Ability to create a "global select / dropdown" field type

🧩 Low-Code Development
#1

***Apologies if this issue is already ticketed or on the roadmap but after searching the forum and GH issues, I couldn’t find any reference to this enhancement request.

Background

When we are creating record fields across different modules we noticed that we create records fields that use the same options in the “select / dropdown” field type. For example, it may be common to create record fields like a survey questionnaire where you ask “yes” or “no” questions so instead of creating the dropdown options for each record field, we would like the ability to create a global select / dropdown with the same dropdown options. This would allow us to create standardization across multiple fields and when changes need to be made across the dropdown options, we only have to make changes in one place.

Acceptance Criteria

GIVEN that I'm a logged in user that can create modules

AND I create a new module

AND when I create a new record field

THEN I should be able to select a new field type called "global select / dropdown"

AND when I click "configure" and navigate to the "Select / Dropdown" tab, I should be able to define the value and labels for each dropdown option and name this global dropdown.

AND when I click save, the global dropdown should be available to me when I create a new record field in the current module I am in OR in a different module within my namespace.

Note to dev

I tried to find a workaround using the field type “record selector” by creating a module called “Global Dropdowns” and added all the field records that I would like to make as global dropdowns and then I created a simple record page where I created records where I select one of each of the dropdown options. However, if I create more records than there are dropdown options then those records appear in the record selector dropdown (See screenshot below)

image

Happy to discuss in more detail and provide additional context!

#2

So in essence making a field configuration global so you can use that same configuration in multiple modules. And if one configuration changes the others using that field change aswell.
It could be interesting but currently not planned.

Regarding your workaround, if you set a proper filter only those will be displayed.

1 Like
#3

Yes, exactly a global field configuration that I can use in the same module or across different modules within a namespace. And if the configuration options change, it would change across all modules using that global field configuration. Another good example is imagine Country dropdown option like you have as an example under the BillingCountry or MailingCountry. This has to be re-created every time you want to refer to this dropdown and that’s tedious when the dropdown options are this many.

ASK: Is this something you would like me to create an issue in GH for future enhancement or leave it to the forum for now?

Could you advise me on the prefilter workaround? In my example, the “Yes” record has the recordID = 379738429318496257 and “No” record = 379738429318955009.

Based on this, I tried following the Query Lanuage syntax like this:

image
image860Ă—178 22.9 KB

Am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance. I’m still new to the QL syntax and I couldnt find many examples in the documentation but feel free to point me to something.

#4

Here’s the recordID for these fields:

image
image664Ă—689 27.6 KB

#5

For this use case of a global variable, we would not use a dropdown - we create modules for all these common variables, like Countries, Currencies, Languages, Gender, Marital Status, Occupations, Industries etc.

So, instead of having 1 module, create a specific module for each type of global variable, so when you insert say a Country record selector field into another module, your list only includes the variables relevant.