Field Types

Two categories of fields are provided:

Simple Field Types

The following fields represent simple values stored within database tables. These field types are the most efficient and provide the best performance when used in reports.

Icon Field Type Description
(the Binary Field icon) Binary/Trinary Can store either two values or three values of your choosing.

Use two values for situations where you need to give users "yes/no" or "on/off" options.

Use three values when you need an additional option, such as a value that helps determine subtask status.

(the Date/Time Field icon) Date/Time Store dates and time values. Date/Time fields can be displayed as the date only, date and time, time only, or elapsed time.

Date/Time values are shown to users in the format provided in their user profile.

(the Numeric Field icon) Numeric Store integers, floating point values, or fixed precision values.

Numeric fields can be used as weights in Trend reports.

(the Summation Field icon) Summation Sums the values of weights of Single Selection fields or values for Numeric fields set as integers.
(the Text Field icon) Text

Can be of fixed length up to 255 Unicode characters, Memo type (whose length varies by DBMS), or a Journal type.

SBM supports non-ASCII characters in Text field values, allowing runtime data to be displayed in a wide variety of international languages.

You can enable Rich Text editing for Memo and Journal fields.

User Field Types

The following field types represent users or groups in your systems. Values for these field types can come from roles defined in SBM Composer and from users and groups defined in SBM Application Administrator. For details, refer to Values for User, Multi-User, and Multi-Group Fields.

User field types are also used to establish ownership for primary items. For details, refer to Ownership of Items.

Icon Field Type Description
(the Multi-Group Field icon) Multi-Group Enables users select one or more groups to associate with an item.
(the Multi-User Field icon) Multi-User Enables users to select users, groups, or group members as values for the fields. The type of selections available depend on settings you apply for the field in SBM Composer.
(the User Field icon)

(the System User Field icon)

User Enables users to select a single user or group member to associate with an item.

System User fields, such as Owner and Submitter, are indicated by a red circle in the bottom left corner of the User field icon.

Selection Field Types

The following field types enable users to select values you define for the field in SBM Composer. Use this field type for static values that will likely not change over time. For example, use a Single Selection field to create a Priority field that may have values of High, Medium, or Low.

If values will change on a regular basis, consider using Single Relational or Multi-Relational fields instead.

Icon Field Type Description
(the Multi-Selection Field icon) Multi-Selection Enables users to select one or more predefined values.
(the Single Selection Field icon) Single Selection Enables users to select one predefined value.

You can assign weights to each value to assist with reporting, backlog views, and Summation field values.

Relational Fields

Single-Relational and Multi-Relational fields are used to establish relationships between data in primary and auxiliary tables. These field types are ideal for managing values that will change over time.

For example, you may have a Products auxiliary table that stores information about the products your company sells. Each product has its own record in the Products table. You can create a Multi-Relational field in your process app that points to the Products table, enabling users to select the products that relate to a particular work item. As your company adds products, you can easily add records to the Products table.

Relational fields are created in SBM Composer, but Relational field values are typically added using the Auxiliary Data feature in SBM Application Administrator.

The following information applies to Relational fields:

Icon Field Type Description
(the Multi-Relational Field icon) Multi-Relational Enables users to select one or more items from a primary or auxiliary table as values for the field.
(the Single Relational Field icon) Single Relational Enables users to select one value to associate with a particular primary or auxiliary table.
(the Sub-Relational Field icon) Sub-Relational Allows access to additional fields in a related primary or auxiliary table. Sub-Relational fields are tied to a Single-Relational field already in an application. For example, if an Incidents table contains a Single-Relational field to an Issues table, you can include a Sub-Relational field of Owner. This lets users see the owner of a related issue within the incident. Sub-Relational fields are only available if Single Relational fields already exist for a particular table.

Folder Fields

Folder fields are used to link primary or auxiliary items to a specified Public or Knowledge Base folder.

Icon Field Type Description
(the Folder icon) Folder Values are folders created in SBM System Administrator.