3 Minute Screencast: Autopopulate a Lookup Column
Eric Alexander, Moderator, Stump the Panel
Author: Employee Training Templates
Over the past 2 days there has been a repeated question over on Stump the Panel about having a choice column that will auto update with values users manually enter. Out of the box there isn’t anything that can be done to update the values of the choice column to include the specified value.
However, there is an alternative using a lookup list, a single line of text column and a workflow to mimic that. In this screencast I show how to create this basic functionality.
A recommendation would be to have content approval enabled on the lookup list so that admins can approve additional selections and weed out duplicates. This can also be tweaked so that the lookup allows multiple values to be selected. The logic in the workflow would then change to Contains Other, instead of Equal to Other.
Am I the only one that hears the audio, but the screen is blank?
I see the screen in my browser.
Another step can be added to the workflow to update the original item, http://twitpic.com/bgra7.
@Caleb Screencast works in IE, but not in Firefox.
Very nice, good job.
Now to enhance the UI experience what you could do is have the workflow (after its inserted the new colour, yellow, in the lookup list) update the value of the colour field in the list item thats just been created to Yellow. That way the user can specify their own value, have it updated in the lookup list and also appear in the colour column if the list item.
I have an app begging for this type of input, I shall definitely be trying this one. Thanks.
Hi Eric
Thanks for putting this together. This is exactly the solution I was looking for.
Many thanks.
Iain
Nice solution. Any suggestions if the car had many colors and we wanted to add multiple items in the same manner, separated by e.g. comma or semicolon?
It should be roughly equivalent, I’ll see what I can come up with.
Is there a way to do just the opposite of this? Have a list choice subtracted from the list once chosen so only one person can make the selection on the list?
Hi Eric,
Very nice post.
Thanks a lot!
This is exactly what I was looking for.
Could you tell me how should I update the “Color” field to value of “Specify your own value:” field.
I don’t want the value of the field to be “Other” but rather one which user enters.
Please throw any suggestions you might have.
Thanks,
Vaishnavi
Eric,
the link you put up here for adding another step to the workflow to update the original item (http://twitpic.com/bgra7) does not work. Can you point me to where I might be able to find this?
Best regards,
Neil
Neil – I just clicked and the link does work. Check to make sure twitpic.com is not blocked on your server. — Mark