Expression editor and content assist

You can define any expression in  by using one of the following techniques:

• Click the ellipsis button on the appropriate field to open the Expression Editor dialog box, and then build the Run If qualification or other expression by selecting fields, keywords, and operators.
• In the workflow editor for the object, type the expression into the field with the help of the content assist feature.

Expression editor

The expression editor is a dialog box that appears in  whenever you click the ellipsis button in a field that requires an expression. It presents the data types allowed for the expression in the current context, such as the field names from the primary form,  keywords, the results of a function, or static values. Additional data types depend on the workflow action type. The expression editor also includes buttons for the most commonly used operators. 

To build an expression, you select from the options in the expression editor. For example, the following figure shows a Run If qualification in progress in the expression editor. In this case the developer has added the fields Status and Short Description, along with the operators AND and !=, and is about to add the keyword $NULL$ to the end of the expression. 

When you highlight an entry in the lists of fields, keywords, and other data types,  provides information about the selection in the information area of the expression editor. 

For an example procedure that describes building a Run If qualification in a filter, see Checking-transaction-versus-database-values. For an example of using an expression to map fields in a workflow action, see Using-field-names-field-values-and-expressions-in-workflow. 

The Expression Editor dialog box

Run If qualifications and other expressions can contain any valid sequence of operators, wildcards, and keywords, as shown in the following examples:

Operators-wildcards-keywords-and-NULL-values describes how each of these expression components is used and evaluated in . 

When entering an expression, make sure that it is acceptable to the database on which  is running. Avoid creating comparisons with fields of unlimited length, because the database might not support that capability. For more information about fields of unlimited length, see Field-Properties.

Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase RDBMSs remove hard returns at the end of character strings. This can result in incorrect qualification syntax. To resolve this problem,  adds a space before any hard return at the end of a string.

Content assist

You can also type the expression directly into the appropriate field of the workflow editor. If you are already familiar with  expression syntax, using content assist is a quick way to build an expression manually, but still ensure that field names, keywords, and other data types are spelled correctly and have correct punctuation. 

The content assist feature pops up when you begin to type an expression. For example:

• If you type a single quote (') in the field where are building an expression, content assist provides the list of available fields from the associated form. The following figure shows an example of this when building a Run If qualification.
• If you type a dollar sign ($) in the field where are building an expression, content assist provides the list of  keywords.
• If you press Ctrl+Space in the field where are building an expression, content assist provides a list of all the available data types.

The content assist list is grouped by data type, such as fields, keywords, and functions. Within each data type the list is sorted alphabetically. 

The list is filtered according to any characters you have already typed so far. For example, if you enter S, the list is immediately filtered to show only the field names beginning with the letter "s" (such as Short Description, Status, and Submitter).

If you type an incorrect character or click elsewhere on the screen, the content assist list might disappear. If this occurs, delete what you have typed so far and retype the quote, or dollar sign, or press Ctrl+Space, to reactivate it.

The content assist feature