Drop Downs behave strangely...

[roblaus]

Hi,

I created (some time ago) a custom field "gender" for leads and contacts (using the same drop down list with just 2 values - Male, Female). No problems so far. Now I imported some leads, all fields appear correctly (including some other custom drop downs) except gender. It doesn't show anything on the detailed view screen and just the standard value on the edit screen. If I change the value manually everything is fine.

I checked the database in leads_cstm - the right value is assigned to the correct lead id. I went into studio but I couldn't find my field in "edit drop downs" anymore. The layout screen shows the field, though. I can drag and drop it but after saving just the label (caption) shows and NOT the field id. If I go to "view custom fields" everything looks fine. I can even click on my field and it shows the correct values.
I ran all sensible repair options but to no avail.

I am really clueless and I am starting to lose confidence. I am dealing with a relatively large no of addresses and I can't afford to check and change them one by one.

Any help is greatly appreciated

rgds
rl

ADDED: to correct myself: The drop down list shows under "edit drop downs" but under "all" and not under leads (of course because it's a general one). But this doesn't solve the problem...

[mycrmspacegunnar]

Hi,

The way dropdowns work is that the key-values are stored in the database and the key to display values are stored in a php file.
Because of this the way the dropdown work there are a few ways you can run into problems with dropdowns.

Example:

When your dropdown defintion is "m" => "MALE"
Then a legal value for your database will be "m".
If you have "MALE" stored in your database then you will see nothing in the application.

Unfortunately the data import of sugar does NOT complain when you import data which use not matching dropdown values.
So you can easely import data that can not be displayed without getting a warning.

Please verify that the possible keys and the values in your database really match.

Another issue is that the Studio editor of 4.5.0 can simply break forms.
Under some rare conditions the studio editor will break a field.
Often it will still look okay in the studio editor but the displayed content will not work.
Can you please complete remove the field and save the form and then re-add the field to try to work around this?


Cheers
Gunnar

[lvangool]

This is one of many cases where Sugar just isn't utilizing the database properly. MySQL has an 'enum' field type which would make the application simpler and the data cleaner (less chances of data loss). But sugar doesn't use the enum field, it simulates an enum field with php programming. Also, Sugar doesn't allow changing these key values, although it's perfectly possible. And yesterday, I discovered that the Dashboard has some keys hard coded, so I had to hack the Dashboard module to map a new custom value of sales_stage so the graph would be fixed.

There are quite a few things you can mess up when working with dropdowns. Please check everything twice; the data in the database, the keys (case sensitive!) that sugar uses (in your langauge files) and the translation. You are describing a common error in the data, an unknown value in the database to be correct.
The value in the database can't be matched with an option by SugarCRM...so it stays blank.

[roblaus]

Guys,

Tx for trying but I believe Gunnar is right - it's the studio that apparently broke the whole thing.

I did import the right values and they show correctly in the database. I did remove (delete) the field and created a new one (with the same underlying attribute list, though) - to no avail.

But: I did a mass update of the field in question from within Sugar (a proof that the value is and was there and that it works correctly because otherwise a select for all females wouldn't have given the correct result) and everything is ok all of a sudden.

Given my (and others) problems with studio I sincerely hope that it will be fixed in 4.5.1.

rgds
rl