Fix order of items in selected in multi-select dropdown when in-line edited (in report)

[#1]

Description - I would love to see consistency when I'm applying same choices from multi-select dropdown to an item listed in a report (e.g. task). Let's say dropdown has 3 options: 1,2,3. Depending on in which order they will be applied against task they may appear in random order: 1,3,2;   3,2,1;   3,1,2 etc.

According to WF support randomness is per design.

Why is this feature important to you - Consistency in listing items makes it easier to read field values

How would you like the feature to work - Regardless of the order in which I select dropdown values, if I select the same values I would like to see them display consistently, as 1,2,3. Keep it consistent.

Current Behaviour - randomness

[#2]

Harrumph: not having a logical sort on multi-select parameters has bugged me for years, @Rafal_Bainie, so today, I decided to solve it.

For each such multi-select parameter (e.g. Parm A) that warrants your time, I invite you to consider maintaining a calculated parameter (e.g. Parm A Sorted) that checks the selected value in the logic (e.g. alphabetized) order you prefer, and in so doing, renders a consistent sort. Because it is persisted and consistent, Grouping by such Sorted parameters are now also far more valuable.

I've included a (non-alphabetical, but logical) working example below to illustrate. You can of course adjust the logic and conventions (e.g. " | " delimiter) to suit your own preference, and for inline editing, might prefer to shrink the data entry column to something smaller (e.g. an "X" as the header, with a "..." shown as a target for the end user to click and adjust the data) so that only the sorted end results are then visible.

Good luck with it -- I'm interested to hear how it works out.

Regards,

Doug

TIP: if this solved your problem, I invite you to consider marking it as a Correct Answer to help others who might also find it of use

[#3]

Hi @Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore,

thanks for this suggestion. if I didn't had so many dropdown fields with some of them having >20 values I would seriously consider implementing this.
I did test this in my environment and didn't had any problem with replicating the solution. One minor point would be that in CONTAINS first argument required refers to value and not to label, which might not be apparent from your screenshot, especially if both are the same. 

[#4]

#aacgotcha01

[#5]

that's a good improvement, I think I had a similar problem when I did my attempt. In my custom fied values are numbers, and I was encountering often situation that value, e.g. 4, would be found also in e.g. 14, 24, 34, 40, 41 etc. So essentially that brought me to a conclusion that all value items need to be unique for this to work properly.

[#6]

Hi again @Rafal_Bainie,

As I just mentioned here, I made some improvements to this technique yesterday to work around having two multi-select values that have similarly-worded values (namely, "Swimlane Project Owner" and "Swimlane Project") as follows -- note the REPLACE trickery:

AtApp Swimlane Tag Sorted:
CONCAT(IF(CONTAINS("Swimlane Portfolio",{DE:AtApp Swimlane Tag}),"Portfolio | ",""),IF(CONTAINS("Swimlane Program",{DE:AtApp Swimlane Tag}),"Program | ",""),IF(CONTAINS("Swimlane Project Owner",{DE:AtApp Swimlane Tag}),"Project Owner | ",""),IF(CONTAINS("Swimlane Project",REPLACE({DE:AtApp Swimlane Tag},"Swimlane Project Owner","SwimlaneProjectOwner")),"Project | ",""))

Regards,

Doug