Managing Cases

Cases represent units of analysis in your project — typically participants, sites, organizations, or other entities you want to compare across your data.

Understanding Cases

A case groups related sources and attributes together. Each case has:

• Name — A descriptive label (e.g., "Participant Alpha")
• Description — Optional notes about the case
• Attributes — Structured data such as age, gender, or location
• Linked Sources — Documents associated with this case

The Case Manager

Open the Case Manager from the main navigation to see all cases in your project.

The table displays each case with its name, description, linked source count, and attribute summary.

Case Attributes

Attributes store structured demographic or contextual data for each case. QualCoder supports four attribute types:

Type	Display	Example
Text	Plain text	"female", "urban"
Number	Formatted number	28, 75,000
Boolean	Yes / No	Yes, No
Date	Date portion	2025-03-15

Missing values display as an em dash (—).

Adding Attributes

1. Select a case in the Case Manager
2. Click Add Attribute
3. Choose a name, type, and value
4. Click Save

Attribute Detail Panel

The attribute detail panel lets you inspect all attributes for a case directly in the table, without opening a separate dialog.

Expanding a Case Row

Click the Attributes column for any case that has attributes. The row expands to show a detail panel with all attribute names, types, and formatted values.

Each attribute displays: - The attribute name as a label - A type badge (text, number, boolean, date) - The formatted value appropriate to its type

Multiple Expanded Rows

You can expand multiple case rows at the same time to compare attributes side by side.

Collapsing

Click the Attributes column again to collapse the detail panel.

Tip: Cases without attributes do not show an expand button.

Filtering by Attributes

You can filter the case list by attribute values to find cases matching specific criteria.

Filter by Attribute Name

Use the has_attributes filter in the stats row to show only cases that have attributes defined.

Filter by Attribute Value

The viewmodel supports filtering by both attribute name and value: - Filter by name only — shows all cases with that attribute - Filter by name and value — shows cases matching the specific value

Reactivity

The detail panel updates automatically when attributes change. If you add a new attribute while a case row is expanded, the panel refreshes to include the new attribute without losing your expanded state.