Service Tracking - Specifying Field Names

When specifying field names, usually for displaying or sorting, there is additional syntax that can affect how the fields are used and displayed.

The general syntax is

[+-]external_field_name[-precision][!verbosity][<>]
described in detail below. An "external_field_name" is either a field name or one of its alternatives, as described in the field name descriptions.

Defaults

When no specific fields are specified for displaying or sorting, defaults are of course chosen. When selecting other than the defaults, it's often the case that one wants to make a simple modification to the defaults. So to avoid having to re-specify not only the change one wants, but all of the defaults as well, a leading + will add to the defaults, and a leading - will remove from the defaults. E.g. to include the cost_estimate field, specify +cost_estimate.

Sort Order

The default sort order of a field is field specific, intended to be what people want most often. A specific sort order can be specified by appending a < or >:

< ascending sort order
> descending sort order
where the sort order is expressed in terms of the meaning of a value, not its representation. So an ascending sort of priorities starts with low priorities, which are high numbers.

It makes no sense to specify a sort order in a field specification used for anything but sorting.

Precision

The precision of a value can be used to determine where titles appear when sorting and grouping records. It can also be used to simplify the result of displayed data, although that's less common.

All fields will accept any of the following a general precision specifications.

none results in every value replaced with a single value (undefined). That's useful only as a way to avoid grouping records after sorting. E.g. when sorting by age one might not need to see titles separating the records for some specific interval.
low results in a field specific precision that most would consider to be low. The specific precision is deliberately not documented, as it could change according to general preference.
medium results in a field specific precision that most would consider to be medium. The specific precision is deliberately not documented, as it could change according to general preference.
high always leaves the data alone; there's no reduction in precision. E.g. dates remain accurate to the second.

In addition, there are field specific precisions, determined by the type of the data.

Dates One of day, week, month, term, or year.
Intervals One of second, minute, hour, day, week, month, term, or year.
Attributes The precision is the number of words in the attribute. E.g. applying a precision of 1 to a Service of Student Computing Environment — Mac Labs results in Student Computing Environment.
Email Addresses A precision of "userid" converts the address to the first 8 characters of the userid part, i.e. the campus convention for the shortest unique part of the userid. It's useful when dealing with an inconsistent use of short and long userids.
Priority A precision may be 0 or 1, being the number of digits after the decimal point.

Verbosity

The verbosity of the field display is one of

How they affect display is field specific. This specification overrides the verbosity implied by an "external" field name. E.g. "Unit" (an "external" field name) is the Department in terse form, while "Unit!verbose" uses the verbose form.