Make it possible to enter value not in lookup to show autocomplete suggestions.

Some time ago I was trying something but it did not work.

What I want is a way in which the lookup only gives suggestions allowing the user to enter other values, and/or I would like to bind a lookup to the grid and not to the form.

Below I try to explain in two examples.

Binding to the grid and not to the form;

currently the excell style dropdown only appears when there is a lookup, while it also makes sense on a lot of other columns. Here I could solve it by creating a view which selects all the distinct existing values and creating a lookup relation to the field. But if this lookup is also connected to the form the user can not enter new values.

It would be easier to have a checkbox at column level in the grid component tab, and to always be able to create an excel style select, lookup or not.

Suggestions

People in our company are allowed to drive and use all different brands of cars, but the list of brands and models we actually use in 95% of the cases is small.

So, I was looking for a way to define a lookup with the technique above, selecting for example the top 10 most likely matches;

“If it is a 4 wheel drive vehicle it is probably a Toyota and if it is a Toyota it is probably model Landcruiser and if it is a Landcruiser it probably runs on Diesel”.
(that could give an almost 95% click click click match filling in the form).

Using a lookup to achieve this gives a lot of flexibility, as the lookup views can contain logic on for example the location of the user, and dynamically decide what data to show. 

I know it is an option to have users maintain tables with models and brands, but it costs clicks and explanations, and they will make mistakes and create doubles anyway. I don’t care about the model and the brand, the only data the system uses is the fact that it is a 4x4 vehicle that uses Diesel, and Normalizing it out creates more work for the users, so why?

What is needed?

A mode in which the key and value of the lookup are the same, and the user is allowed to enter new values not in the current lookup.

In this mode;
- Universal should understand that the key and value field are the same and that the value the user entered is also the new key..
- indicium should just not check if the value is allowed before commit.

That would allow full control over dynamically generated suggestions. 

In my use case a query which looks what data we have in a specific area in the world, also ranked on the newest data first, which results in a top 10 suggestion based on that combination, in combination with the keys the user typed.
I looked at the data and … in general all the previously used brands will always be in the list, a 100% match … (Almost AI, …, but much simpler).

I think that there are a lot of use cases for this.

There are more advanced ways to implement this

But those would require a new type of stored procedure; if it is possible to do this with a function or procedure it is possible to use a Soundex kind of construct, which would also allow to suggest to correct Lndcrs to Landcruiser. 

Using the default for this is not a good idea, as there might actually be a model “Lndcrs”… and it might make that users accept the suggestions for things they don’t know.

Using the stored procedure option would also allow to call a CLR procedure which calls an AI….