Creating a selector for an attribute in Dataset Objects

You can select an attribute in the Dataset Objects panel and create a selector to allow a user, in Editable, Interactive, Express, or Flash Mode, to select which attribute elements to display in a Grid/Graph. You can also create a selector from custom groups and consolidations in the Dataset Objects panel. Do this the same way you work with attributes.

The default style of the selector is set to Drop-down and the Show All option is cleared, although you can change these defaults.

You can choose to either automatically maintain the targets of attribute and metric selectors, or manually define these targets:

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• If targets are automatically maintained in the layout, attribute and metric selectors automatically target all Grid/Graphs and panel stacks that are in the same panel or document section as the selector.

• If targets are not automatically maintained, you must manually select the targets when you create all types of selectors.

For more information on automatically maintaining targets, including instructions to enable or disable it, see Automatically maintaining targets for selectors.

You can choose to either include or exclude the selected elements from the target Grid/Graph by default. For examples, see Determining whether the selector includes or excludes data: Selection type. Steps to define the default behavior are included below.

Prerequisites

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• This procedure assumes you have already added a Grid/Graph to the document to use as the target of the selector. For steps to add a Grid/Graph, see Adding Grid/Graphs to documents.

To create a selector for an attribute in the Dataset Objects panel

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1. Open the document in Design or Editable Mode.

2. Drag the attribute from the Dataset Objects and drop it on top of the selector. The selected attribute is defined as the selector's source and the Action Type is set to Select Elements.

3. If targets are not automatically maintained, you must manually specify the target of the selector, as described below:

1. Right-click the selector and choose Select Target. The Select Target dialog box is displayed.

2. Click the Grid/Graph, panel stack, or selector to use as the target. The sizing handles of the target are displayed. To select multiple targets, press CTRL and click each control to select it.

3. Click the Select Target icon . The controls you selected are added as targets of the selector.

4. Right-click the new selector, then select Properties. The Properties and Formatting dialog box is displayed.

5. From the left, click Selector.

6. From the Selection Type drop-down list, select one of the following:

• To use the selector to include data for selected values, select Include.

• To use the selector to exclude data for selected values, select Exclude.

7. If the selector's title bar is not displayed, then this setting is used. If the selector's title bar is displayed, a user can use the title bar to change between including or excluding the selections.

8. By default, autosubmission is enabled, which means that once a user chooses an item in the selector, the target immediately updates without any additional user interaction. For steps to disable it, see Controlling how data updates: Autosubmit.

Now that you have created the selector, you can modify properties, such as multiple selections and simultaneous display of selector items, and format the selector.

Related topics

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• Adding a selector to a document

• Defining a selector