Use external lookup field to check status of a request

[ab_cdef]

Hi,

I have a question regarding tracking the status of one request using another. Specifically I’d like to know if this can be achieved with an external lookup field.

Here’s the scenario:

• I have Request A.
• I want to use Request A to track the status of Request B.

In the custom form for Request A, is it possible to include a lookup field where:

• I can select Request B from a request queue project.
• A second field displays the status of Request B.
• A third field displays the link of Request B.

To summarize, there would be three fields:

• Field 1: Select a request from a request queue.
• Field 2: Show the status of the selected request in Field 1
• Field 3: Show a clickable link of the selected request in Field 1

If this approach is logical and feasible, I would appreciate any help on how to configure the three external lookup fields, particularly with respect to their Base API URL and JSON Path.

I hope this explanation makes sense.

Thank you for your time and assistance!

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi @ab_cdef,

While you could use an external lookup (or typeahead) to (1) find and connect one request another, and it then might be possible to (3) fish out enough information in a calculated parameter to then create a clickable link, although an external lookup might be able to also show you the status of the target (where I believe a typeahead cannot), that status would be "as of the moment of connection" (i.e. as you are making that connection), but -- being static and decoupled -- would become stale, and not show you the target's status as it changes. So...not recommended.

Instead, if you have Fusion, you could poll/pull the data to keep it fresher.

Alternatively, if you simply tagged such related Requests with some custom data (e.g. a Job Number, the date, etc.) in a custom data parameter, you could then create an Issue report that would filter (and/or prompt) for such related Requests, group them by that custom data parameter, and use the resulting (always live) data to compare their status values "beside each other" and then take appropriate action.

Regards,

Doug

[ab_cdef]

Thanks @Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore 

I’ve managed to use an external lookup field to display the ID of Request A (using this example): $$HOST/attask/api/v15.0/optask/search?name={DE: my custom field}&fields=ID

But when I tried using a separate calculated field to construct a clickable URL for Request A using the value from this external lookup field, Workfront threw an error:

An error occurred while making a call to the mentioned API endpoint (URL: https://xxxxxx.workfront.com/attask/api/v15.0/optask/search?name=xxxxx&fields=, Status Code: 422). Please check your parameters and try again.

This is somewhat expected, as it seems you just can't directly pull the value of an external lookup field into a calculated field.

Do you have any suggestions for constructing a clickable URL for Request A now that I have the request ID from the external lookup field?