Folks,
As we rumble on with the ever-changing HESA Reporting juggernaut, there are items from our PickLists that are no longer in use, but still exist on old Student records. Is there a way to take these items off of active PickLists without removing them (and causing a system error!)?
For example, our HESADisability Picklist contains a value:
Internal Value: 09
External Value: Three or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions
This is no longer valid for reporting purposes, having been replaced by:
Internal Value: 08
External Value: Two or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions
However, existing student records will continue to contain the original value. Is there a way to make sure it can't be selected going forward? I'm thinking along the lines of 'Historical' status for Degree Tracks.
Thanks for your help!
This has been an issue for several schools and there is already a task to implement a solution. I will add this Post to the task to make sure it is tracked.
The best solution at the moment is to update the External value to be something like HISTORICAL:Three or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions, or INACTIVE:Three or more impairments and/or disabling medical conditions.
This will allow you to keep the value but also will indicate on the dropdown that the value is inactive for future use. This might be your best option anyway as the situation gets complex if you need to set the setting for someone historically but no longer have access to the value etc.
*GNECsis Support Specialist*
Folks,
This is just a bump, really - as we move into the last year of our current HESA government reporting with the 'old' specifications, and onto the new specs, there will be wholesale changes to the reporting options from PickLists, and I suspect unless there's a way to clean them up, they'll quickly become quite unwieldy. I'd love to see something like this made a matter of priority over the next little while, as it will make a huge different if our users aren't faced with a massive list including a load marked "Do Not Use" every time they try to select an option!
Thanks for your hard work :)
Rob
Robert Rae
Admissions
Nazarene Theological College, Manchester (UK)
For most locations, picklist values are fairly stagnant, so this isnt a big issue. For HESA where they change, Alan is working on a work around for you to use a Context that you can add and remove values from. I believe he has been in contact with you, and this will be coming soon.
Senior Software Developer
Global Ministry Center - Church of the Nazarene
In the next version (coming later next week), we will be adding an inactive flag on picklist items. This will not show them in the dropdown boxes, unless it is actually used by the record that you are on. If it is used by that record, it will show in the list as grayed out and can't be selected, in order to encourage the selecting of another. This should help clean up picklists and prevent errors.
Senior Software Developer
Global Ministry Center - Church of the Nazarene