Disabled, Optional or Required

Code tables and Data dictionary fields can be Disabled, in which case they are removed from the RefTracker functionality, or, Enabled in which case they can be set to Optional or Required.

Disabling a field in the Data dictionary, or a Code table in Code tables can be used to limit the RefTracker functionality that your users see. See the section of this manual on Customisation to find out more about removing functionality that you don’t use.

Setting a field or Code table to Optional or Required, enables the field or code table so it is included in RefTracker functionality, however you can control how it is used by selecting either “Optional” or either of the Required” types.

Required means that wherever the field or code table is used, a value must be entered/selected for it and this value will be recorded in the RefTracker database.
Required (on open) means that the data must be provided when the request is first submitted.
Required (for close) means that the data does not have been provided to create the request, but that it must be provided before the request can be closed.

Optional means that a value does not necessarily have to be entered/selected for that field when it is used. Setting a field to Optional provides the greatest level of flexibility because it will make every use of the field optional, which allows it to be independently set in the Request forms, to be Required for some uses, Optional for others, and Disabled for still others.

Where the field is a code table, the code table is presented with [select option] showing to indicate that a value can be chosen – but a value does not have to be chosen unless the code table has been separately defined as Required (for example in a specific Request form), in which case it will have an asterisk next to it to indicate its Required status. If a value is entered in/selected for this Optional field, it will be recorded in the RefTracker database. If a value is not entered/selected for it then nothing will be recorded for it in the RefTracker database. This important concept means that when data appears in a RefTracker record, the data has been specifically provided. There are no long lists of “not specified” where fields are not in use, or where fields are not directly relevant to a specific request.

Because the relationship between Code tables, the Data dictionary and the Request forms is hierarchical, changes that you make at the higher levels automatically feed through to the lower levels. For example, if you set the Age/Group Code table to Required in the Code tables, that will automatically reset it to Required in the Data dictionary and reset all uses of the field in Request forms to Required. If you want to be able to override this hierarchical cascading the code table needs to be set to Optional. However the automatic cascading of changes makes it very easy to implement policy changes, for example, if the collection of Age/Group is no longer optional, but is now mandatory – just change the Age/group code table to Required and your new policy is implemented!

More information about how the Code tables relate to the Data dictionary and how the ability to set them to Required, Optional or Disabled interrelates, is provided at the end of the section in this Data dictionary section of this manual, and in the Code tables section.