Introduction and Goals

Bridged Resources are the connetion between Models and Forms.

Goals

• Learn to create and modify Bridged Resources
• Learn how to apply Bridged Resources to Form elements

Bridged Resources Video

Bridged Resources

A Bridged Resource connects data returned by a Model to your Form. There are a number of different ways they can be used, but we're going to focus on lists and defaults in this article.

You must have a Model configured before you can use a Bridged Resource. And, while Bridged Resources can be shared within a Form, they cannot be shared between Forms.

List Elements

All list elements have an option for Custom or Static options. That is what we did for the Site list on the Cleaning Request Form. But each list element also has a Bridged Option. The Bridged Option means getting the elements for the list from a source outside the Form using a Model.

Custom List Element:

Ready for a Bridged Resource:

Default Values

If at all possible, you don't want customers filling out information that is already reliably available from other systems. For example, don't ask the customer to enter their email and phone if it's available elsewhere. At the very least it eliminates typos, and prevents delays in processing services.

Bridged Resources are one way to get information like this, and set it as a default value. Once the Bridged resource is created, attributes are available to set the default value.

Here is a screenshot before the Bridged Resource:

Here it is with the default value set by an Attribute from the Model:

In the Default Value field you can see a reference to a Resource (Single Username), and the Attribute (Username). These are references to the Bridged Resource and the Model.

Creating the Bridged Resource

Now that we've seen the end resort of a Bridged Resource in the Default value, lets create one for the Dropdown list.

Building on the dropdown list above, here's how you add a Bridged Resource.

For the element you want, select Bridged Resource, and click Add New:

Completed Bridge Resource:

The following values are set:

• Name provide a descriptive name
• Status defaults to active (this is the status of the Bridged Resource, it doesn't have anything to with our Sites Model)
• Model select the Model that coresponds to the data you want to display
• Qualification select the qualification that should query the specific information you want to display
• Order By if the Model and data allow, you can order the results
• Parameters if you need to pass information to the qualification it is set here.

Now the Site dropdown list displays a dynamic list of sites based on the Datastore instead of a static list. This Bridged Resource is also available to other list elements in the same Form.

The last step is to go back to the list element and select the Label and Value from the attributes of the Model.

Here is the completed Bridge Resource for the Default Value User ID:

In the Next Article

Another common use for Bridged Resources is with events. Next we use a resource to fill fields after a dropdown choice.

Story for this Class

The Cleaning Request created in the previous classes is OK, but now we need to improve the User Experience and Workflow.