Use 'open lookup' as a start action for a process flow

Hi @J. de Lange,

Opening a look-up can occur in multiple states, such as in Edit mode and Non-edit model. But also if the field with the look-up has a value or not, that also impacts the look-up after as the look-up will filter on the input value.

Would it be a better solution if you could enforce a prefilter on the dropdown recordset which is not enforced when opening the look-up popup? That way you could limit the recordset in the dropdown to your liking but keep the entire/bigger recordset when opening the look-up. Like in your example, the dropdown would be limited to branches that are within the My branches prefilter set, and when opening the look-up, this prefilter is not active therefore showing all branches of the model.

This would definitely solve most of our current use cases and would be a very welcome addition.

I do feel that somehow linking this to process flows would allow for even more options which rely on already existing features in the SF. It would also avoid adding yet another very specific setting under subject settings. Would it be an option to add Edit mode, and input value as output parameters of this start action? That way we can decide what to do in the process flow.

This is only a suggestion of course. You are in a far better position to decide what would be the best way to implement this in the Software Factory. 

We can certainly consider starting off process flows when opening a look-up. However, it is a bit contentious to start process flows during editing/task execution. Furthermore, the GUI already performs certain actions depending on the state, such as navigating to a form or applying a filter or go-to-row to the current value.

For this situation I’d consider an alternative instead:

Allowing the user to expand the available values in the look-up to include items outside of the default look-up prefilters would resolve this situation without process flows required for every look-up.

It would also be available for any existing look-up without developers having to set up anything.

Would something like this be a viable alternative?

Anne Buit wrote:

We can certainly consider starting off process flows when opening a look-up. However, it is a bit contentious to start process flows during editing/task execution. Furthermore, the GUI already performs certain actions depending on the state, such as navigating to a form or applying a filter or go-to-row to the current value.

For this situation I’d consider an alternative instead:

Allowing the user to expand the available values in the look-up to include items outside of the default look-up prefilters would resolve this situation without process flows required for every look-up.

It would also be available for any existing look-up without developers having to set up anything.

 

Would something like this be a viable alternative?

This does sound like a good alternative. How would you define which prefilters are switched off when clicking “Load other available items”? Without a way to configure this, it might cause problems with pre-filter groups or otherwise mandatory prefilters.