Here's a simple tip that can improve the online
experience for your users in some cases if you are
using PeopleTools 8.4+.
If a field is edited by a "prompt" table, a
magnifying glass icon appears on the page. When you click
on this magnifying glass, a search form appears.
In addition to displaying the form, Tools will
now attempt to list all of the matching rows immediately
(or the first 100 if there are more
than that). You can then select one of these values
or specify search fields and resubmit the search.
The "auto-lookup" feature means that you can see the
possible selections without submitting the search
form. The problem is that in some cases, developing
this list can take a considerable amount of time.
We had one case in which the session actually
timed out while trying to display a search form.
Fortunately, an easy solution is available. We can
exclude a particular record (table or view)
from auto-lookup processing. At PeopleTools > Utilities
> Administration > Lookup Exclusion Table is a list
of records that should be excluded—in other words,
when this record is used as a prompt record,
the blank search page will be displayed and the user
must submit the search to get a list of matching values.
This permits the user to specify a narrow search first.
Note that although the instructions on the page refer
to a "record (table)," you can use any table or view.
When we added our troublesome record (the view
WORKER_PROMPT), the problem was solved.