Configurable Questions

The Internal Codes page now includes a series of related settings to help you setup up to 5 questions to further classify your donations.

To activate certain questions for certain categories after you have named them using an internal code, go to Admin Menu, Setup categories and check each category's checkbox for the questions you want it to have.

For example, you might set QUESTION1=Vegetarian Friendly and then check the question1 checkbox on any Category that involves food.

While you are on the category edit screen, you might want to update your bid sheet messages (There's two versions on each category - one for fixe price and one for normal items). You can now mention the value of any question you want using the %answer1% format. For example, if you have question3=Return if Unsold, you might add: Return %answer3% to the bid sheet messages for the categories you've checked this question on. (or just %answer3% if you want it to be less conspicuous). The answers will be either Y or N.

If any questions have been defined, you will see a new search feature on the catalog page which lets you show or hide the items which answer each question with Yes, No, or Either.

By default, each question shows Both YES and NO responses to all questions. However, you can set QUESTION1_DEFAULT=Yes - this will cause the screen to hide items in categories that have that question and which have answered No to it (left it unchecked). The user can still click on Both to make them appear, or No to do the opposite and hide the checked ones.

Finally, questions can be made visible only to administrators and voluteers. This allows for a juried item acceptance process as follows: Define QUESTION3=Accepted, QUESTION3_DEFAULT=Yes, and QUESTION3_HIDDEN=true. Then select Accepted on the artwork, china, or similar categories. Now the items in those categories won't initially appear on the catalog, because they won't be checked since they are hidden, and the normal users can't see that question to check the NO to make them appear. But, admin/volunteers can see it, and they can use it to see only the items that haven't been accepted, and go check the ones they want the public to see. The new columns will be included in the item spreadsheet report, so you can keep them out of your printed catalog that way.

One more related feature for hidden questions - if they have default other than Both, the front page notice with '%FeaturedItem.xxx% will not (randomly) select any items from a category defined to have that question and with a default value answer for it. So in our example, the items not (yet) Accepted=Yes will not (yet) be featured on the front page. Since they are also hidden from view on the Catalog grid, this is consistent with not letting them appear before they are accepted.

Note: Don't use a question for 'business donation' - there's a new feature just for that.