How to make a reference field appear as dropdown list?

[MG Casey]

The Notification Messages table has a particularly interesting field called the Device field:

It is actually a reference field, but instead of the user having to type in text to get possible selections, it just acts as a normal drop-down box.

I've tried to recreate this functionality in my own fields by using the same dictionary entry values, but no luck:

Its Choice List specification tab:

Any ideas on how to make that kind of field? It has some appeal for reference fields where users may not know possible values.

[MG Casey]

Figured it out - it's when you pass 25 available records that the reference choice field automatically becomes a reference field. That's smart of them to code that in - it could really start to slow down page load times if there were 1,000 of choices to load in.

[Chuck Tomasi]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. It looks like someone was paying attention to my technical best practices after all. 🙂

[prathyusha_snow]

Chuck,

Is there a way for this to be achieved in the list view as well?

[Tushar Sharma2]

Hello Prathyusha,

I don't believe this is possible. We've already configured the table to have the Reference Autocomplete and set that to AJAXReferenceChoice and it is working for the form. There is not a mechanism to configure the control any differently for a list so you'll get the standard popup no matter how you have the dictionary set up for that field.

Regards,

Tushar

[Chuck Tomasi]

Here's my findings... It doesn't work in list v2. Reference fields are shown with the reference lookup.

In list v3, it *DOES* show a choice list picker, but doesn't seem to be populating properly. I call this a BUG (even in Kingston P1).