Watch our tutorial video “How to create Custom Dropdown Lists”

What are Dropdown Lists?

Dropdown lists (previously known as Look-up Tables) control many of the fields within the CRM system. These include the Country, Account Type, Sector on the Account record, Salutation on the Contact record, Task Status and Task Type on the Task record, Activity Type on the Activity record, Status, Forecast and Product on the Opportunity record.

Each dropdown list can be maintained and customised to meet your business needs.

Look Up Tables: Custom Dropdown Lists in your CRM

Creating, Editing and Deleting Dropdown Lists

If you have created a new Custom Field you might want to create a Custom Dropdown List to drive that field.

Create a New Dropdown List

To create a new dropdown list, go to Settings/System Setting, then ‘Custom Dropdown Lists’. Select the record you wish to change, for example, AccountType. To create a new list click ‘+ Add’.

Look Up Tables: Custom Dropdown List

Give your new list a name and click ‘Continue’.

New Look Up Table or dropdown list

Next, add the dropdown items to create your list by typing in your item name and clicking ‘Add new item’. You can reorder your list by “dragging and dropping” the row using the icon in the left-hand column or delete any items you don’t want by clicking the trash icon. Then click ‘save’. If you then go You can go back to your Custom Field you can update the ‘Look Up Table’ field as required.

Look Up Tables: Create New Dropdown list

Editing a Dropdown List

To edit an existing dropdown list, or Look Up Table, go to Settings/System Setting and click on ‘Custom Dropdown Lists’. Open the list you wish to change, e.g. AccountType, and edit the table as required.

You can change to order of the list by “dragging & dropping” using the icon in the left-hand column.

Delete any rows you do not want using the trash icon.

Deleting a Dropdown List

To delete a dropdown list, open the list you wish to delete and remove all the list entries by clicking the trash icon, then save.

Multi-Line Custom Fields

If you want to create a Custom Field where you can select more than one option within the dropdown, you can use Multi-Line Custom Fields, for example for Products, where a customer may buy more than one product from you. Create the LookUp Table as normal and when you add the table to your Custom Field, select the table Type as ‘Multi-Line’.

Multi-Line Custom Fields

List Order

You can change the dropdown list order by “dragging & dropping” the rows in your list. With your mouse, click and hold the ‘+’ icon in the left hand column and drag it to the order position you want. Then release your mouse and save.

Look Up Tables: Create New Dropdown list

Include in Forecast Reports

The dropdown list ‘OpportunityForecast’ has an additional checkbox against each Table Value, labelled ‘Include in Forecast’. Selecting ‘yes’ will allow Opportunities with a Forecast set to that Table Value to be included in your Forecast Reports (although you can also override this in the report generator).

For example, Table Values of ‘Forecast’, ‘Upside’ and ‘Closed’ could be flagged to be included in forecasts, while table Values of ‘Not Forecast’ or ‘Dead’ would not be.

Include Value In Forecast Report

Cross-refer fields with Derived Tables

The Derived Tables feature gives a number of options to cross-refer fields within the CRM. For example, whilst an Opportunity or Task is held at the Account level you can add a Custom Field to the form to link it to a particular Contact within the Account. This means you can record which is the main Contact for that Opportunity of Task.

The Derived Tables are “hard coded” into your CRM so you do not need to create a new Dropdown List – nor do they appear on the Look Up Table lists. You will need to type them into the Custom Field table using the text format as shown in the list below.

Adding a Derived Table

In Settings/System Settings go to Custom Fields. Click on the name of the form/table you wish to add the Derived Table to, e.g. Opportunity. Create a new Custom Field and set the “Type” field to “text”. In the Look Up Table field add the Derived Table you wish to use in the same text format as shown in the list below (the fields are not case sensitive):

 Derived Table  List Details
Users List of user login initials on your system
LiveUsers List of “live” user login initials on your system
ContactName List of contacts in the associated account
ContactPhone List of contacts combined with their phone and mobile numbers in the associated account
OpportunityName List of opportunities in the associated account
ActiveCampaigns List of all the active campaigns in your marketing system

Using Derived Tables

The field will initially suggest that you need to create this table – but just save the changes and the CRM will accept your new table.

If you then take a look at the form/table you have customised, the Derived Table will appear. In the example below and new field of ContactName with a dropdown list of all the Account’s contacts has been created within the Oportunity. Selected the Contact for the Opportunity and save.

You will then be able to run reports on any of these fields.

Look up Tables: Setting up Derived Tables