Siebel Applications Administration Guide > Working with Lists of Values >

Constrained Lists of Values

Some drop-down lists are set up to display a subset of values that are based on a value set in another drop-down list. For example, if you have two fields for Service Request, Area and Subarea, the values shown in the Area drop-down list might include Network and Upgrade. If the user chooses Network, that user might see a drop-down list for Subarea that includes Ethernet Card and 3rd Party Software. If the user chooses Upgrade for the Area, that user might see CD-ROM, Disk Drive, Memory, and Operating System in the Subarea. This type of filtering is a constrained drop-down list. In such a case, the lists of values are configured to be dependent on each other. In this example, the Area drop-down list is the parent, and the Subarea drop-down list is the child. For information about constraining both static drop-down lists (maintained through lists of values) and dynamic lists, see Configuring Siebel Business Applications.

Figure 2 shows the values available in the Area drop-down list, and the values available in the Subarea list when Network and Upgrade have been selected, respectively.

Figure 2. Contents of Drop-Down List Constrained by Parent Drop-Down List

Constrained drop-down lists (or lists of values) must first be set up through Siebel Tools. After they are configured through Siebel Tools, specific values in lists can be made hierarchically dependent through the List of Values view. You use the Parent LIC attribute in the list-of-values record to specify the values that appear when a value is selected in the parent drop-down list.

For example, the LOV Type SR_AREA is used by both the Area and Subarea drop-down lists in a Service Request. The values that show up in the Area drop-down list are constrained to those that have a Parent LIC value of External. Figure 3 shows how the records for these values appear in the list-of-values list, including the Parent LIC value of External.

Figure 3. LOV Records with the Same Parent LIC

The values that show up in the Subarea drop-down list are constrained to those that have a Parent LIC value that matches the user's selection for the Area. For example, if the user selects Network in the Area drop-down, only those values that have the Parent LIC set to Network show up in the Subarea drop-down list, while if the user selects Upgrade in the Area drop-down, only those values that have the Parent LIC set to Upgrade show in the Subarea drop-down list. Figure 4 shows the records for the values that are available for both the Network and Upgrade parent values.

Figure 4. LOV Records Constrained by the Values Upgrade and Network

If you want to change the parent Area of a Subarea list item, you must modify the Parent LIC code of the Subarea list item. Similarly, to add a new Subarea list item, you must create a new record, setting the list-of-values type to SR_AREA and the Display Value, Language Independent Code, and Language as described in Adding a New Value to an Existing List of Values.

Then you would set the Parent LIC code to the appropriate parent area. By contrast, to add a new item to the Area drop-down list, you would follow the same steps, but specify that the Parent LIC code have the value External.

NOTE:  The usage of the value External to identify items in the parent drop-down list is specific to this example. To determine this value for any given pair of constrained drop-down lists, reference the underlying configuration in the Tools Repository.

SR_AREA LOV is used by the SR_TYPE, Area, and Sub Area LOVs in a Parent-Child-Grandchild hierarchy. SR_AREA LOV configuration is different when compared with other LOVs. While creating SR_AREA LOV values make sure that:

• SR Type value has no Parent LIC Code and the order number is 1000 or more.
• SR Area LOV value's Parent LIC code is the LIC of the parent SR Type.
• Sub Area's Parent LIC code is a combination of the SR TYPE and SR Area LIC Values. The SR Type and SR Area LIC values are concatenated to create a new record that appears in the Parent LIC list.

NOTE:  In the example using the Area and Subarea drop-down lists, both parent and child lists of values have the same list-of-values type. This condition is not required, but it has the advantage of avoiding EIM unique key violation errors. These errors can occur when constraining drop-down lists using Siebel Tools, when the parent and child lists of values contain different list-of-values types. If you plan to use Siebel EIM to exchange list-of-values data, consider constraining drop-down lists by configuring them so that the parent and child lists of values have the same list-of-values type.