What to do when changing Field types or removing Fields

Wednesday, Jul 11, 2018

Sometimes when your data requirements change you need to modify the way that values are gathered, eg moving an address from a multiline text field to a set of single line text field.

There is also occasions when removing data completely is necessary. The following are suggestions of how to deal with this.

There is no data manipulation management tool within CourseSales.com for you to automatically move from say two fields and merge into one field. However there are a few things you can do in some cases:

Multiline text field can be changed to single line text field, in these cases the return characters are ignored and the lines are truncated. For example the multiline text area:

14 Corton Street
The Gap
Queensland

would be merged into a single text line like this:

14 Corton StreetThe GapQueensland

The different fields where there are multiple options and only one can be selected, are interchangable can be switched without loss of data eg Autocomplete, Lookup List and Radio.

Moving from an internal list. These lists have values that differ from the labels, this means that to reproduce these as an external option list is not possible without losing the labels.

If data might be required for existing documents the following method for the transition is recommended:

  • Change the fields to ‘hidden’ so they are no longer gathered

  • Move those fields to be removed into their own section with the heading ‘to be removed’ so that operators know that these are not to be used.

  • Ensure fields are manually transferred when required. If you need to ensure these values need to be transferred, eg they are area codes of phone numbers, that need to be added to a previous value that didn’t have the area code add a mandatory checkbox that says ‘fields have been copied across’ - so that should an operator is alerted by being made to check the box.