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How Do I Use Reference Data…

Canvas now lets you publish apps with reference data from outside sources. You can use this feature to upload lists of customers, products, accounting codes, or other data that is specific to your applications. You can set up these lists by importing CSV files or using Canvas web services.

It is easiest to describe this new feature by highlighting limitations that were in place before this update. Canvas has always allowed a Canvas apps user the ability to select from a list values by using a Value List field. This approach was great for lists that did not change very often and had a small number of possible values. However this feature had three inherent limitations:

1. The list of values had to be manually entered.

This required the designer of the app to enter all the values they wanted to display to the user in the field at design time. This was limiting to the designer because entering a large list of items is time consuming and could be error prone. For example, if the designer was building an app to collect order information and wanted to give the user the ability to select the item being ordered from a list of three hundred (300) different items, the designer would have to manually enter all three hundred (300) items as options into the Value List field at design time.

2. The list of values are part of the field definition itself.

This meant that whenever the app designer wanted to change the list, the designer had to create a new version of the app and edit the list. In our example above, if the list of three hundred (300) items changed the designer would have to create a new version of the app using the app builder and go into the list of three hundred (300) items, make the needed changes and publish the new app version.

3. There was no way to display additional information about a user’s selection.

For example, if a user was building a order of book and selected the book title from a Value List, there was no way to show the Author, Publisher or price of the selected book.

Continue to Page 2: How does Canvas address these limitations?