Sharepoint 2013 - People picker does not work in custom form

Question

I have some people picker fields in a new custom form. The original form has the type ahead feature - searching the specific SharePoint groups.

I am able to change the fields in SP Designer from SharePoint:FormField to SharePoint:ClientPeoplePicker. Once I choose the SharePoint:ClientPeoplePicker I also loose the SharePoint group I am wanting to search - instead I get a full AD list which is not going to work due to permissions set within the form - not to mention the confusion for the end user.

I really need the solution to search the persons inside the specified SPGroup.

Is there a way to do this in SP designer or with some script?

Answer 1

Default behaviour limits the ClientPeoplePicker to return only users from SharePoint, the ClientPeoplePicker does not return SPGroups or Active Directory Groups or Security Groups nor Distribution Groups.You can configure client side people picker to get groups as below.

Follow below steps

1.Add references

<SharePoint:ScriptLink name="clientforms.js" runat="server" LoadAfterUI="true" Localizable="false"/>
<SharePoint:ScriptLink name="clientpeoplepicker.js" runat="server" LoadAfterUI="true" Localizable="false"/>
<SharePoint:ScriptLink name="autofill.js" runat="server" LoadAfterUI="true" Localizable="false"/>

<script type="text/javascript" src="../SiteAssets/jquery-1.11.1.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../SiteAssets/SPReferences/MicrosoftAjax.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../SiteAssets/SPReferences/sp.runtime.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../SiteAssets/SPReferences/sp.js"></script>

2.Initialize peoplepicker

$(document).ready(function(){
         SetPeoplePicker_Multiselect("peoplePickerspanId",true);  
    });
    function SetPeoplePicker_Multiselect(peoplePickerElementId, allowMultiple){
        if (allowMultiple == null) {
            allowMultiple = true;
        }
        var schema = {};
        schema['PrincipalAccountType'] = 'User,DL,SecGroup,SPGroup';
        schema['SearchPrincipalSource'] = 15;
        schema['ResolvePrincipalSource'] = 15;
        schema['AllowMultipleValues'] = allowMultiple;
        schema['MaximumEntitySuggestions'] = 50;
        schema['Width'] = '';
        SPClientPeoplePicker_InitStandaloneControlWrapper(peoplePickerElementId, null, schema);
    }

3.Add Markup to page

<span id="peoplePickerspanId"> </span>

you can tweak it more as per your requirements.