external choices

[BrianKaplan1]

So I gather that using external_choices requires a choice_filter.  The Esri example uses a US example of State, County, and City.  This is great example.  However, I'm working in an African country.  While there are equivalent designations of Admin 1, Admin 2, and city, it is sometimes the case that the link between village and Admin 1 and Admin 2 is not well known or there is conflicting information about the location of the village.  So I would like to provide a dropdown of ALL the villages.  Because this list is larger >500, I would like to use external choices.  But how do I set it up with the choice_filter.  I could do it by country but the choice would be only one country for one list and a second country (neighboring country) for another list.  I prefer they didn't have to choose the country as I would like to set it by default and not let them see this.  The country name is set in the Label.

In the choice filter, can I use this country = "Guinea" instead of country = ${country}?  I tried this and a few alternative syntax's but I didn't find one that worked.  Is there a correct syntax for this?

Or can I set up a survey question with a default answer and have it not appear?

Or is there another way or other ideas?

Thanks

Brian

[HannahFerrier]

You are right, Brian.

The ability to use external_choices is only available when used with cascading selects.

You could create a column in your external_choices sheet that contains the same value for every option. I have not been able to get a default value to be used as a choice_filter with a cascading select, but if you can enter this value in your form, you could create a 'false' cascading select. I have used a select_one field with a choice list that has only one value. Users will have to select the answer - but then you should be able to load the next select_one list from an external file.

Let me know if this helps,

Hannah