Selectors: Allowing multiple selections and autosubmission

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.

About multiple selections in a selector

Items in a selector are the elements, metrics, metric values, or panels that are listed in the selector. The user selects an item to change the panel, Grid/Graph, or other selector.

If the style of the selector is listed below, the user can choose more than one item in the selector:

• Slider (except for metric condition selectors)

• Listbox

• Link Bar

• Button Bar

• Check Boxes

Use the Allow multiple selections option to determine whether multiple selections are allowed. For all other styles, this option is unavailable, since those styles do not support multiple selections. For instructions, see To allow multiple selections in a selector and Disabling multiple selections in selectors.

The Check Boxes style always allows multiple selections; you cannot change the Allow multiple selections option.

Controlling how data updates: Automatically applying selector changes

Once a user chooses an item in the selector, the target immediately updates without any additional user interaction. This is referred to as automatic submission. If multiple items are selected, the target is automatically updated after each individual selection, which can take some time. Therefore, if multiple items are allowed, disable the Automatically apply selector changes option, allowing the user to choose when to update the target. The user can pick either a single item or multiple items, and then click Apply to update the target.

For metric condition selectors that use a qualification, the user must click the checkmark to apply the qualification to the target. For a description of metric condition selectors, see Creating selectors that filter metric values.

The Automatically apply selector changes option is set for an entire document or Report Services (RS) dashboard, not for an individual selector. For instructions, see Disabling automatic submission for selectors in documents.

The Apply button is displayed only if the Automatically apply selector changes option is disabled and the user clears or selects an item in the selector.

Prerequisite

This procedure assumes you have already created a selector with one of the styles listed in About multiple selections above. Also, the Check Boxes style always allows multiple selections; you cannot modify the Allow multiple selections option for that style. For instructions on creating a selector, see Inserting selectors into documents.

To allow multiple selections in a selector

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

2. From the Format menu, select Properties. The Properties dialog box opens.

3. On the Selector tab, select the Allow multiple selections check box.

4. Click OK to return to the document.

You can also use the Property List to allow multiple selections.