Text Field Options

Text fields let users enter information about primary and auxiliary items.

Text fields with the Memo or Journal option enabled cannot be sorted in reports.

Style

• Memo

  Select this option to let a user enter up to 65,535 Unicode characters in the field. (See Span entire row on forms, below.)

• Journal

  Select this option to automatically insert a date, time, and user ID whenever a user enters text in the field. A journal field can accept up to 65,535 Unicode characters.

  Tip: For information about expanding this size, refer to S139895.

  Selecting this option enables these additional options:

  • Append only

    Forces the text in any new journal entries to be appended to the text in an existing journal entry, preventing users from modifying existing journal entries. Clear this option to let users edit existing journal entries.

  • Insert newest first

    Select this check box to insert new journal entries at the top of the list, so the journal entries are ordered from newest to oldest. Clear this check box to insert new journal entries at the bottom of the list, so the journal entries are ordered from oldest to newest. (Changing this option does not affect the order in which existing journal entries are listed.)

• Fixed length

  Select this option and specify maximum number (up to 255 Unicode characters) allowed in the field. (See Span entire row on forms, below.)

  (Custom text fields only) Selecting this option displays an additional option:

  • Password

    Forces the characters in this field to be replaced with asterisks (*) on state and transition forms and in the form preview.

    Note: This option does not appear on the Options tab for system text fields, like Title, or for fields for which the Memo or Journal option is selected.

Display

• Prefix and Suffix
  Type any plain text and HTML tags you want to display before and after the field's values. Note the following:

  • The rendered HTML is visible in preview mode and at runtime, but not in the form editor.
  • HTML formatting applies to the prefix and suffix for the field label, but not to the value of the field.
  • Use the &lt; and &gt; character entities to display the less than (<) or greater than (>) signs, respectively. Otherwise, these signs will be interpreted as HTML code. Use the &nbsp; character entity for each extra space you want to display.
  • By default, there is no space between the field value and its prefix or suffix. If you want a space to appear between the prefix or suffix and the field value, then you must add spaces.
  Note: For best results, formatting changes should be applied using styles on custom forms rather than by adding HTML tags to the field's prefix and suffix. For more advanced HTML formatting, create a custom form for your workflow, and then add an HTML/JavaScript widget to the form.
• Enable Rich Text

  Select this check box to enable a Rich Text Editor that lets users apply basic formatting to text in the field. This also enables the Rich Text Editor for the Default Value setting located on the Attributes tab. For details, refer to Setting Default Values for Fields.

  Clear the check box if you do not want the Rich Text Editor available for this field or you do not want HTML tags rendered at runtime. You may want to disable the editor if you want HTML tags and code snippets to display as plain text, for example.

  The Rich Text Editor is enabled or disabled at a system level in SBM Application Administrator. If you select the Enable Rich Text check box for a field, but HTML5 features are disabled for your system, HTML tags manually added to the field are rendered on State forms.

  The Enable Rich Text option applies only to Memo and Journal fields and is selected by default when a new field of this type is added to a table.

  CAUTION:

  If you disable Rich Text capabilities after formatted data has been added to fields, notes, and e-mail messages, the data may be garbled or unreadable. In this case, you must manually modify data to remove formatting tags.
• Span entire row on forms

  Select this option to make this field the only field to appear on a single row.

  Note: This setting does not affect the display of Text fields with the Memo option or the Fixed length option if the specified length is greater than the Max Text Field Size (set in SBM System Administrator).

Search & Query

• Appears in report field lists

  Select this option to include the field in lists on report forms. If you clear this option after the field is used in reports, the changed setting is ignored for those reports and the field is still shown until it is removed from the report definition.

• Appears on lookup form and relational field value lookup

  Select this option to add the field to the Auxiliary Data search forms and the Advanced Lookup Tool and Relational Field Value Lookup forms.

  The field order for the Advanced Lookup Tool and Relational Field Value Lookup forms for primary items is determined by the default field order of the table's first project in the project hierarchy. Projects are defined in Application Administrator.

• Appears on searches for this table

  Select this option to specify that the field will be available for selection on the Advanced Search page. This setting applies to primary and auxiliary tables. See Configuring Advanced Search for additional information.

• Automatically prepend wildcard to lookup text
  Note: This option is available only when the Appears on lookup form and relational field value lookup option is enabled.

  Select this option to automatically use wildcard characters both before and after the search text for this field in the SBM User Workspace, unless there are wildcard characters within the search text. This helps users search for keywords more easily.

  When this option is enabled, a percent sign (%) is displayed next to the field on the Lookup form in the SBM User Workspace.

  When this option is disabled, a wildcard character is automatically appended to the search text, unless the search text itself includes wildcard characters.

• Include field in keyword searches

  Select this option to let users search for particular text from keyword searches in Serena Work Center and the SBM User Workspace.

  Tip: Improve the performance of your process app in the by disabling this option for any Text fields that you do not expect to be relevant in searches (especially those with the Memo option enabled). Note that disabling this option also removes the field from keyword searches for the Basic Search and Global Search features.