Web Service Drop-down - Excel Source (Confiform)
Asked by Andre T_:

I have created a Web Service Drop-Down to pull data from a specific Excel file. The drop-down field shows the entries pulled from the Excel just fine, but I am having trouble doing a validation lookup against the web service drop down because it is not yet part of my confiform table of data.

Any ideas on how to do a lookup against an excel column without having those entries part of the Confiform table yet?


Answers:
author: Alex Medved _ConfiForms_
body: Hi

I am afraid you cannot lookup agains the excel file through ConfiForms.

As I am assuming you are using the experimental API we provide to read the contents of an Excel file and that does not provide any support for parameters / lookups

Alex

comments: author: Andre T_
body: Hi Alex,

Is it also normal behavior that the column pulled from excel doesn't show up in the preview drop-down window?

Is there an alternative way to pull a column from Excel to a Confiform field? My column from Excel has 1400 rows.

Thanks!


author: Alex Medved _ConfiForms_
body: Preview might not work, especially if a webservice uses context variables (and even if it does not I think we dont render in the preview)

What do you mean by pulling the column? You can setup a dropdown and then you can build a view and put a ConfiForms Field macro with a field name set to show any other associated (with row) column from your excel

Assuming your dropdown field is called myfield and you want to show the column 4 form excel

then you put a field name to

```
myfield.cell4
```


author: Andre T_
body: I am trying to do validation (data set) against that field but it isn't working...

webservice field is called Excel

I am looking to pull second column from Excel and due a Validation Rule (data set) against another column:

Excel.cell2:\[entry.field\]

Based on user input from "field" should compare against the entire cell2 dataset and provide a message if found. Unfortunately since the entire dataset isn't in the confiform table, this isn't working for me.

Any thoughts?


author: Alex Medved _ConfiForms_
body: Well, it actually works for me just fine.

It does not need a whole dataset, as it can use "excel" field as a bridge to get other values of a "row". Same what it does with any sort of a "rich" field (jira, web service backed, insight objects, smart and database fields)


author: Andre T_
body: I think that's the problem. I am trying to do a search of the entire drop-down column field (excel) to find the input value from the user. (not the row, but entire column which is found under the WebService Drop-down field "Excel")


author: Alex Medved _ConfiForms_
body: Sorry, I am confused now.. Dont understand really anymore

I am searching through the whole ConfiForms dataset, not the excel of course, as I mentioned before (there is no lookup into excel)

But if the data is in the form (stored), then you can access ANY other cell of your excel file for the particular row you have stored in the ConfiForms dataset


author: Andre T_
body: Got it, that is my understanding as well. The data needs to be stored in the form in order for it to be searchable, otherwise the data pulled from Excel via Webservice isn't searchable.

Thanks!


Tags: confiforms

ms-excel

webservice