Forum Discussion

HarrisonSmith's avatar
HarrisonSmith
Qrew Trainee
31 minutes ago

Workaround for 20 Option Max in Multi-Select Text field?

I found this thread from years ago (https://community.quickbase.com/discussions/quickbase-discussions/multi-select-fields-max-100/76382) that demos a really clever method to get around QB's limit of 100 options in a multi-select text field, but I have sort of the opposite issue where I have a multi-select text field that contains a list of all 50 states, and I want users to be able to select potentially up to all 50 options, but currently they're limited to 20. 

There are a handful of workarounds (breaking the states list into multiple fields, creating 50 individual checkboxes for each state, setting up a sub-table with an embedded grid report on the form where the user would create 1 record/state), but none of those options are nearly as elegant/intuitive/UX friendly as just a single multi-select that lets you pick more than 20 options.

Anyone have any ideas? This is for a project where the intended users are external users who have 0 QB experience and would only ever fill out this form once and then be done, so it has to be really easy/intuitive; there won't be any time to train users on how to fill out a form using any of the other options I considered above. Thanks!

Forms

1 Reply

  • MarkShnier__You's avatar
    MarkShnier__You
    Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
    15 minutes ago

    I suppose one pretty elegant solution would be to have a pipeline ensure that the parent record always has the 50 state children records and have your users use Grid Edit on the embedded report to select the states they want. So they would not be adding the states one by one, the states would already be loaded and they were just checkbox the ones they want.

    You could also consider having a URL formula button, which would either check them all or uncheck them all to deal with situations where the user wants either all 50 states or almost all the 50 states in which case they could click a button to check them all and then deselect the ones they don't want.

    There are elegant ways to do this with a URL formula button, so that the response on the screen would be instantaneous, the user would click the button and the page would refresh with all of the check boxes checked or all of them unchecked.  

    This Mass checking or unchecking can also be done with a Pipeline where maybe the set up is a little more intuitive but the response on the screen is not quite instantaneous. The user would probably have to refresh once or twice to see the effects of the pipeline running.