1. Practifi Success
  2. System Administrator
  3. Active Forms

Configuring Active Form Picklists

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Overview

Active Forms are the data-capture layer within Practifi’s process management system. They give your team a structured way to collect information at key points in a workflow, ensuring records stay complete and consistent across your firm. Picklist fields are among the most frequently used Active Form components, as they guide users toward valid inputs rather than relying on free-text entry, helping maintain the data integrity that reporting and compliance work depend on.

Dynamic picklists source values directly from an object rather than a form’s configuration. Filter criteria are applied as needed to limit the available options, so picklist options change automatically as the data in your Practifi instance changes. Because dynamic picklists display a list of records, the selected value can be mapped to a Lookup field, yielding results similar to lookup filters in Salesforce. This article explains how to add a predefined or dynamic picklist to an Active Form.

Adding a Picklist to an Active Form Field

Like all Active Form components, picklists are added in the Settings app. To add a picklist to an Active Form Field, do the following:

  1. From the Settings app, click the caret and select Process Types.
  2. Open the desired process.
  3. In the Process Tasks section, click the name of the process task you want to edit.
  4. On the Process Task Overview page, select the Active Form tab.
  5. In the Active Form Fields area, click New. A new tab opens.



     
  6. On the New Active Form Field screen, enter the following information:
    • Label - This appears above the picklist within the form. Use it to explain the picklist’s purpose to the user.
    • Order - Defines the picklist’s position within a form section.
    • Type - Select Picklist or Picklist (Multi-Select).
    • Section - Search for the Active Form Field Section where you want the table to appear. We recommend searching by Process Task name.
  • Picklist Value Labels (optional) - If you want the values that appear on-screen to differ from what’s used for field mapping purposes in the Picklist Values field, specify a set of labels here as a comma-separated list.

  • Picklist Values - Specify the options you want to appear in the picklist as comma-separated values. If you specified labels in the previous field, use the same number of items in an order corresponding to the value labels. 

    When you select a picklist type, the Picklist Value Source field appears. The default selection is Predefined. To use dynamic values instead, see Setting Up a Dynamic Picklist below.

Setting Up a Dynamic Picklist

To create a dynamic picklist, follow Steps 1 through 6 above. Then, in the Picklist Value Source field, select Dynamically sourced from records. When you make this selection, the following fields become available:

  • Dynamic Picklist Object — Enter the API Name of the object from which you want the picklist to return records.
  • Dynamic Picklist Value Field (optional) — If you want to use a field other than Name to display values in the picklist, enter the API Name of that field here.

When you click Save, two new tabs become available on the Active Form Field record: Available Values and Visibility Rules.

  • On the Available Values tab, you can use the Rule Builder to define the filter criteria and determine which records are available for selection.

    Please note: If you do not define criteria on the Available Values tab, no options will be displayed in the dynamic picklist.

  • If you want the picklist to be available only in certain situations, you can use the Rule Builder in the Visibility Rules tab to specify the criteria that cause it to appear.

Picklist Display Options

The Display Picklist As field controls how the picklist appears to users. Choosing the right style can improve form usability, especially for teams using Active Forms on mobile devices or working through long option lists.

The following options are available:

  • Single-select
    • Button group
    • Drop-down menu
    • Radio buttons
  • Multi-select
    • Button group
    • Checkbox group
    • Dueling picklists

Here are some helpful tips when considering which style of picklist your firm should use: 

  • Button groups provide large, easy-to-click targets and allow a selection in a single click, making them well-suited for mobile use. Because the group must fit on a single row, however, long picklist values will be truncated and are not a good fit for this style. 
  • Drop-down menus require multiple clicks to select an option, but can accommodate many picklist values within a compact space. 
  • Radio buttons and checkbox groups can be selected in one click and do not truncate values, but they are harder to use accurately on mobile devices. 
  • Dueling picklists are more space-efficient than checkbox groups for multi-select picklists with many values, but item selection is less streamlined than with checkbox groups.

Dynamic Picklist Considerations

Mapping Dynamic Picklists to Lookup Fields

In the Dynamic Picklist Value Field field, you can map to a lookup field by entering a Record ID rather than a Label. If you choose Multi-select from the Display Picklist As field (see below), the picklist can be mapped to a multi-select lookup. It cannot, however, be mapped to a single-select lookup when Multi-select is chosen.

Dynamic Picklists and Active Form Tables

Dynamic picklists can be included in Active Form tables. Because fields in tables inherit their field type from the object field they represent, an additional step is required. When adding an Active Form field to a table, check the Display Lookup as Dynamic Picklist checkbox to display it as a picklist rather than a lookup field. The Rule Builder on the Picklist Values tab can still be used to filter which records are available.

Dynamic Picklists and Enhanced Prefill

Dynamic picklists support enhanced prefill. If a field is being prefilled from a Dynamic Picklist, it can return either one or more record IDs, a static value, or a comma-separated string. The specific behavior depends on the field type of the prefilled field and whether the dynamic picklist is configured as single- or multi-select. For more information, see our Configuring Active Forms article.

Validation Check Scenarios

A range of scenarios has been made compatible with dynamic picklists. The following conditions are checked automatically:

  • Incompatible field types: Unlike predefined picklists, field compatibility for Dynamic Picklists is determined by the Field Type of the field displayed in the picklist itself.

  • Lookup field mapped to incompatible object.

  • Lookup object doesn’t exist

  • Mapped field doesn’t exist

  • Not assigned to a Field Section, unlike other fields.

  • Not linked to an Action

  • Shared Activities isn’t enabled

Additional validations are performed automatically when you attempt to save an Active Form Field with a dynamic picklist enabled:

 

Validation Checked On Method Error Message
Dynamic Picklist Object doesn’t exist Dynamic Picklist Object field Check the API Name specified in this field against the existing objects in the org. The object specified for this Dynamic Picklist doesn’t exist, so the field will not appear on the form. Confirm the field name is spelled correctly, and that the API Name is being used (not the Label).
Dynamic Picklist Value Field doesn’t exist Dynamic Picklist Value Field field Check the API Name specified in this field against the existing fields for the specified Dynamic Picklist Object. The field specified as the Dynamic Picklist Value Field doesn’t exist so that Name will be used instead. Confirm the field name is spelled correctly, and that the API Name is being used (not the Label).
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