Sharepoint 2013 - How to create workflow to extract data to a list from the "specify your own value " field?

Question

I am wondering if there is a way to get the data that is entered into specify your own value which is a part of Content type, new folder/new item form I have set up for a document library.

This section in the image is for when there is a new client that is not already in our drop down menu.

I am curious if there is a way to pull every 7 days (for example) all data that is entered into that field and have it send me an email or a list of some kind. To help reduce the steps I take currently to make sure this list (drop down) is up to date.

See image:

Answer 1

You can use REST API to loop through all the items in the list. Beginner overview here: https://weblogs.asp.net/ricardoperes/looping-through-list-items-in-sharepoint-2013

A few notes for building your API call:

• You only want the data from this column, so just select its values ($select=column).
• Filter out the default values (and speed up the workflow) by weeding them out in the REST API URL ($filter=column NE 'existing value 1' AND column NE 'existing value 2' AND column NE 'existing value 3').
• You should also sort the data by this column to easily figure out new values when looping through the results ($orderby=column ASC). Selecting, sorting & filtering context and details here: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/35796.sharepoint-2013-using-rest-api-for-selecting-filtering-sorting-and-pagination-in-sharepoint-list.aspx

You'll end up with a REST API URL that looks something like this: http://server/site/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('yourlist')/items?$select=column&$filter=column ne 'existing value 1' AND column ne 'existing value 2' AND column ne 'existing value 3'&$orderby=column asc

Run the HTTP GET operation in your workflow to pull that data into a dictionary, then loop through the items to eliminate duplicates (save the previous value in a string and only add the new value to your report if it's different).

Lastly, send yourself an e-mail with that information, tell the workflow to pause for 6 days, 23 hours, and 55 minutes, and then loop back to the top. The whole thing will look something like this:

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

1. If you need "a way to pull every 7 days" something within a SharePoint environment - the right solution is a timer job and not a workflow (although it is also possible to implement this as a workflow)

2. It is indeed quite easy to implement such functionality - just get all the values since the last timer job run and compare it with a "field definition" (actually with all the "Choices" within a SPFieldChoice object)