Remembering Recent Selections in SharePoint Lookup Columns

Lookup columns in Microsoft SharePoint allow you to select a values (or values) for metadata attributes as you save or edit files in SharePoint. You choose from a drop down that displays entries retrieved from a List in SharePoint. As a Business User you often find yourself choosing the same old values - e.g. the name or ID of a project that you are working on, a classification that is common to your line of work, etc.

It would be nice if your most recent selections were displayed at the top of the list of valid values. In many cases that would significantly reduce the effort associated with cursoring down a long list of valid values to find the one(s) that you want. This is a personal thing, in the sense that the recent selections will most likely be different for each user.

This functionality is now available in the WISDOM Document Management Framework from MacroView. MacroView is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that specialises in solutions based on Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office, particularly solutions for document management and document automation. The WISDOM DMF add-on extends and enhances the native document management capabilities of SharePoint.

You can configure WISDOM DMF so that it only displays each user's recent selections for Lookups that contain more than a threshold number of entries (you really don't need help when dealing with short lists of valid values). You can also configure how many entries are displayed. Your most recent selection is displayed at the top of the list and also as the default value for the Lookup.