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Dot-walking / dot walking / dotwalking

What is dot-walking? This is a term you'll probably hear mentioned at some point. Simply put, if you are "dot-walking," you are referencing a field on another table. It will make more sense with an example:

Example of dot-walking

So we're going to take a look at an Incident [incident] record to demonstrate dot-walking. Because I have SNUtils installed, I can see the field values and labels at the same time. This will make it easier to understand.

So I want to call out a few fields here:

• Caller (caller_id): The user who is the reporter of this incident
• Department (caller_id.department): The department of the user who is the reporter of this incident
• Department head (caller_id.department.dept_head): The department head of the department of the user who is the reporter of this incident

We are dot-walking through the Caller field to access information about the individual. The Caller field is a reference to User [sys_user].

The User [sys_user] table has a field on it, called Department, which is itself a reference to the Department [cmn_department] table. To take it a level deeper, the Department head field on that Department record is a reference back to User [sys_user].

So basically, we're "dot-walking" into the User [sys_user] record to grab the Department field and display it on our form. And a layer deeper: we're also grabbing the Department head from that Department [cmn_department] record.

Benefits of dot-walking

When we dot-walk, we're ultimately avoiding creating a new, custom field. In the example above, on the Incident [incident] table, I know who my subject person is. And I know what department that person belongs do, because I know that information is on their User [sys_user] record. And I'm pretty damn sure that the head of the department is on that Department [cmn_department] record.

So why would I create a custom field? I can now access data that is consistently up-to-date. If my subject person (caller)'s department changes, it will update on their Incident [incident] record as well. Same thing with the Department head... it would automatically get updated on my case as well.

How to dot-walk

You generally will dot-walk through Configure > Form Layout. Any field that has a [+] next to it can be dot-walked, because that [+] means the field is a reference field.

So check this out. When I go to edit my form on the Incident [incident] table, this is what I see:

On left side, I see the Caller [+] field, and on the right side, I see the fields on my form. If I click the button highlighted in red (which will only appear if I've selected a field with that [+]), I'll "walk" into that table and see its fields.

And I can go layers and layers deeper if I need to. If I want to get all the way back and step "outside" of the layer, I can choose the option at the top of the left-hand list: Incident fields. Once I click that, I'll see what I saw in the first screenshot of this section.

How to dot-walk from the list view

If you are on a list/table view, simply go to Configure > List Layout to update the list. You'll follow the same exact steps as mentioned above.

If you want to apply these changes to a personalized list, you'll need SNUtils. This is actually a really neat feature; you can double-click on your personalize list form and then just type in the value of the field you want to see. Check it out:

These changes are global

I want to call out that these changes are global. So if you change the form layout or list layout for the Default view, that's going to apply for everyone who loads into the Default view. Whenever you're in one of these configuration menus, you will see an option to choose the view you're applying your changes to. (This is not pictured in the screenshots above.)

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