Guides read, create, and update your application's data. This information is stored in fields, and these are the items that you see within the

Insert Read-Only Field

and

Insert Field for Update

picklists. These fields are defined within the application. However, there are times when a guide needs to temporarily store information. To do this, you will need to add fields, fields that are only used within the guide. The place where you add them is the

Guide Fields tab

within the

Guide Properties

dialog.

You can create input and output fields.

All fields have a data type. Guide Designer has the built-in data types shown in the picklist in the previous figure. Developers can add additional data types.

Some of these data types are ones used in most programming languages; for example, text and numbers. Others such as checkbox and picklist are elements that are used in interactive forms. Object ID and Object List are unique to Guide Designer. An object ID is a built-in type into which Guide Designer can write data that identifies an object. Object IDs can be passed to or returned from Service Call steps and guides as fields. The guide can also be started with an object ID association, which is set using

Applies To

in the

Guide Properties

dialog.

An Object List is also a built-in type. It is a multi-valued data type where each item identifies one object ID. This list can be operated on as a set and the guide can individually execute on each element of the list or displayed as a table to the user.

This guide needs to display a list of contacts, and this information will be stored in an Object List.