Additional lookup options of displaying only unique values / not displaying empty values.
G
Gady Margalit
When I created a field lookup to 1 to many to many
For example "Class" --> "Course" --> "Students"
and In Class I'd like to see all the students (and be able to drill down to them)
I created a lookup field "linked Course" --> "linked Students"
It shows doubles and spaces (looks like -* )
It would be helpful to flag it the lookup field to show only the Unique values only
Also the drill-down to take me to the Student and not to Courses
A
Alexios Palinginis
It is very true that Smartsuite highlights the ability to link records, but using applications such as this example of Class->Course->Student (or Product/Model/Item or any heavy linked application) we can see major limitations in lookup fields:
- As Gady mentions when Student is enrolled in many Courses, the lookup field in Class for the students will result in duplicates Students entries.
- When choosing to link a Student to a Course and if you want to filter the available Courses options by the Class in which the Student is enrolled, you can not use the lookup field for filtering.
- In general, you can not use the lookup field in any filtering way: Filter widgets do not accept lookup fields, Charts values can not be of lookup value.
For the moment the only workaround we found is to have an automation that syncs an explicit linked field (a Student linked field in Class) with the corresponding lookup field (Course.Student). Of course the duplicates can not be removed.
Jon Darbyshire
Great to hear your perspective, Gady Margalit! I have a few more questions for you:
- Can you provide more context on how often you encounter duplicate or empty values in your current workflow?
- Could you clarify what you mean by 'flagging' the lookup field to show only unique values?
- Can you elaborate on how you envision the drill-down functionality to work in terms of navigating directly to the 'Student' instead of 'Courses'?
G
Gady Margalit
Jon Darbyshire
1a. Duplicates every time it's many to many and the data contains the same value :)
1b.
I found out that empty I find when ever I deleted a record
The -*- in the lookup fields, are deleted records
TableA--> TableB --> TableC
Lookup B->C
delete records from C, you would now have these -*- where you used to have records
- By "Flagging" I ment to add a checkbox if I want to see the origial like today, or "remove duplicates
Since to day there is also use for the duplications (I can corelate between the "middle" table and the last table
- when I click on a Student name, instead of taking me there it takes me to the "middle" record