About Lookup Behaviors

Use the Lookup behavior to specify a set of dynamically generated field value choices to be included in a drop down list. The Lookup behavior can retrieve data of any type, and can obtain the data from the task view data or from an external system, (such as Objectel) using a Data Instance behavior. You can also define the behavior to display multiple columns to the end user.

You attach Lookup behaviors to simple type data nodes, and define the location of the data using an XPath expression. When the Lookup behavior retrieves the data, it expects a repeating XML data structure that it will use to build the list of options.

When configuring Lookup behavior properties, you define where the OSM server should obtain the information, how much information to present in the drop down list, the order in which the options should be presented to the user, and the value that the OSM server uses for the data node (for which the Lookup behavior is defined) when a user makes a selection. For example, consider that you want a Lookup behavior to retrieve a code and a description of mobile phone handset color options. You can create a Data Instance behavior to retrieve the available handset color options from inventory, and display those options to the user with a Lookup behavior:

Code Column Value	Description Column Value
12HS00B	Blue Handset
12HS00S	Silver Handset
12HS00R	Red Handset

You might elect to display only the description to the user (in a single column) but update the task data with the code value.

Note:

See OSM Concepts for more information about behavior default values, inheritance, and declarative syntax.