Using Placeholders in Required Fields

Records cannot be saved in FIS unless required fields have been populated. However, required Information is sometimes not readily available; for example, historical information can be difficult to obtain and requires time to research.

If data is unknown at the time of input, enter a placeholder; that is temporary data that can easily be identified and later replaced by a known value. Placeholder values are "unknown" (not case-sensitive) for unknown text fields and "8888" for unknown date fields.

 

Important: Enter only the placeholder value and no other text. For example, if you enter "unknown city," the text will not be suppressed and will be printed on the CV.   In a drop list, do not select "Other" and enter "unknown." The text will be treated as free text and printed on the CV. Instead scroll to the end of the drop list and select "Unknown."

For unknown start and end months for clinical fellowships/residencies under postgraduate training, follow these guidelines:

For unknown start month, enter 07 followed by year, for example 07/2006.

For unknown end month, enter 06 followed by the next year, for example 06/2007.

The following example demonstrates the proper use of placeholders.

 

 

Generate CV with Placeholders Displayed

Since the Comprehensive CV consists of all data entries, it should be used to display all placeholders. On the left menu, click Comprehensive CV under Reports. The following screen will be displayed.

As a default, No will be checked in the radio button labeled Suppress "Unknown" and "8888." All placeholders will be printed on the CV.

Replace Placeholders with Data

Highlighting placeholders will enable the user to easily identify them in the CV Word document. When the required information is obtained, the user can insert data in place of the placeholder in the FIS database not the CV Word document and save the record.

In this example, the placeholder we wish to highlight is 8888.

1.    On the Edit menu in Word, click Replace.

The following screen will be displayed.

 

 

2.    In the Find what box, enter the placeholder (in this example, enter 8888).

3.    In the Replace with box, enter 8888.

4.    Click More.

The following screen will be displayed.

 

5.    With your cursor in Replace with box, Click Format.

The Format drop list will be displayed.

 

6.    Select Highlight from the drop list.

The words Format: Highlight will be displayed under the Replace with box.

 

7.    Click Replace All.

All occurrences of 8888 will be highlighted.

Generate CV with Placeholders Suppressed

Placeholder use is primarily intended to be temporary, i.e., the missing information should be researched and included in the database once available.

If, however, a CV or Biosketch is needed during the interim, the user has the option to suppress printing of placeholders on the Institutional CV, Comprehensive CV, or Biosketch so that a clean copy can immediately be available. In this example we will use the Institutional CV. To suppress printing of placeholders, click CV, Institutional under Outputs on the left menu. The following screen will be displayed:

In the radio button labeled Suppress "Unknown" and "8888," check Yes. All placeholders will be suppressed on the CV.