Adding Fields to a Display

About this task

Fields allow one value per document across all users. For example, if you have a "status" field, the first person in a workflow might set the field for some set of documents to "review". The next person in the workflow could search for all documents with status "review". After going through the review process, the status field can be set to "print". This will overwrite the previous "review" value. Unlike tag annotations where values from multiple users are added to the content, the field value gets overwritten by the next user. Only one value for the field is associated with each document.

Note: Field annotations are different from syntax fields and custom document fields.

Procedure

To add the ability to annotate with fields:

  1. Open the display that is associated with your project.

    This tutorial uses a project named collab-tutorial and a display named collab-tutorial-display).

  2. On the Settings tab, select Collaboration from the left-hand menu.

    This will automatically open to the Annotations subsection. A screen like the one shown in Figure 1 displays.

  3. Scroll down, if necessary, and click add new to the right of the Groups: Fields header.

    The mandatory settings are Name and Label.

  4. For the purposes of this tutorial, specify workflow-status as the Name and Status as the Label.

    There are three Field types that can modify the way the field displays:

    • Input - This is a free text field with one line meant for shorter amounts of text. This display type is compatible with the Adding Express Tagging to a Display component.
    • Textarea - This is a free text field with multiple lines meant for longer amounts of text. This display type is not compatible with the Adding Express Tagging to a Display component.
    • Select - This is a drop down menu with a predefined set of values that you can specify for end-users in Select Values. The values are separated by a vertical bar (or "pipe") character "|". This type of field is compatible with the Adding Express Tagging to a Display component.
  5. Choose the Field types for your workflow-status field.

    If the status can be described in a word or two, but you don't want to constrain your end-users by forcing them to pick a predefined word, choose input. If your users might need more space to explain the current status, choose textarea. If you have an established procedure that has well defined states for documents proceeding through the workflow, and your users can only specify one of those states, choose select, and specify the values for those states (separated by "|") in the Select Values setting.

    Tip: For information about the other items on this editing screen, click the tool tip icon () to the right of each entry.
  6. When you are done, click OK to save your changes.
  7. Do a search in your application and check to see that the field annotations now appear with the results.

    See the section on Using a Collaborative Search Application for more information about how the end-user display works.

Results

The next section discusses Adding Express Tagging to a Display.