Define a hierarchy property
You can use a hierarchy property to create a series of dependent drop-down lists. This means that the choices made in higher-level drop-down lists determine which options are presented in lower-level lists.
For example, you could create a property named Region that includes two drop-down lists, labeled Country and City. In this case, once a User selects a country, the City drop-down list would become available and would be populated by cities defined for the selected country (for a more detailed example, see Hierarchy property example: Office Location).
Hierarchy property example
To define the property, specify the following details and then click Create Property or Save Changes:
Hierarchy property details
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Name |
Name of the property displayed in email, text, and push messages. |
| Description |
Optional descriptive text that appears beside this property in the list on the Properties tab. You can use this to explain anything about the property that other communication plan designers might find useful - it isn't shown to message senders or recipients. |
| Help Text |
Text that appears on the form below the setting that's intended to help the message sender understand the intention of the property setting. Although this value is not mandatory, it should be used when the setting is potentially complex, or requires specific explanation to clarify its meaning in the context of the form. |
| Category Labels |
Text that will appear in the form beside the drop-down list for the category. For example, a Hierarchy Property with a Name of Location might have Category Labels of Country, State/Prov, and City. |
| Delimiter |
Separator that will be automatically inserted in the Values box to assist with creating the hierarchical list. Tip: To make it easier to see the relative level of each value at a glance, use a non-space delimiter such as the pipe character or hyphen. |
| Values |
Allows you to specify the values of the options that will appear in the category drop-down lists. Each line represents an option that corresponds to a category level. For details, see the example below. |
Hierarchy property example: Office Location
Assume that you want to create a hierarchy property named Office Location, and that you have specified the following Category Labels in the order shown:
Country
State/Prov
City
Each of these labels will appear beside the related drop-down list on any form to which you add this property. Because the lists are hierarchical, the State/Prov drop-down list does not become available until a country is specified; similarly, the City drop-down list is not available until a state or province is specified.
Further assume that you want use the following values for each category:
- Country: USA, Canada
- State/Prov: New York, California, Georgia, Quebec, Ontario, BC
- City: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver
You can think of each Category Label as a level, with Country as level 1, State/Prov as level 2, and City as level 3. You must organize entries in the Values box to correspond to each level, with the selected delimiter used to denote and separate levels. Note that top level entries are not preceded by a delimiter.
If you selected the pipe delimiter, your Values list would look similar to the following:
USA
|New York
||New York
|California
||Los Angeles
||San Francisco
|Georgia
||Atlanta
Canada
|Quebec
||Montreal
|Ontario
||Toronto
|BC
||Vancouver
To set a level 1 value as the default for the form, add an asterisk after the value (lower level values cannot be marked as default). Note that values will appear in the drop-down lists in the order specified.
The following screenshot shows how the example Hierarchy property would appear on a form, with the San Francisco office location selected:
Hierarchy property displayed on a message form