Setting User Variables

User variables act as filters in forms, enabling you to focus only on certain members, such as your department. Before you can open a form, you must set your preferences for the user variables that your administrator has set up.

Administrators can set up user variables to help users focus on those members that they're interested in, such as their department's expenses. For example, your administrator can create a form with entities on the rows and a user variable called Department. You can limit the number of rows displayed on the form by selecting a member for the Department user variable, such as Sales. Later, you can select another member for Department, such as Marketing.

To update user variables:

  1. On the Home page, click Tools, then User Preferences, and then select User Variables.
    The User Variables page lists the user variables that the administrator has set up for each dimension and under Member, the currently selected member for each variable.
  2. Click Member Selector icon (Member Selector) next to the variable you want to change.

    You can also type a member name directly in the Member column for the dimension.

  3. Select members by clicking the member or the checkmark in front of it.
  4. Click Save.

Administrators can also enable dynamic user variables on forms, which you can then select and change directly in the forms. They can also define context-sensitive user variables, which change dynamically based on the context of the form. To learn more about dynamic and context-sensitive user variables, see Dynamically Setting User Variables.

To learn more about managing user variables and selecting user variables as members, see the following topics in Administering FreeForm: