Dropdown

Lumel EPM provides options to create a single-select or multi-select list of values of your own, or by using the preset options available, while creating your Data Input Measures.

The single-select and multi-select columns have two main differences:

1. The obvious one is that a single-select column accepts only one option as input, whereas a multi-select column doesn't have that restriction.

2. There are presets available for creating a list of values in the case of the single-select column, whereas the same is not available for multi-select columns.

In this section, we'll cover single-select columns. The same steps can be followed for multi-select, except for the two points mentioned above.

Go to Home Tab > List. Click on the 'Single Select' option in the dropdown.

1. Creating a list of values

There are three Options to create a list of values (LOVs). The third option - Lookup Option is covered in the next section.

a) List

On clicking 'List', three default options along with colors are displayed. You can rename the options as required and click Create to create a new list with three options.

b) Presets

On clicking 'Presets', a pop-up screen opens. The list of values for each preset can be seen on hover. Select the required preset and Click Apply.

The list of values that gets created is shown below.

c) Look up

You can fetch data from your source tables into the List of Values, provided you have an up-to-date semantic model by using the lookup option.

Inside the pop-up, select the table name, Column Label field – the options in the dropdown will be sourced from this field and the Column Id which is the primary key or ID field associated with the label field.

If the column labels are updated, the ID field mapping ensures that the updated value will be reflected in your reports.

Note: If your lookup table has no ID field, use the same label field as Column ID.

You can enforce data integrity by specifying filters while configuring using Filter option.

Click Add to apply the configuration and create the dropdown.

Now the products are listed as values within the Single Select column.

2. Editing the LOVs

Changes to data input columns can be achieved using the 'Manage' option in the toolbar.

You can edit the column created by clicking the Pencil icon. The data input side panel opens up. You can make the changes as desired.

Editing the options

The names, order, and color of the options can be modified, and they can be added or deleted as well. To edit the names, type over the existing names in the text boxes.

Adding new options

To create a new option, click on the 'Add option'. Type the name in the text box and click 'Enter'. The option gets created as shown below.

Changing the color associated with each option

To change the color, click on the color dropdown. A color picker opens. Choose a color as desired.

To reorder using the highlighted icon, and you can delete using the delete icon.

Icon position

This option allows you to hide or display the icon in the options to the left or right of data.

This option is unavailable when the option Style is chosen as Chip.

3. Options Style

This option lets you choose your desired display style for single and multi-select dropdowns: Chip, Arrow, or Plain text.

4. Allow user to add new option

Enabling this option allows users to create new options dynamically while using the dropdown, without the need to open the side panel for adding options.

5. Entry in total/subtotal rows

By default, data can be entered in total/subtotal rows. To disable it, uncheck the checkbox highlighted in the below image.

On trying to select an option in the total/subtotal row, a message as shown in the image is displayed.

6. Default Value

When you create a single-select data input field, you can specify a default choice to avoid blanks in your reports. There are three ways to specify your default values. They are

• Static

• Dimension

• Measure

6.1 Static

When you use the static option, you can select the relevant default value from the Value dropdown. In this report, we’ve chosen the ‘Approval Status’ preset. Notice how the Value dropdown for default values contains options relevant to approval status. Even if you specify custom options with the Lists, Lumel EPM will populate the manually entered options in the default value dropdown.

6.2 Dimension

You can choose to set a dimension category as the default value. Please be mindful that if you choose to source default values from a dimension, you will need to enable the Allow user to add new option checkbox.

6.3 Measure

You can choose to set a measure as the default value. Please be mindful that if you choose to source default values from a measure, you will need to enable the Allow user to add new option checkbox.

7. Using the dropdown

Once the necessary changes are made to the list of values, and other properties are configured, click 'Create' in the data input side panel. Click on a cell in the data input column to enable the dropdown and choose an option.

8. Dynamically adding missing options

Users can create a new option on the fly if a particular option is not available in LOV. In the example below, the available values are 'Not Started', ‘Started’, ‘In Progress’, ‘In Review’, and 'Completed'.

To add a new value of ‘Rejected’, type the new value in the search bar and click on the ‘Create’ button.

The new value gets added to the list.

In the next section, we'll cover other data input types such as text, checkbox, and date.