What Does This Page Cover?
Learn how you can view a complete list of references for each of your form fields, thereby enabling you to make better, informed decisions.
Availability
Field references:
- are available in all the data centers.
- are accessible to users of both free and paid plan users.
- can be viewed only by the super admins, admins, and developers.
Overview
Field references enable you to select a field and view a list of every instance in which that field is being referenced at a glance. In your Zoho Creator app, you can gather and store data using
forms fields. Fields are the building blocks of your forms. Creator provides a variety of form fields ranging from basic text boxes to powerful AI fields. You can refer your fields inside multiple forms in your application, workflows, functions, report filters, and so on.
You can view the field references and make decisions as required. You can view the field references and make decisions as required. Let's assume that you want to change an employee's reporting manager upon the previous manager's resignation. You want to view all the instances where the previous manager field's value was being referenced before making the required changes. This is where the field reference comes into picture. You can view all the instances in which the field is referenced at a glance instead of manually navigating to each of the instances, thereby minimizing navigation and saving time.
Example
Let's assume you've created a Hotel Management application in which you've added a form named Reservation. This form has a field field that is used in the following places:
- As a lookup in other forms in the same application
- Inside a formula field in the same form
- In form and report workflows
- Inside a few custom functions
It would be tedious and time-consuming to manually find and open every reference of the Amount field individually to make changes. Instead, you can use the Field References property to view its the references and proceed to modify as required.
See how it works
View references for a field
- Navigate to the edit mode of your application.
- Open the form builder of the required form.
- Select the required field.
- Navigate to the Field Properties tab displayed on the right.
- Click View Details under Field References. A popup will appear.
- Click View beside the required reference to view and track that field's usage.
- If a field is not used anywhere except in a specific form, no references will be available for that field.
- When you use this field elsewhere, only then will its references will be listed under the Field References section.
Limitations
Currently, the following references for a field will not be shown.
- Grouping records in reports
- Field-based sorting in reports
- Fields added to be displayed in a report.
- Understand forms
- Understand fields
- Add field
- Delete field