Best Practice for Duplicating Fields on a Record

dmullinax
Mega Guru

What is the best practice or preferred method of duplicating fields on the same record, when that additional field would be for information only?

In other words, we don't want to actually store data for that field.  That would be a waste of resources.  We want something like a label that copies content over from another field.  Like an annotation sort of.

This form has multiple tabs.  In this tab is a writable field "specific recommendations."
find_real_file.png

In the next tab, our customer wants to duplicate that same field.  I managed to accomplish this by creating a new field, and setting the calculated value field to assign the contents of the original field to the second field.
find_real_file.png

The problem with this approach, is that data gets permanently saved in the field, taking up unnecessary storage space.  If I run a report on that additional field, the data shows up in the report.

We don't want that.  We want a label, or information only.

An annotation won't work because it is static.  I couldn't figure out how to manipulate it with code.
find_real_file.png

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Allen Andreas
Administrator
Administrator

Hi,

I believe someone mentioned in another thread that you could click on the other section and then place that same original field again...in that other section. So that it's just a basic replication of the same field. Have you tried to click on the section in the form layout settings page and place it there a second time?

Me personally...I would say it's a training issue and the team just needs to know it'll be under the one section...OR...if needed to be under multiple sections, then just bring it out of the sections altogether and place as a main form component...but...

I believe as I mentioned you can add the field again to the other section.

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11 REPLIES 11

I don't know about that statement (as far as the intentions from the devs), but either way, there is no "randomness" to the updates (like sometimes taking value from field 2 versus field 1, etc.). So that's cleared up.

I think that's about all we can do for this thread.

 


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DrewW
Mega Sage
Mega Sage

If all you want to do is just display some information you can just use a UI Macro or do what you did.  The only other option is to put it on one tab and they have to go there to see it.