How to Pre-Populate a field in a form with a unique ID?

John- Michael Diedrich

Hello Community,

I am asking for your help today figuring out a challenge I am currently facing. We are trying to pre-populate the "Work Order ID" field in the form because it is often overlooked or entered incorrectly. We have been trying to figure it out but it is hard because you cannot have a column formula field in the form, so we must figure out a workaround. I tried making an automation to record a unique ID in the field, but we can't use formulas in the automation to calculate the unique ID. We are stuck and out of ideas at this point.

Any help here is greatly appreciated! Let's figure this challenge out.

Thank you

Michael Culley

Do you need the Work Order ID on the form or can you just have it on the sheet itself?

Paul Newcome

If you use a column formula, you do not need the field to be in the form. If you are trying to communicate the generated unique ID to the submitter, you can set up an alert that sends out to them and include the unique ID field.

John- Michael Diedrich

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/347038#Comment_347038

Ideally we will have it on the form

Michael Culley

yea I just don't think that's possible. Perhaps another creative solution is using the form logic to sorta guide form users on how to enter it properly? Like having the form reveal columns that give instructions on how to properly enter the correct work order ID based on their previous selections.

Other than that I would say it must be on the sheet itself and not on the form.

Paul H

@John- Michael Diedrich Do you have access to data shuttle? I had a similar problem and now upload a master list of open jobs to populate a dropdown list restricted to dropdown selections only.

Previously people had to enter Job#, Item, and Qty all separately on the form, now they are all combined into a single dropdown with no typos. Using a unique separator I can break them back down to their own columns on the sheet.

Michael Culley

@Paul H I think you meant to tag @John- Michael Diedrich