How to allow for autocomplete Person/Group for a new custom site column of type Person or group

Question

I have added a new site column named “Assinged To” of type “Person or Group”, then I added it to the page layout.

The final result was that I can search for our active directory user/groups.but if I start typing a string inside the column then no autocomplete will occur. For example I type “joh” but it did not autocomplete the results (john).

So is there a way to add this feature? Thanks

Answer 1

there is no OOTB feature in SharePoint 2010 but you can achieve it using Jquery.

Please refer the below links it would help you. https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/eusp/pages/autocomplete-for-sharepoint-people-picker.aspx

Autocomplete people picker in sharepoint2010

http://spjsblog.com/2010/03/25/autocomplete-for-sharepoint-people-picker/

For SharePoint 2013 it works, just wait after typing the name for some seconds. Sometimes it takes time to load the username.

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According to your post, my understanding is that autocomplete for people picker field is not working in custom layout form.

People picker loses its autocomplete functionality and defaults to the old style on a form page other than the default form.

As a workflow around, you can add the JavaScript Code to the form page in the SharePoint Designer to add autocomplete functionality.

For more information, you can refer to: Javascript Reference Link

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There is a new control called ClientPeoplePicker.

You can change the "<SharePoint:FormField" to "<SharePoint:ClientPeoplePicker" to display as the new control.

However, you need to add function to get and set the value to the control.

More information:ClientPeoplePicker in SharePoint 2013

Thanks!

Answer 2

I faced the same issue when my SharePoint 2010 portal was migrated to SharePoint 2013. I created a new page layout and everything started working. But for old layout Autofill was not working at all. Verify using developer tools that below files are getting loaded:

1. clienttemplates.js
2. clientforms.js
3. clientpeoplepicker.js
4. autofill.js
5. SP.JS

If these files are not getting loaded then explicitly add reference to these files. And try with below javascript

                     <script src="/_layouts/15/SP.Runtime.js"></script>
                <script src="/_layouts/15/SP.js"></script>
                <script src="/_layouts/15/clientform.js"></script>
                <script src="/_layouts/15/clientpeoplepicker.js"></script>
                <script src="/_layouts/15/autofill.js"></script>
                <script type="text/javascript">

                    function SetUserFieldValue(fieldName, userName) {
                        var _PeoplePicker = $("div[title='" + fieldName + "']");
                        var _PeoplePickerTopId = _PeoplePicker.attr('id');
                        var _PeoplePickerEditer = $("input[title='" + fieldName + "']");
                        _PeoplePickerEditer.val(userName);
                        var _PeoplePickerOject = SPClientPeoplePicker.SPClientPeoplePickerDict[_PeoplePickerTopId];
                        _PeoplePickerOject.AddUnresolvedUserFromEditor(true);
                    }
                    SetUserFieldValue("Assigned To", "Domain\\UserID");
                </script>

Answer 3

I had trouble finding a complete drop-in solution for custom forms in SharePoint Designer, so with the help of some other resources I developed my own. I answered this another Stack Exchange post, which can be found here: Permalink: Clientpeoplepicker control in custom SharePoint List form

To summarize, you add an old style picker as <SharePoint:FormField ... tag and a new style picker as <SharePoint:ClientPeoplePicker ... tag for each form field that needs a picker and use javascript to copy values between them, hiding the old style SP2010 pickers on the page. It requires careful setting of attributes.