 | Slava Shinderov 4/23/2013 3:06:00 AM @basenine Please consider renaming "New Lookup - Address" column to "Address", so you'll get what's needed in both places without using "Alternate Label" at all.
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 | basenine 4/23/2013 4:54:53 AM Hi Slava.
Maybe a bad example…😉 It doesn't necessarily have to be a Lookup.. With Lookups, I've gotten into the habit of flagging it as a lookup by naming it New Lookup - xyz… I find it neater and easier to find.
Another example where this comes into play is when there is a Postal Address, Postal City, Postal State, Postal Post Code and a Site Address, Site City, Site State, Site Post Code. You create 2 Formulas to combine the fields as one:
[Full Site Address] (as you can't have [Site Address] again) and [Full Postal Address]. [Full Site Address] looks like this:
[Site Address] & "\n" & List(", ",[Site City], [Site State], [Site Pcode])
In the Form, you Edit the Site Address, Site City, Site State, Site Post Code and View the [Full Site Address]…But you want to View it on the Form labelled as [Site Address]… So you go to the Form Layout and type Site Address in the Alternative Label
Sometimes you might even want two formula Addresses…the second one being [Full Site Address - Linear]:
List(", ",[Site Address], [Site City], [Site State], [Site Pcode])
You still call this Site Address when Viewing the Form and it might be the one you want to use for one of the Records View.
Forms are Dynamic based on Role(), User() etc and [Site Address] may need to be shown in any number of formats. Views, too, can be Role() or User() Dependant…you get the idea.
I'm sure there are other examples. I'll have a think and a look through some of my applications where I know it would be handy.
If it was a simple as just changing the Column Name, why is there an alternative name… Just Sayin'
😉
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| basenine 9/8/2013 10:18:32 PM Is there any consideration for an Alternate Column Name Label please?
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 | Rick Cogley 9/9/2013 8:50:05 PM Sometimes, the column name is indicative of purpose, and is a bit too long for display in either a form or a view. What we have done in the past is to use formula-xxx fields, and name it appropriate to the location.
For us I am not sure if the same alt name for forms and views would work. What about having an alt name field for the column, and allow that to be turned on for the view or form, and, allow overriding in the form setup, as well.
Of course, if you then consider "multilingual" at all, it's kind of a can of worms...
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| basenine 9/9/2013 9:33:01 PM Hi Rick... I'd thought about doing the formula column but thought it was a bit of a workaround rather than inbuilt functionality. I'm with you regarding an alt name in the column setup - that'd be the best for us.
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 | Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 9/10/2013 9:45:04 AM @Rick: Tell me more about the formula-xxx approach
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| Rick Cogley 9/10/2013 4:39:38 PM @Phillipp - if you have a text field called [ABC Field with a Long Name] and you want [ABC], you can just make a formula text [ABC] that points at the original with the unwieldy name.
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| Rick Cogley 9/10/2013 4:42:58 PM Then you would use the [ABC] in the view where you wanted the short name.
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| basenine 9/10/2013 4:43:01 PM Great explanation @rick!
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| Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 9/11/2013 7:15:28 AM @Rick. Ah OK. That I already do, mainly as a workaround for having to deal with both English and German users. What I was hoping you might tell me was that there is a way to have a formula to populate the Alternative Label field in forms, which was a suggestion I made sometime ago as an interim solution to multi lingual.
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| Rick Cogley 9/11/2013 7:37:04 AM Ah, that would be nice! I don't think we can programmatically control that. :-)
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| Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 9/11/2013 7:38:00 AM Not yet, unless the good guys at TeamDesk decide to implement it for us
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| basenine 9/11/2013 5:39:56 PM @philipp... I'd requested a similar feature too - column name based on formula. I think now it requires two columns named differently and the form control specifies which one is visible. Pain for multi lingual though
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 | calvin peters 11/21/2017 8:51:00 AM Many "column" names are not very meaningful to end users. Using the "Alternate Label" in forms only makes sense.
