Creating dependent Picklists to help filter your results

This guide will show you how to create dependent Picklists to help filter your data selections more efficiently, and create a neater view on your records.

The desired outcome is to be able to select a wider category in an initial Picklist, and then have a second Picklist that only contains filtered results. The following instructions will help you achieve this.

To start with, you will need to create your categories - head to API data in configuration, and click “add new API data”.

Enter the industry group into the Key field, and then after revealing additional keys, add the single sector that you wish. Please note, you will need to create a new API data record for each sector, so the next that we need to create would look like this:

Once all of the API data has been correctly set up, you then need to build a Report from this data.

Create a new report based around API data:

In your main view of this Report, you will want to add a ‘Key’ column and call this Industry.

Then add the ‘key 2’ column and name it Sector.

Now create a new Summary view, and add a grouping column by Industry.

Save the report, as “API Data Report”, and now you can move to the configuration of the Picklists by going to Start > Configuration > Customisation > Record Types > Organisations.

Now you will want to add a Dynamic Picklist, Name the Field, Add the Report and direct it to the relevant column / view, ensuring the Fields highlighted in red below are configured as such:

After this, create a new Dynamic Picklist which will be your Sector Picklist. Fill out the relevant Fields, ensuring the View and Display columns are correct. You will also need to set up the constraining settings to constrain the results - all of the fields requiring attention are highlighted in red in the two images below:

Once saved, you will need to show and place your new Picklist fields to relevant Form Layouts.  Once done, your fields should be set up, as demonstrated below: