Conditional Element Control
Using conditionals in the design of your photo ID badge can greatly simplify the
process. If you use more than one design of card to meet the requirments of your
company, you should consider using conditionals. Conditionals allow you to simplify
changes to your badge design, to consolidate all your badgeholder data into one
database, and to quickly and easily provide a variety of cards to your employees with
no additional work on your part. The example at the left and right are the same
badge, just using conditionals to control the display of the green and red boxes
and the text in them.
Conditionals are fairly easy to understand, but can be a challange to get to work
as you want. A conditional will control the printing of a card element based on
the status of a field in the database. They are of the form "If this condition is
met, print this kind of element." By using them, you can change the background, how
a photo is displayed, if a person's title is printed, or nearly anything else that
appears (or doesn't!) on a card.
For example, suppose you have an ID card that will display a different colored
background depending on what department a person works in. You could design a
differentcard for each background, and link these designs to a different section
in your database, and have to keep track and maintain all these differnt items as
you add and loose employees or change the card design. Instead, if you set the
background to display a different color depending on what is entered in the
"Department" field in the database, then one card design will work for as many
different departments as you have. And it is not necessary that the field that
controls the display be printed on the card. As long as it is in the record for
the card, it can be used to control what gets printed.
I also have a
TechNote
about using conditionals with
Asure ID
, one of the software
programs we offer for creating ID badges. It has screenshots and goes into more
detail about how to use conditionals with that program.
