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2️⃣ Discover the Property Types and Their Use Cases

Properties are the traits of an element type that can be used to classify, structure, visualize, and compare content. Learn more about the different options at hand.

When you define your custom element types or simply want to know what options you have to classify, structure, visualize, and compare content, you need to know the difference between the different property types:

      1. Rich Text

      2. Dropdown

      3. Hierarchical Dropdown

      4. Rating

      5. Numerical Rating

      6. Aggregated Rating

7. Number

8. Date

9. Hyperlinks

10. User Fields

11. Attachments 

If you are interested in creating your custom properties or changing them, please read this article: Structuring Content via Element Types: The Element Configuration

Note: Currently, existing values (e.g., options in dropdown or rating properties) cannot be deleted to avoid data loss. If certain values are no longer needed, we recommend creating a new property with the required, updated options instead.

Where to create properties

To create a new property, navigate to the element configuration, then to 

  1. Element type to be edited
  2. Find where you want to use/create the new property, press on "+".
  3. Press "create new property".
  4. Select the property type.

The next sections will focus on explaining all available entity types and their use cases.

Rating properties can only be created and inserted in the "Rating" block, they are separate from the other properties. 

Properties are cross element type.

Changing an existing property will affect this property across all element types in the particular workspace and change all affected elements!

Be mindful when editing.

AI powered RTE — rich text fields

RTE fields are AI powered with Prism (and powered by tip-tap, for the technical readers) and can be used for nearly everything, style your text with headings (H1–H3), bold, italic, strikethrough, subscript, superscript, and underline styles, links, code blocks, quote blocks, different text align styles, highlighting, text coloring, bullet-, ordered-, task-lists, notifications bars, dividers, tables, pictures, videos, files and embeds and reference elements with "#".

Prompt Prism for virtually anything and it will, even context aware, do it:

Prompted to write RTE to put here with information on all the supported RTE features.

And the result:

Note: There is a character limitation of 31772 characters on Rich Text Fields. 

Dropdowns

The dropdown property includes:

  • Property name
  • Multiple values checkbox
    Note: cannot be changed for the respective property at a later stage (would require the creation of a new property
  • Required
    Information then needs to be added before the element can be created. To do so, check the Required checkbox.
  • Dropdown-options
    Click on Add option to enter more options.
    The dropdown-options themselves can be:
    • Reorder
    • Delete
    • Change color (eleven predefined, color picker, or enter hex value)
  • Save
    To save the new property

Two visualizations

Dropdown fields can be displayed in two different ways.

As dropdown:

And as steps:

Hierarchical dropdown

Definition

The hierarchical dropdown property includes:

  • Property name
  • Multiple values checkbox
    Note: cannot be changed for the respective property at a later stage (would require the creation of a new property
  • Required
    Information then needs to be added before the element can be created. To do so, check the Required checkbox.
  • Dropdown-options
    Click on Add option to enter more options.
    The dropdown-options themselves can be:
    • Reorder
    • Delete
    • Change color (11 predefined, color picker, or enter hex value)
    • Add another dropdown layer (nested)
      Press "+" next to the dropdown-option name
  • Save
    To save the new property

The hierarchical dropdown property type is perfect for segmenting elements for display on Radars views.

E.g. both the Trend Radar and Technology Radar use the hierarchical dropdown property for segmentation.

Visualization

Used in all of ITONICS' radar views.

    In the element card, show like below.


    Rating

    To collect feedback from lots of people and to condense it as much as possible, a rating property makes a lot of sense. Ratings can be set on any element type there is, they also come included in the predefined ITONICS element types. 

    Definition

    The standard rating property includes:

    • Property name
    • Rating-options
      Click on Add option to enter more options.
      The rating-options themselves can be:
      • Reorder
        Note: only when configuring, once saved this is no longer possible due to semantic constraints.
      • Delete
        Note: only when configuring, once saved this is no longer possible due to semantic constraints.
      • Change color (11 predefined, color picker, or enter hex value)
    • Invert values order
      When inverted, visualizations will flip the order of values of this property by default.
    • Save
      To save the new property

    Furthermore, the purpose of the rating is to collect opinions from evaluators on the element.

    • Pre-definition prevents users from adding invalid options
    • Can be selected in radar, matrix, and board as visual indicators (e.g., segment, columns, swimlanes, axes, color, distance, halo, or donut).
    • Can be filtered from "more filters"
    • Individual ratings can be seen by clicking on the "person +  number" icon

     Visualization

    The rating properties in the element card are displayed as shown on the right side.

    Note that a rating that has been rated by multiple users will have its average calculated for use in a lot of visualizations, namely the radar.
    For regular ratings (as opposed to numerical ones, see below), the average will be rounded to the next full value.

    Note as well that the rating average is calculated as a percentage of the total number of rating-options and it is not influenced by its rating-option-names.

