How can I use a dropdown instead of a free input field in filters?

Note: This feature is available in DESelect Advanced.

In many cases creating a filter for a segment will work fine by using free input fields, however, it does require some understanding of the data in the field you’re filtering on.

For example, let’s say you want to filter out delivery countries or imagine filtering on state code. Wouldn’t it be convenient if you could see the name of the state instead of only the state code?

To make it easier for users to filter, DESelect admins can define a picklist for a field, so the user can use a dropdown with the defined values instead of a free input field when working with the field in DESelect. This feature is called Picklists.

Important note: 

• A picklist can be created per field.
• A picklist can show 1000 values at most per field.
• A picklist will not be applicable for fields with either Boolean or Date data type.
• A picklist can be used in Equals, Contains, Does not contain, In, and Not in filter types.

Knowing these points, let's proceed.

Users defined as admins in DESelect can navigate to the Admin panel by clicking the gear icon on the Selections overview, and refer to the instructions below. Go to the Picklists tab and hit New Picklist.

This will bring you to the screen where the details of the new picklist can be defined.

For name, type in ‘Delivery Country’.

In the Data Extension dropdown, select the Data Extension that contains the field for which you want to create a picklist, in this case, choose DESelect_DEMO_Orders. Upon choosing the Data Extension, the fields for that Data Extension become available in the Field dropdown. Pick your field there, in this case, choose Delivery Country.

Admins can define the values for the dropdown either manually or by getting the values from the Data Extension.

Manually

Note that one can define both the technical values and the labels shown to the user. On the Values field, enter the technical value, on the Label field, enter a more readable label for the value and hit Add. Some use cases where this is very useful:

• Record types (value = record type id, label = name of the record type)
• Product codes (value = product code, label = product name)
• State/country codes (value = state/country code, label = name of the state/country)
• ...

Automatically

By clicking the Retrieve Values button, DESelect will go and check the values in the selected field and add the list of retrieved values. Users can also modify the label of a value by simply clicking on the label itself and hit Save.

A modal will show up providing the estimated time it will take to retrieve the values for the picklist. Click Continue to proceed.

The Label will be shown as a more readable text that makes sense to an end-user which will correspond to a Value - usually a technical name.

The options, whether entered manually or automatically can be re-ordered and marked as inactive, in which case they won’t be shown to users and all inactive values can be deleted.

Enable the picklist toggle by turning it on. This indicates that the picklist will be shown to users.

You should now have this.

Admins can also set an auto-refresh setting for a picklist. Using this setting, DESelect will automatically retrieve the values from Data Extensions on the set day/s and time or frequency. Using the toggle switch, you can enable and disable the auto-refresh setting.

Retrieving picklist values from Data Extension also supports the result separator. The separator will split the values of the picklist field into different picklist values wherever the field value contains the selected separator. For example, the Interests field containing a value ‘Food,Music’ with ‘,’ as a separator. Instead of creating 1 value for 'Food,Music', this will be translated to 2 values such as 'Food' and 'Music'. This will be important in cases where you need to filter your values inside a picklist.

Admins can use the toggle switch to enable and disable the separator setting.

Hit Save to finalize the setup of your picklist. If the toggle is switched on, users will start seeing the picklist in the DESelect UI, for example in the Selected Filters section.

Related articles: DESelect November ’20 Release: Auto-refresh picklist values, and relations on multiple fields.