When a user fills out a form, the more data that is available and prefilled onto the form, the less work the user must do. Generally a form is filled with data that aligns to specific roles (Owner 1, Owner 2, Beneficiary 1, Contingent Beneficiary 1, etc.) and that's it. The Alternative Data Buttons make this much easier by giving the user the ability to click on entire data records to prefill onto the form without typing.

Alternative Data Buttons Overview

The Alternative Data Button is the "+" (plus sign) next to a block of fields that contain alternate data. When the user clicks this button the Choose Alternate Data popup appears with the list of available records to choose from. By default, every client record output to the form (not just Owner1) will appear, including rep information. The user then clicks the desired record and that data is inserted into the data block on the form.

Use Cases

There are several reasons to make the Alternative Data Buttons available to users.

• The user can more easily switch people into different roles
• The user can fill in non-pre-filled data blocks or empty fields, with two clicks
• The user can select alternate records that were not used to prefill any fields (e.g. extra addresses).

How To Add Alternate Data Button Records

To add records to the alternate data buttons that are not being used to prefill other roles on the form, there is a parent field name that is reserved for up to 20 different alternate records. Use the parent name "##altclient" in front of any fields you want to prefill with the "##" being replaced by an instance number between 1 and 20. In other words, you can add up to 20 altclient records to the form with any base fields that are used in Alternate Data Buttons (name, address, phone, etc.). For example:

Sample Alternate Client Record 1

objQFE.AddFieldToForm("1altclient.FName", _
"Henry", _
QuikFormsEngine.QFD.FieldReadOnly.Read_Only, _
QuikFormsEngine.QFD.FieldVisibility.Visible)
objQFE.AddFieldToForm("1altclient.LName", _
"Ford", _
QuikFormsEngine.QFD.FieldReadOnly.Read_Only, _
QuikFormsEngine.QFD.FieldVisibility.Visible)

Sample Alternate Client Record 2

objQFE.AddFieldToForm("2altclient.FName", _
"Josh", _
QuikFormsEngine.QFD.FieldReadOnly.Read_Only, _
QuikFormsEngine.QFD.FieldVisibility.Visible)
objQFE.AddFieldToForm("2altclient.LName", _
"Mandel", _
QuikFormsEngine.QFD.FieldReadOnly.Read_Only, _
QuikFormsEngine.QFD.FieldVisibility.Visible)
When the Execute method runs, the Quik! Forms Engine will look for any fields added that have a parent field name of "altclient" between 1 and 20 and treat them like any other client record. The only difference is that forms are not designed with fields that start with "##altclient" as a parent field so these records will never prefill the form. The main reason to use "altclient" as the parent name is to ensure your alternate records are calculated like any other field (i.e. "1altclient.FullName" will be created automatically based on the values for "1altclient.FName" + "1altclient.MName" + "1altclient.LName").
NOTE: If you need to add more than 20 alternative data records to the form, you can use any parent field naming convention that is not already in use (e.g. "21alt" or "record4") but these records will not be output to the form with any calculated values, just the values you supply.

How to Hide Alternative Data Buttons

By default Alternate Data Buttons display when data is provided to the form and is available for selection via one of these buttons. If you want to suppress the buttons from appearing, set the HTMLShowAltDataButton property to FALSE.

Alternate Data Button Record Blocks

Below is a list of the record blocks that are available in Alternate Data Buttons.