. My status column only shows active or blank. If I wanted to set up a question to review non-active units, I would need to adjust my DataSource first as prontoforms can not filter by the logic if status column = blank.
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Luke Greene
Risk Analyst
KONE
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-27-2022 15:14
From: Erin Longhurst
Subject: Multi-select or Dropdown from Data Source question
Hi folks!
I'm wondering if an upcoming feature that we've mentioned in roadmap sessions may solve this issue: would being able to view multiple columns of a data source in a dropdown view -- i.e. column 1 may be blank, but column 2 contains data -- mitigate this issue?
Thanks,
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Erin Longhurst
Product Manager
ProntoForms
Original Message:
Sent: 10-21-2022 11:06
From: Natalie Tallon
Subject: Multi-select or Dropdown from Data Source question
Hi Cesar, I'm not sure I follow here, is it if someone picks the blank value in a drop down you do something with conditional logic that brings up a message/field that they need to fix it?
All: Our subject matter expert in this area is @Erin Longhurst and she is on vacation till Tuesday - so stay tuned - Erin's done some research into this area specifically so she'll be able to address this.
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Natalie Tallon
Product Manager
ProntoForms
ntallon@prontoforms.com
Original Message:
Sent: 10-21-2022 09:15
From: cesar mccoy
Subject: Multi-select or Dropdown from Data Source question
Same here, what I have done in some forms is to place a blank text field question and with a conditional, compare both for when both are blank have specific actions.
Kind regards
Cesar
Original Message:
Sent: 10/21/2022 8:55:00 AM
From: Lisa Zido
Subject: RE: Multi-select or Dropdown from Data Source question
I agree with Luke and would like to upvote this suggestion haha. We also have FTP data sources that are not managed by me, and it is often out of our control if one or more of the fields in this data is blank. I have spent months working with different people internally to get some of these blanks corrected, but it would save so much time and effort if I could just filter out any blanks through ProntoForms instead.
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Lisa Zido
Technical Systems Analyst
GOJO Industries Inc.
OH
Original Message:
Sent: 10-20-2022 14:32
From: Luke Greene
Subject: Multi-select or Dropdown from Data Source question
Hey Ian,
I wanted to chime in on this as I run into this problem from time to time as well. I totally get that prontoforms needs to read the blank row as it is pulling information in a different column. However, would it be possible that the filter logic in prontoforms Multi-select/Dropdown could be updated to include "does not equal". Right now I can filter something if it equals the number 1 or starts with 1. It would be awesome if I could filter as long as it does not equal something. Ie. Filter if column "Option 2" does not equal blank.
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Luke Greene
Risk Analyst
KONE
Original Message:
Sent: 05-10-2022 14:20
From: Ian Chamberlain
Subject: Multi-select or Dropdown from Data Source question
Hey Scott,
I just did some playing around with this and think I have found out why thats happening.
When we are parsing through a data source to find the options to display, we will read the rows and then the columns. There is a good explanation here (it says Google Sheets but is also applicable to Excel): https://support.prontoforms.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406631466260-Troubleshooting-Google-Sheets-Data-Source-Multiselect-Question-Showing-Blanks
It describes how we process the records in a data source and explains why would see a blank value in your drop down. In my test, I have 2 columns that are used for my options. If these 2 columns have different number of options, you will generate a blank value in the list of options because ProntoForms needs to read that row to get the options for the other column and just assumes that "blank" is an option.
Example:
Data Source with different number of options:
The app:
Data source with the same number of options:
Hope this helps!
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Ian Chamberlain
Implementation Specialist
ProntoForms
Original Message:
Sent: 05-09-2022 21:20
From: Scott Gilleland
Subject: Multi-select or Dropdown from Data Source question
When using a Multi-select or Dropdown with options from a data source, I get a blank selection choice at the bottom of the popup, like this:
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Scott Gilleland
Senior Field Service Engineer
Messer Cutting Systems
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