Dynamic Population of Sharepoint fields

Question

Can someone please help me with a query on Sharepoint?

Suppose, I have a list called employee database and the list has two columns Name and employee ID.

Employee ID   Name
1             John
2             Mary
3             Peter
4             Mark

Now, I create a new list called, employee registration tracker and have following field in this list; Employee ID Name DOB

Is there any way by which, while entering a new item in this new list, I just enter employee id and using some javascript, it fetches ‘name’ corresponding to that ID from employee database list and automatically populates the field ‘Name’ in this list. So this way we do not have to again enter name.

We have approx 500 team members in different teams and we need to keep track of them. I tried various ways like cascading dropdowns etc, but such a big list it does not allows. Also like I told you earlier, I need to make all this in my enterprise firewall and other restrictions where they do not allow sharepoint integration with MS access , Sharepoint developer etc and the only way I have is easy javascript in CAML.

Answer 1

If you are on SP 2007, consider using Web services. For example the SPServices library has a utility called $().SPServices.SPDisplayRelatedInfo that just does what you're looking for.

Another option would be to build a workflow in SharePoint Designer that will fetch the other columns after you save the form.

For the record SP 2010 does this out of the box with lookup columns.

I should also mention that duplicating information is not a good idea. SharePoint provides other techniques, like joined views or Web Part connections, to achieve what you want.

Answer 2

Yes you can do this using the JavaScript Client Object Model: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/60348/SharePoint-2010-Client-Object-Model-for-JavaScript

http://praveenbattula.blogspot.in/2010/02/sharepoint-2010-client-object-model.html

What you can do is capture the key pressed event (using jQuery) of the textbox where you enter the Employee Id and then using the JSCOM, go to the Employee Database list and fetch the employee name with that id. (It should be as simple as getting an item from a list).

And then just push the name of the employee into the appropriate text box.