Record Picker Component

Function

a!pickerFieldRecords( label, labelPosition, instructions, helpTooltip, placeholder, maxSelections, recordType, filters, value, saveInto, required, requiredMessage, readOnly, disabled, validations, validationGroup, accessibilityText, showWhen, showRecordLinks )

Displays an autocompleting input for the selection of one or more records, filtered by a single record type. Suggestions and picker tokens use the title of the record.

Parameters

Usage considerations

Suggestions and permissions

• Suggestions are based on the fields used in the record title. However, if you use a service-backed record type without data sync enabled, the search is based on the search property configured in the source expression.
• Only records that the viewing user has permissions to see appear in the suggestions list, as determined by the record-level security or the default filters in the record type.

Selections and placeholders

• Any nulls in the array passed to selected records are not displayed. A [Not Available] token is displayed for any invalid identifiers in the selected records array.
• The component always saves an array regardless of how many selections have been made.
• By default, all selected record tokens include a link to the record unless showRecordLinks is false. Consider setting showRecordLinks to false when selecting reference data from the picker. See Select a record from a record type without a link to the record for an example.
• This picker cannot be used to selected records of a rule-backed record type (deprecated).
• Whether placeholder text clears on focus or input varies by device and browser.

Row limit for records-powered components

Interface components that use a record type as the data source are known as records-powered components.

Records-powered components can display a maximum of 5,000 rows. As a best practice, you should not display all 5,000 rows in a component since it may impact performance.

Service-backed record types

If you want to use a record picker with a service-backed record type, it should work as expected, without the need to change your record definition. But, in case something is not working as desired, here are a few notes on how the record picker works and how you can tweak your record design to optimize for a record picker.

• When a user types text into the picker field, it is equivalent to a user typing text into the search bar of the record list. The difference is that every new letter in the picker is a new call to the web service, whereas in the record list, the user must hit enter before any calls are made. This means increased load on the web service.
• Once a record is picked, the component makes one call to the web service for every picked item to get the information displayed in the label. This could be problematic because there is often overhead in web service calls. For that reason, only use the record picker when the number of items you expect users to pick at one time is low.
• Filters applied in the component are processed in the same way that default filters and user filters are processed. This means that any new filters in the picker needed to be handled accordingly in your source expression and data retrieval rule.

If this picker does not meet your needs, use a custom picker.

For more information about records, see Appian Records.

Examples

Record type object references are specific to each environment. If you copy and paste these examples into an interface, they will not evaluate. Use them as a references only.

Select a record from a record type

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a!localVariables(
  local!storedRecord,
  a!pickerFieldRecords(
    label: "Choose an Employee Record",
    /* For the "recordType" parameter below, replace the record type reference (recordType!Employee)  
     * with a valid record type reference in your environment. 
     */
    recordType: recordType!Employee,
    value: local!storedRecord,
    saveInto: local!storedRecord
  )
)

Displays the following:

Select a record from a record type with filters

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a!localVariables(
  local!storedRecord,
  a!pickerFieldRecords(
    label: "Choose an Employee Record",
    /* For the "recordType" parameter below, replace the record type reference (recordType!Employee)  
     * with a valid record type reference in your environment. 
     */
    recordType: recordType!Employee,
    filters: a!queryLogicalExpression(
        operator: "AND",
        filters: {
          a!queryFilter(
            field: recordType!Employee.fields.department,
            operator: "=",
            value: "Engineering"
          ),
          a!queryFilter(
            field: recordType!Employee.fields.startDate,
            operator: ">",
            value: date(2022, 1, 1)
          )
        }
      ),
    value: local!storedRecord,
    saveInto: local!storedRecord
  )
)

Displays the following:

Select a record from a record type without a link to the record

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a!localVariables(
  local!storedRecord,
    a!pickerFieldRecords(
      label: "Choose a Case Priority",
    /* For the "recordType" parameter below, replace the record type reference (recordType!Priority)  
     * with a valid record type reference in your environment. 
     */
      recordType: recordType!Priority,
      value: local!storedRecord,
      saveInto: local!storedRecord,
    /* Since the Priority record type only contains reference data (the different case priority levels), 
     * we can hide the record links to prevent users from navigating to their summary views.
     */
      showRecordLinks: false,
    )
)

Displays the following:

Feature compatibility

Old versions

There are older versions of this interface component. You can identify older versions by looking at the name to see if there is a version suffix. If you are using an old version, be sure to refer to the corresponding documentation from the list below.

To learn more about how Appian handles this kind of versioning, see the Function and Component Versions page.

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