Custom Lists

Business Case

Custom Lists are used for managing client-controlled lists of data such as Practitioner status values, dropdown options for various form fields, etc.

Configuration Details

Custom Lists and Custom List Items are managed in the Admin → Custom Lists area of the site.

Separate Label and Value

As of LearningBuilder 10, list items can be given a custom Label in addition to the Value that is stored in the database. This is useful when list items are used in conjunction with 3rd party integrations; for example, the Activity Offerings feature uses Custom Lists to represent the Special Accommodations that a given offering supports.

If these accommodation values are shared with a 3rd party partner, such as when scheduling an exam through an exam proctor, then it's likely that the value the partner expects (e.g., "XT") might not be very human readable. In this case, we'd like to display something more useful in the relevant dropdown, such as the phrase "Extra Time Allowed".

As of LearningBuilder 9.10.0, the only places where the custom Label appears are the input modes for a /wiki/spaces/DOCS/pages/564592680 and /wiki/spaces/DOCS/pages/558203147. In all other contexts, the Value of the selected list item will be displayed.

User-Supplied Values

In some cases, the end user should be forced to select from a finite list of options. But in other cases, it's desirable to allow users to select "Other" and then type in a value of their own.

This can be achieved by configuring a list item with a value that begins with the special marker "^^", for instance "^^Other". The "^^" is removed when that option is rendered in a dropdown list, so that only the specified text ("Other" in this example) is displayed. Once selected, the user is given a chance to enter their own value.

 This is only supported when the Custom List is used in conjunction with a Workflow attribute. It is not supported when the Custom List is used elsewhere in the system, such as the State and Country dropdowns used during registration.