"Thanks. I found out through trial and error that the list items are added as topics to the type...."
After carefully working out the schema for your type, you might be worried about what other users will enter for the property values on specific topics. What if some joker comes along and decides to enter "hermaphrodite" for someone's gender? Or what if you end up with people entering different formats for the same information, like "PhD," "Ph.D." and "Doctor of Philosophy" for "Highest Degree Attained?"
In any case where you want to control the information that users can enter for a property, the solution is to use an enumerated type. When you create an enumerated type, and then set that as the expected type for a property, you are creating a list of values for users to choose from when completing that property information for a topic.
Setting up an enumerated type is easy.
- Create the type in the domain where you want to use it by clicking edit next to Browse types on the domain homepage, then enter a name for the type and click Save.
- Click the name of the type to view it, then click View Properties.
- Click edit next to Display.
- Select Enumerated type, then click Edit list of topics.
- Enter the values you want users to choose from. Each will be created as an individual topic.
- Now, when creating a property within another type, enter your enumerated type as the expected type for a property. When users enter information for that property in a topic, autocomplete will attempt to match their entry against the values of your enumerated type. If there isn't a good match, the list of options will be displayed to the user and they can select the one they want.
