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Softdial Scripter™

Collection Controls

The Selection control supports five selection styles which determines their visual appearance and also determines whether a single item or multiple items can be selected.

List - single
DropList - single
Radio - single
Checkbox - multiple
MultiList - multiple

To inspect a Selection control for yourself:

In the Scripter Designer Script Resources section to the left, double click the Screen Step you wish to edit, to open it in Scripter Page Editor
Drag a Selection control onto the Screen area
With it selected, in the Properties list to the right, type a Name, e.g. myColours
Close the Editor, saving your changes
Drag the edited Screen Step on to the flow chart
Double-click the step to edit in the Step Editor

The Step Editor gives access to our Selection control as follows:

For all styles

Inputs

myColours Items
- used to set a collection of input values, one per line
- may be populated with text, and campaign / script fields
myColours -
- used to set the initial value when the screen is shown
- may be populated with text, or a campaign / script field

Outputs

myColours Items
- used to capture the property output, one field per line
- may be populated with text, and campaign / script fields
myColours
- used to capture the selected value of the control to a single script or campaign field.

For mulitple selection styles

The Checkbox and MultiList styles are visually very similar and it is a matter of preference as to which should be used.

For these styles, the data editor Inputs and Outputs tabs will show an additional entry named SelectedItems.

Inputs

myColours SelectedItems
- used to preselect items when the screen is shown
- may be populated with text, and campaign / script fields, one per line.

Outputs

myColours SelectedItems
- used to capture user selections from the control to multiple campaign / script fields, one per line.

The KeyedSelection control

From the agent's view, this works in the same way as the Selection control.

From a script writer and developer's perspective, it allows you to

associate each item in the control with a key
set the initial selected item(s) using keys/ values
get the user selected item(s) using keys

The control is populated using XML in a fixed format, for both the Collection and Selection fields.

Collection field

In the script, the following must be formatted on a single line.

For example:

<collection>
  <entries>
    <entry key="A1">Michigan</entry>
    <entry key="B1">Vermont</entry>
    <entry key="C1">Wisconsin</entry>
    <entry key="C2">California</entry>
    <entry key="D1">Alaska</entry>
  </entries>
</collection>

Selection field

In the script, the following must be formatted on a single line.

The Output always uses the key method to return the selected item(s):

The Input can use the key method (above) and also the value method (below):

<selection method="value">
  <items>
    <item>Michigan</item>
  </items>
</selection>

In Script Designer (logic flow design)

The Data Query step

The Data Query step can be used to take data from a database and return the data in an XML document. For usage details, see the Data Query control.

The database must be the same database as configured for the campaign's ODBC connection.

In order for a KeyedSelection control to make use of the returned result set, the shape of the data must be transformed, using the XSLT Transform step.

The XSLT Transform step

The Inputs and Outputs for the XSLT Transform step are:

Inputs

Xslt Transform Document - see example below
Xml Input Document - the Data Query step's Result Set output

Outputs

Xml Output Document - used to store the result in a script variable

Show example

Using the Mobiles database, we want to show some surnames and use the postcode as a key. Supposing the query is this:

SELECT postcode, surname FROM Mobiles WHERE Contact_ID >= 10 AND Contact_ID <= 15;

...then the output from the Data Query step looks like this:

Show Data Query output

... using this transform

Show transform

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"></xsl:output>
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <collection>
      <entries>
        <xsl:for-each select="collection/entries/entry">
          <entry>
            <xsl:attribute name="key">
              <xsl:value-of select="@postcode"></xsl:value-of>
            </xsl:attribute>
            
            <xsl:value-of select="@surname"></xsl:value-of>
          </entry>
        </xsl:for-each>
      </entries>
    </collection>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

... the transformed output is this:

Show XSLT Transform output

<collection>
  <entries>
    <entry key="Y">Elmes</entry>
    <entry key="Q">Follett</entry>
    <entry key="QNUU">Reddel</entry>
    <entry key="AC">Challinor</entry>
    <entry key="MAQNI">Little</entry>
  </entries>
</collection>

The Execute SQL Select step

The same operation may be performed using the Execute SQL Select step instead of the Data Query step.

Using a different SELECT statement in this case, the output from the Execute SQL Select step would look like this:

Show Execute SQL Select output

<QueryResult>
  <Row>
    <Contact_ID>10</Contact_ID>
    <Surname>Elmes</Surname>
  </Row>
  <Row>
    <Contact_ID>11</Contact_ID>
    <Surname>Follet</Surname>
  </Row>
  <Row>
    <Contact_ID>12</Contact_ID>
    <Surname>Reddel</Surname>
  </Row>
  <Row>
    <Contact_ID>13</Contact_ID>
    <Surname>Challinor</Surname>
  </Row>
  <Row>
    <Contact_ID>14</Contact_ID>
    <Surname>Little</Surname>
  </Row>
</QueryResult>

... using this transform

Show transform

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"></xsl:output>
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <collection>
      <entries>
        <xsl:for-each select="QueryResult/Row">
        <entry>
          <xsl:attribute name="key">
            <xsl:value-of select="Contact_ID"></xsl:value-of>
          </xsl:attribute>
          
          <xsl:value-of select="Surname"></xsl:value-of>
        </entry>
        </xsl:for-each>
      </entries>
    </collection>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

... the transformed output is this:

Show XSLT Transform output

<collection>
  <entries>
    <entry key="10">Elmes</entry>
    <entry key="11">Follett</entry>
    <entry key="12">Reddel</entry>
    <entry key="13">Challinor</entry>
    <entry key="14">Little</entry>
  </entries>
</collection>