The purpose of this topic is to give you insights into the Religious Education setup process, which requires you to create records that are displayed as options in the application's lookup lists. The setup process is fairly straightforward but, depending on your program's requirements, can require considerable time and effort. To help the process go more smoothly and quickly, it may help you to understand what you need to set up and why.
Understanding the Relationship Between Lookup Tables and Dropdown Lists
Defining the Content of the Religious Education Lookup Tables
Lookup Configuration Introductory Video
The Setup Wizard walks you through the initial setup of the Religious Education application so that you can quickly get started adding classes and students to your faith-based education program. The setup requires you to create records for five core lookup tables. You will also define the terms and sessions for your program. After completing the setup, you can add classes to your program.
Religious Education is a web-based application that uses lookup tables to store your religious education program's data. In the setup, you will create records for five main lookup tables. The records you create will be presented as options for users to select from dropdown lists when they are doing data entry or performing other application-related tasks. A one-to-one correspondence exists between the records in your lookup tables and the options users see in the same-named dropdown list. Therefore, any time you add a new record, edit an existing record, or delete a record from a lookup table, the corresponding option in the associated dropdown is updated accordingly.
The following illustration shows the relationship between the Grades lookup table, which holds the grade records created in the setup, and the Grades dropdown list, which contains the options users can select when working in the application. Note the one-to-one correspondence. The tables store all of the values users of the application can "look up" in same-named dropdown lists wherever the lists appear in the Religious Education application.
The Initial Setup Wizard guides you through the steps required to create or modify records in these lookup tables:
● School Types
● Grades
● Departments
● Leader Roles (optional)
● Buildings and Rooms
To be meaningful and correct, the records in the tables table must conform to the design and structure of your religious education program. For example, each record in the Departments table should represent a department in your program. Likewise, in the Grades table you need to ensure that you have a grade record for each grade level or grade level grouping in your program. When users of the application open the dropdown list associated with a given lookup table, the records in the table appear as options from which they can select when doing data entry. Therefore, you want to make sure that each lookup table is accurate and that it contains all of the options needed to support users' data entry efforts.
Before you begin entering data in the setup, you should have a good understanding of what records you need in each table. One way to make the setup process go more quickly is to make a list of records you need in each table and refer to it as you work your way through the setup. Careful thought and planning beforehand can ensure that dropdown lists the lookup tables support are complete.
One purpose of the lookup tables is to limit data entry for a field to a specific set of selectable options. If an option is missing because you did not create a record for it, that causes problems and confusion for your users. More than likely you will need to modify the lookup tables after completing the Setup Wizard. If you need to modify records in the lookup tables, you can do that at any time. However, you should try to make modifications before your users invest time in using the application.
To get an overview of the lookup configuration process, take some time to view the first two minutes of this introductory video, which walks you through the basics: https://vimeo.com/72650643.
Lookup Configuration and Migration Video