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 | Nick Ashcroft 10/10/2018 3:04:12 AM I would love the ability to alter a column name for display purposes. This is already support on forms but not yet in views. Please allow ability to use a 'friendly' name in a view.
thanks
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| calvin peters 6/28/2019 2:54:34 PM Any chance of this?
It would be handy to have alternate labels for columns since it is that name and only that name that is available for use in Custom Buttons when creating a "User Input" list for the button.
If the underlying form uses an alternate name for the same column it is confusing for the user if the 2 names are different.
ie:
column name="EDV"
Form Alternate= "Deviation"
one name is more Design oriented which the user never sees, the Alternate is a User oriented name.
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 | Luison Lassala 1/11/2024 6:19:43 AM Views should display the alt column label not the column name - for the user, what they see in a form (the alt column label) is how the recognise the field. If they see a different column heading in a view they will not know it is the same field. This is a real problem with TeamDesk: that "alt field labels" cannot be displayed in views.
@calvin's example above is very clear: how can a user know that the column "EDV" in a list or summary view is the same "Deviation" field they see in the form???
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| Nick Ashcroft 1/12/2024 2:42:04 AM whilst we are on this topic, would be nice if we could also have table alias for use on the tabs and entry form titles
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| Slava Shinderov 1/12/2024 3:05:29 AM If you're using "Alternative Label" to rename a column on the form and wish to use the same alternative label on the view, why can't you simply change the column name instead?
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| basenine 1/12/2024 3:10:01 AM Because sometimes there’s a lookup with the same field name as a field name in the current record
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| basenine 1/12/2024 3:22:16 AM For example, an invoice might have a [total] and there may be line items (which build the totals) with the same name.
Also
There may be instances where the record [total] is editable but the real [total for document] is formula driven depending on other variables (like discounting). So the form displays both as [total]but editable form uses [total] and view record shows [total for document] (displayed as alternative name [total])…this is the one we want to use on the view…
Kirill suggested a simple workaround to me around 12 years ago naming a dummy field as [total.]
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| basenine 1/12/2024 3:22:17 AM For example, an invoice might have a [total] and there may be line items (which build the totals) with the same name.
Also
There may be instances where the record [total] is editable but the real [total for document] is formula driven depending on other variables (like discounting). So the form displays both as [total]but editable form uses [total] and view record shows [total for document] (displayed as alternative name [total])…this is the one we want to use on the view…
Kirill suggested a simple workaround to me around 12 years ago naming a dummy field as [total.]
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| Luison Lassala 1/12/2024 3:35:45 AM @Slava - as Calvin's example shows, you may have designed the Tables with 'techie' field names which are not very descriptive (there are reasons why you may need or want to do that). Displaying those names as column headings does not help the users.
On other occasions, as @basenine's examples show, sometimes you may want to 'name' lookups with reference to the looked-up table, which would make the view's column heading too long, and when it is a narrow column (e.g. a checkbox or a number) you want to keep the column's width as narrow as possible - in fact, we don't even have control on the column's width! (which makes the need for alt labels all the more important).
Also, I often (nearly always) name Date fields as "Date..." (e.g. "Date of Birth", "Date Arrive", "Date Updated") so I can find all the Date fields easily in a table. If the column is too narrow, users cannot tell which date each column is showing!
And similarly for Formula columns: I often name similar fields using a common term first (e.g. "Rate") so I can list them together in the Table in Setup. So when I have "Rate Monthly", "Rate Annual", "Rate 2024", etc, etc users cannot see the important part of the label if the column is too narrow - and we cannot control how wide or narrow the columns are.
Trust us @Slava - it would make Views' designs a lot more user-friendly. Is it such a difficult feature to implement??
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| basenine 1/12/2024 3:42:34 AM The date example is good
Different reports named according to date should be able to just show [date] as the table header
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| Nick Ashcroft 1/12/2024 4:14:40 AM "If you're using "Alternative Label" to rename a column on the form and wish to use the same alternative label on the view, why can't you simply change the column name instead?" - we also have integrations using TeamDesk API where developers dont like spaces etc in field names and want a consistent naming convention which is often not so end user friendly
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