Custom Fields

Astra Schedule supports custom fields that can be used on specific record types. The custom field allows you to gather and display information that is important to your institution and schedulers but is not provided by default in the Astra Schedule application.

Once custom fields are defined, they are available for use on the record of that type.

Field Types

The Field Type and Control Type dictates the type of field that will be added to the form:

Text/TextField: creates a single field into which text may be entered.

Text/TextBox: creates a larger text entry field with multiple lines.

Text/Hidden: can be used if there is a certain data element that is desired for reporting, export, or some other process but is not intended to be a visible, editable field in the record.  This data would need to be populated using the Astra Schedule ATE import process with a custom spoke file and then consumed by some other custom object.

Display Text/URL: creates a hyperlink to an external site that will appear on each record. For example, a link could be created to make additional documents available from within a request form or other record type.

Display Text/DisplayOnly: adds static, informative text to a particular record type.

MultiChoice/DropDownList: drop-down list field with specific options.

YesNo/CheckBox: adds a yes-or-no option indicated by checkboxes.

Add Custom Fields

1. Click on the Settings tab.
2. Click on Custom Fields.
3. Select Type from the drop-down menu to designate the form it will be added to.
4. Click Add to add a new custom field to the selected form.
5. Select a Field Type from the drop-down list.
6. If applicable, select a Control Type from the drop-down list.
7. Enter a Display Label for the custom field. This value will be the name of the field on the section or section meeting record.
8. Form Area: the area on the form the field will be displayed.
9. Field Priority: the position of the field on the form.
10. Values (if Filed Type = MultiChoice): enter choice values and use the Add button to place them on the list. The arrow buttons allow the values to be re-positioned as desired.
11. Width(%): the width as a percentage of the overall page width
12. Height(rows): the row Height of text.
13. Required: the new custom field is required before the record can be saved.
14. Read Only: displays the text only and not an input field.
15. Click Ok at the bottom to add the custom field. Custom fields will automatically appear on the record types for which they were defined.

Section Custom Field Containing URL Token

One special, technical use case for custom fields on a record involves creating a custom field on the section form that contains a URL that links to a separate application.  This URL must contain information about the section record that is passed to the application.  In this scenario tokens can be specified in the custom field that Astra Schedule will replace with the actual values for the specific section or meeting that is being displayed.

This use case is supported with section and section meeting custom fields.

The following tokens (beginning with $) are allowed:

• Section meeting values
  $sectionmeetingid
  $sectionmeetingsiskey

• Term values
  $termname
  $termsiskey

• Course values
  $coursenumber
  $coursename
  $coursesiskey

• Subject values
  $subjectcode
  $subjectsiskey

• Section values
  $sectionid
  $sectionnumber
  $sectionsiskey

• Campus values
  $campusname
  $campussiskey
  $campusid

Example, a custom display-only URL Custom Field with the value:

http://hostname/appname/page?subject=$subjectcode&course=$coursenumber&sectionnumber=$sectionnumber&term=$termname&campus=$campusname

will be rendered on the page with the tokens replaced with values from the database, similar to this:

http://hostname/appname/page?subject=ACCTG&course=100&sectionnumber=A&term=2011SP&campus=MAIN