WebDefaultStatus and WebDefaultDepartment will not work to show "Choose a Status" or "Choose a Department" (v9.1)

Purpose/Scope

WebDefaultDepartment and WebDefaultStatusGroup customization key values are not showing up in the NewAuthRegistration.html, NewUserRegistration.html, and/or ChangeUserInformation.html page(s). For example, if I put "Choose a Status" in as the value for WebDefaultStatusGroup, it will not show that as the default option in the dropdown.

Resolution

Filling in the 'Choose a ...' method of setting these web defaults worked at some point, but it was back when all the options were hard-coded in the webpages, before we started using the #OPTION tag that started pulling the drop-down options from the CustomDropDown table, and we had the 'Choose a ...' option hard-coded in every dropdown. The #OPTION tag won't work this way because it's getting its values from the CustomDropDowns table. So, you now have two options:

1. The WebDefault...  keys will only work when they match the value of one of the options in the CustomDropDown table. So you could add that as an entry in the CustomDropDown table.

2. You can also ignore the WebDefault... keys for these and instead use the defaultValue and defaultName parameters in the #OPTION tags themselves. These parameters were present in the 9.0 default pages but removed from the 9.1 pages, but you can add them back in.

These are examples of the code you can use for StatusGroup and Department:

<#OPTION name="custom" groupname="StatusGroup" selectedValue="<#PARAM name=StatusGroup>" defaultValue="" defaultName="Choose a Status" />

<#OPTION name="custom" groupname="Department" selectedValue="<#PARAM name=Department>" defaultValue="" defaultName="Choose a Department" />

 Which will add and select the label 'Choose a Status' or 'Choose a Department' to show in the dropdown options at the top of the list, even with it not being in the CustomDropDown table or in the WebDefaultStatus or WebDefaultDepartment customization keys. If a user actually left it on that option, the actual value (what is submitted to ILLiad) will be the blank value specified in defaultValue parameter. So this means you can have your WebValidation entry just use the .+ required reg ex.