Creating selectors that update dynamic text fields on panel stacks

Before you begin

You should be familiar with the various properties that define how a selector looks and what it controls, such as target and source. See Defining selectors for descriptions.

You can create a selector that displays different elements of attributes, custom groups, or consolidations in a panel stack. The selector updates a dynamic text field on the panel stack. A dynamic text field is a text field populated by the dataset; it is essentially a reference to an object on a report. Selectors work in MicroStrategy Web only.

You can choose to either automatically maintain the targets of attribute and metric selectors, or manually define these targets.

• If targets are automatically maintained in the layout, attribute and metric selectors automatically target all Grid/Graphs and panel stacks that are in the same panel or document section as the selector.

• If targets are not automatically maintained, you must manually select the targets when you create all types of selectors.

For more information on automatically maintaining targets, including instructions to enable or disable it, see Automatically maintaining targets for selectors.

Prerequisite

You should have added at least one panel stack to the document, to use as the target of the selector. For instructions, see Adding panel stacks to documents. If targets are automatically maintained, and you add a panel stack to the same document section or panel after creating the selector, the panel stack is automatically added as a target.

To create a selector that updates a dynamic text field on a panel stack

1. Open a document in the Document Editor. (How?)

2. On the Insert menu, point to Selector, then choose the selector style. When you move the cursor to the Layout area, the pointer becomes crosshairs.

3. Click in the desired section of the Layout area. If you click and drag in the section, you can size the selector.

4. If targets are not automatically maintained, you must manually specify the target of the selector, as described below:

   1. Right-click the selector and choose Select Targets. The selector is outlined in orange to indicate target selection mode is on.

   2. Click the panel to specify as the target. The sizing handles of the target are displayed in orange.

   3. Click anywhere in the Layout area to turn target selection mode off.

5. In the Property List: Data section, select an attribute, custom group, or consolidation in the Source field. The elements of the source are displayed as items in the selector.

   If the Property List pane is not displayed, click Property List at the bottom of the panel on the left. If the panel is not displayed at all, select Property List from the View menu.

6. By default, autosubmission is enabled, which means that once a user chooses an item in the selector, the target immediately updates without any additional user interaction. For instructions to disable it, see Disabling automatic submission for selectors in documents.

Now that you have created the selector, you can modify properties, such as multiple selections and simultaneous display of selector items, and format it.