Forms: format connection fields at view level

Hi,

I can’t believe that Knack still doesn’t let us sort records for connection fields at the view level, within forms. This also applies to the format (dropdown or radio buttons). All of this should be set within the view, not within the object as this is clearly frontend! It has nothing to do with backend!

That in 2022 we still have to set this across the whole app is unbelievable.

Cheers,
Tomas

Hi, @Tomas!

Thank you for sharing this request!

I’ve been going through older requests here in the forum (apologies for the extremely late response), and I wanted to clarify a couple of things with you before I share your request to the Product team.

For the format, you would like to be able to select within the view to display the connection field value options as radio buttons or a dropdown list instead of only be able to do so within the field settings, is that correct?

Secondly, for the sorting of the connection fields at the view level note you made above, could you elaborate more on what you mean for that please?

Thank you in advance for your time!

I think the original poster had the same problem I am having. It seems you have no control over the sort order when you are bringing in the multiple-choice field as a connection.

Example: I have a table for Tickets and I have connected tables for Service Departments, Categories, and Services. This way on an “add new ticket” form, if a staff member chooses a certain Service Dept, they will only be shown Categories that fall under that Dept, and Services that fall under the Category chosen. Within the tables for these three, I have each sorted by the order we want (higher used Categories first, etc) but when I use those as a connection on my “add new ticket” they come in as alphabetical order. I want them to keep their order from their table.

Hi, Jordan!

Thank you for sharing! I think I understand what you mean. For example, I have sorted these Multiple Choice field options in this specific order shown below in the screenshot and selected the Sort setting to be “Custom”. However, this custom sort order doesn’t apply to how the options display in the field input’s dropdown in the Live App Form view. Table sorting preferences do not apply to records displayed in a view in any manner.

I will make sure that this request has been shared with our Product team, and if not, I will share it as a new request. Please let me know if the above explanation is not what you meant :slight_smile:

Happy Knacking and enjoy the rest of your week!

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I don’t believe this is what was meant. It would seem that both @Tomas and @Jordan_Dotson are referring to a connection field, not just a basic Multiple Choice field. There is no option to set the order of multiple choice options for a connection field, the options are simply listed in whatever order they were added in the connected data table.

I agree, this is a bit archaic and very annoying, alphabetical at a minimum would be great.

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Hi @RyanL @Jordan_Dotson

You can sort connected objects multiple choice by Either using Knack sort function here:
image

Or you can add a number field called Sort Order then add your own sort order like this:

Then use table settings to select your sort order field as the sort.

If you are using another connection to display certain connected records you could have multiple 1s 2s 3s etc. as they will never be displayed together, like this:

image

Hope this helps.

Craig