Question

Creating "Global" Fields

Forms

Updated March 26, 2024

asked on March 25, 2024 • Show version history

I have a common dropdown menu across many of my Forms called "Managers". When I have a new manager, I have to touch all of my forms to add that one person. How do I create a global Managers field so that I can update it in one place and I don't have to touch all of my forms?

Edit: Forms version

Laserfiche Forms Professional Version 11.0.2307.40547

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Answer

SELECTED ANSWER

replied on March 26, 2024

What do you mean you have to delete and re-add the field?

If you are using a SQL table as a lookup source, it will not show the values in the designer, but it will pull them from the database every time you load the form.

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Replies

replied on March 25, 2024

If you have Forms Professional, I would create a SQL Database with a table of your managers, then use a lookup for your field referencing that database & table.

Whenever there is a change you just update the table.

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View 2 previous replies

replied on March 26, 2024

I did this and it kind of works. The issue is that when I update the table on the database, it does not automatically update the table. I have to delete and readd the field to the Form so I still have to touch every form on every process. I was hoping to not do that, but it seems like there is not a way to avoid it.

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SELECTED ANSWER

replied on March 26, 2024

What do you mean you have to delete and re-add the field?

If you are using a SQL table as a lookup source, it will not show the values in the designer, but it will pull them from the database every time you load the form.

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replied on March 26, 2024

Let me do some more testing on that.

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replied on March 26, 2024

Oh dang! When I did page preview, it was not loading. But when I ran the live form, it did it! Thank you both.

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replied on March 26, 2024 • Show version history

Your lookup rule should look something like this:

If you're trying to pull a complete list with no filtering like to fill a dropdown, then you probably don't want any conditions; that way it will just pull all the values to populate the dropdown when the form loads.

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replied on March 25, 2024

Which version of Laserfiche/Forms are you using?

I believe Laserfiche Cloud has Lookup Rules/Tables that can be used as a data source for dropdowns.
Laserfiche Forms Professional includes database lookups, so you could reference the data from a SQL database (this is what we do).
I do not believe this is possible with Laserfiche Forms Essentials.

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replied on March 26, 2024

As a follow-up, does this only work on "Form Designer," or does it also work on "Classic Form Designer?" If so, how do I do that?

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replied on March 26, 2024

You can do it in both designers using basically the same process, the UI is just a little different. The screenshot I provided below is from the Classic designer.

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replied on March 26, 2024

Thank you again. I found it.

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Creating "Global" Fields

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