Look up Workflow Data in from Secondary list
Summary: Look up workflow data from a SharePoint lists to support your workflow instead of inserting values inside the workflow.
Benefits
- High Visibility. Anyone can see who the focal points or approvers are for each category or stage of the workflow.
- Easy Maintenance. Anyone with contribute access to the specific list can update the focal points. They do not need SharePoint designer and only need basic SharePoint knowledge to update.
Instructions
- Create a custom list for the focal points with a list item per focal point
- In the workflow, instead of selecting a field to look up data (or of course typing the value directly into the workflow), select the list created in step 1 from the drop down menu
- Then select the field you want to return, example: focal point
- Then select the field to identify the item to return. I like to use the ID since that cannot be changed by a user.
You can also look up relevant data when using a look up column. Instead of specifying exactly which list item to find the data in, the look up column will determine that when the use selects the appropriate value. In the example below the user selects a specific pipeline, the workflow then looks up the relevant contact for that pipeline from the secondary list.
