Setting up Custom Property Shared lists

Custom properties provide you with an easy way to capture your organisation's taxonomy and set your own reporting data. They can be created for any Fluid entities, projects, boards, meetings, schedule tasks, impacts, etc. 

The custom property shared lists provide a way to create global data lists that can be used by any custom properties, regardless of the entity type they apply to. Shared lists should therefore be used to enforce data consistency across the entire application. As they are centrally managed, it also means that you only need to update the shared list if any changes are required, and the updates will automatically be propagated to all custom properties using the shared list.

In this article we will explain how to create custom property shared lists and how to use them when creating custom properties.

Step 1. Navigate to Custom Properties Shared List page in Fluid

• Click on your Avatar (top right of your screen) and navigate to the Administration Console. 

NOTE: Only Application Administrators and Data Administrators can set up custom properties. 

• Navigate to the Data Administration section and click on Custom Properties Shared List.
  
  

Step 2. Add a custom property shared list

The following are points on how to create/add a custom property shared list:

• Click on Add Shared List to open the dialog to create a new custom property shared list. To edit an existing property, click on the pencil icon next the property name.
  
  

• The following dialog will appear where you can capture all the detail relating to the custom property shared list that you're adding. Once complete, click Save. (See below image how to complete the form).
  
  

NOTE: Shared lists can either be an Option list or a Valued Option list. The dialog will display additional settings/value options based on the selected type. Option lists can be used by custom properties of type Option and Multi-Option.

Data Type

• To start creating a custom property shared list, you first need to select the data type. 

Select the custom property type from the list below. You can find out more about custom property types in the next section of this article. 

NOTE: This field value is mandatory when creating a new custom property.

• Option: Use this type if the value of the custom property should be selected from a dropdown list.
• ValuedOption: The valued option type is similar to the Option type, the only difference being that you can associate a weight value to each option.

Name

• The unique name of the custom property shared list. The name can only contain letters, numbers, underscores and spaces. This field is mandatory.

Depending on the Data Type value selected, additional fields will be displayed so that you can set up a default value or enter the list of options.

Step 3. Set up custom property shared list values

When setting up a custom properties shared list, depending on which data type is applied, there will be an additional section called Shared List Value that will display default value fields or option list fields.

• The below image displays the shared list value section for an Option shared list.
  
  

Step 4. Link a custom property shared list to a custom property

As part of providing managers/administrators the ability to create custom properties for additional reporting, shared lists extend that ability by ensuring data consistency and allowing reusable data lists. 

The shared lists can be linked to any custom property element that is found on the custom properties page. 

NOTE: Only custom properties of type Option, Multi-Option and Valued Option can be linked to shared lists. Option and Multi-Option properties can be linked to shared lists of type Option and Valued Option properties can be linked to shared lists of type Valued Option. 

For a custom property to have the option to link a shared list, there has to be a pre-defined/saved shared list to select from. 

Applying the shared list created in the above step. 

• As an example, access the Community Plan custom property page to create a new custom property. 

• Complete the fields in the dialog. In this example, the new reporting field is to record the country the allocated resource is based in. Instead of having to enter the list of countries project managers should chose from, you can link the custom property to the Country shared list by clicking on the Link a shared list option.
  
  
  
  
• After selecting the option, the list of shared lists with a data type of Option will be displayed for the administrator to choose from.
  
  
  
  
• Once the Country shared list is selected, the custom property will be populated with the linked shared lists options/values. As the list is linked, the custom property can be saved and be applied to projects for each resource.
  
  

NOTE: Any updates to a shared list will automatically be propagated to the custom properties linked to that list. Therefore if more countries are added to the Countries shared list, the Resource Countries custom property will automatically inherit these changes.