Metadata Capture Template - Dynamically populating 2nd selectbox

Konidala

I have a requirement dynamically populating 2nd select box based on what user selected in the 1st select box on Metadata Capture Template. I understood FormAPI is not supported for Metadata Capture Template and can't use JavaScript or IWDatacapture.callServer(). Appriciate if anyone suggests me the different ways to meet the requirement. Thanks

TS 6.5

Adam Stoller

I have a requirement dynamically populating 2nd select box based on what user selected in the 1st select box on Metadata Capture Template. I understood FormAPI is not supported for Metadata Capture Template and can't use JavaScript or IWDatacapture.callServer(). Appriciate if anyone suggests me the different ways to meet the requirement. Thanks TS 6.5

The only two suggestions I can think of are: (a) roll-your-own, and (b) wait then upgrade.

roll-your-own - either entirely, by designing your own GUI for doing all this - or, develop a "regular" DCT that you can use to capture the information and perform some post-processing (PT? or something else) that takes the filled in data and applies it as EAs to another file.

wait then upgrade - Interwoven is currently involved with development of a new metadata capture UI - and one of the primary focus points is to provide FormAPI processing. I'm not sure of the targeted release / release-date, they still have design issues to figure out - but I believe there will be a presentation regarding it at GearUp in early April.

While at first glance one might think that there should be no big issue doing this - keep in mind that "regular" DCTs have a single <ruleset> element and are always creating a single output file (DCR) -- MDCTs can have multiple <rulesets> active depending on conditions specified in the metadata-rules.cfg (both 'or' and 'and' conditionals) and the FormAPI code is currently specified at/within the ruleset level (so they need to deal with nested code specifications). Also, MDCTs can be used to set metadata on both a single asset *and* on multiple assets at the same time.

This last piece creates a matrix of situations that need to be covered:

?	1-file	N-files, 1-type	N-files, N-types
1-ruleset, 1-page form	?	?	?
1-ruleset, N-page form	?	?	?
N-rulesets, 1-page form	?	?	?
N-rulesets, N-page form	?	?	?

The bottom-right-hand-corner is the toughest one, especially because a 3rd dimension to the matrix also exists whenever talking about tagging multiple files at the same time: How to display the fields associated with each / all files when the values pre-exist and are not the same.

E.g.: you select a PDF, JPG, ASP, and HTML file and say "Tag" - each one of the file-types represented may have different metadata fields associated with them; some of those fields might overlap (e.g. "Title"). When setting metadata - how does one display (cleanly, understandably) both the unions and the sub-sets (or whatever the oposite of union is, can't think of the word right now, sigh) of all the fields, and all the values in such a way that the user can set a single value for a common-field *or* set different values for each instance of a common-field? and what do you do with fields that only apply to some, but not all, of the files being tagged, and how do you display sufficient information to allow the user to know which files are to be tagged with which values.

It ain't easy. This is what they're trying to figure out now - and most likely there will be some "lines drawn" with regard to what they will / won't handle.

For those folks who only tag a single file at a time (which I think is the majority) - and who only use a single-page form - the answer is pretty easy. For every other situation, the answer gets a bit confusing.

Out of curiosity
- how many folks out here (regularly) tag multiple-files at a time?
- how many folks out here (regularly) use multi-page metadata DCTs?