    This means, when hovering over a regular rating to see its average, encountering a different number than when calculating it yourself with the rating-option-names, is expected.

    Internally, every rating-option is mapped to an integer value starting from zero, then every user-rating is added up, divide by the total number of user ratings and divided again by the number of rating-options minus one (to get an accurate visual representation):

    E.g.: for a regular rating with

    rating-options: "low" = 0, "medium" = 1, "high" = 2,

    user-ratings: 2x low, 1x medium,

    the average would be:

    (0 + 0 + 1) / 3 = 1/3 [=  0.33]

    0.33 / [total number of rating options - 1] = 0.33 / 2 = 16.5%. 

    Numerical Rating

    Sometimes a rating not by text, but with a number is needed, that is why ITONICS introduced the numerical rating.

    Definition

    The numerical rating property includes:

    • Property name
    • Rating range
      Specify the range
    • Invert values order
      When inverted, visualizations will flip the order of values of this property by default.
    • Save
      To save the new property

    Furthermore, the purpose of the rating is to collect opinions from evaluators on the element.

    • Pre-definition prevents users from adding invalid options
    • Can be selected in radar, matrix, and board as visual indicators (e.g., segment, columns, swimlanes, axes, color, distance, halo, or donut).
    • Can be filtered from "more filters"
    • Individual ratings can be seen by clicking on the "person +  number" icon

    Visualization

    In the element card a numerical rating looks like this.

    When multiple users evaluate an element, we will calculate the average of those evaluations. For numerical ratings, we do not round the results to the next full value, but rather work with decimal numbers - both in the rating widget and in any visualization.

      Aggregated Rating

      Based on the individual rating criteria, you can build an index that aggregates the values of at least two rating criteria into one value.

      Definition

      The aggregated rating property includes:

      • Property name
      • Rating properties & weight
        Select all the standard rating properties you want to aggregate over and select a weight
      • Rating-options
        Click on Add option to enter more options.
        The rating-options themselves can be:
        • Reorder
          Note: only when configuring, once saved this is no longer possible due to semantic constraints.
        • Delete
          Note: only when configuring, once saved this is no longer possible due to semantic constraints.
      • Invert values order
        When inverted, visualizations will flip the order of values of this property by default.
      • Save
        To save the new property

      The same permissions to view the aggregated rating criteria apply as for the general permission to view ratings.

      Visualization

      On a content card, the aggregated rating will be displayed with a sum sign. By hovering over the sum sign, users can understand the calculation formula.

      Note

      • Select at least two rating criteria
      • If you add another rating criteria later to an aggregated rating, you need to manually add this new rating criteria to the element form and the rating group. If you start directly the configuration of the rating group with the aggregated rating, all rating criteria included will be added automatically.

      On a content card, the aggregated rating will be displayed with a sum sign. By hovering over the sum sign, users can understand the calculation formula. 

      Number

      Numbers have all kinds of use cases, use them to enter budgets, KPIs, anything that needs a number.

      Definition

      The number property includes:

      • Property name
      • Specify range
        Select the range you want to use
      • Unit label
        Set a unit label to inform everyone what the number means.
      • Required
        Decide whether or not this property is required for every element of this type.
      • Save
        To save the new property

      Visualization

      image-png-Nov-09-2023-09-09-59-7482-AM

      Date

      Use the date picker to set deadlines, project scopes, important events and whatever else might fancy your mind.

      Definition

      The date property needs:

      • Property name
      • Required
        Decide whether or not this property is required for every element of this type.
      • Save
        To save the new property

      Dates cannot be filtered by.

      Visualization

      Use a visual date picker to set the date.

        Hyperlinks

        Hyperlinks can be used to link all kinds of things, Signals to an idea, external websites to projects, Google Docs to projects, etc.

        Definition

        The hyperlink property needs:

        • Property name
        • Multiple values checkbox
          Note: cannot be changed for the respective property at a later stage (would require the creation of a new property
        • Required
          Information then needs to be added before the element can be created. To do so, check the Required checkbox.

        Visualization

        Hint: You can also use RTE properties instead of hypertext properties to better visualize links.

        EC_hyperlink-3

            User

            The User property can be used to assign users to virtually anything depending on the context. As a rating expert, as a process owner, add multiple users to a project, etc.

            Definition

            The user property needs:

            • Property name
            • Multiple values checkbox
              Note: cannot be changed for the respective property at a later stage (would require the creation of a new property
            • Required
              Information then needs to be added before the element can be created. To do so, check the Required checkbox.

            User properties can be filtered by in most filters.

            Visualization

            EC_user-3

            Attachments

            You can upload most file formats, but we do have a list of formats that you cannot upload for security reasons. Please read this note to find out which file types.

            You can attach files with a maximum size of 20 MB.

            Attachments can be used to store files.

            Definition

            The attachment property needs:

            • Property name
            • Required
              Information needs to be added before the element can be created. To do so, check the Required checkbox.

            Visualization