I need my customers to be able to select their department from a pick list in order to submit a request. We currently have a list of 720 departments. Can a custom field pick list handle that many choices? Is there any way to import this information, or does it have to be manually entered?

 Thanks,

I don't believe there is a physical limit to the number of values in a picklist.  I recently tested how many values could be added to a Dynamic Application picklist field, and if memory serves, we got up to about 150 before stopping.  However, I wouldn't recommend adding this many values to a picklist for a couple of reasons:

They must be manually entered and maintained, which is more of a hassle than an ongoing inconvenience but will be a source of frustration for someone, like when you lose all of your work if you hit the backspace key when the cursor focus is set outside of a text field, triggering the browser "Back" function.

In my experience, if users have more values to choose from than what is visible in the picklist without having to scroll, they will generally pick the value that is "close enough" or one of the first values in the list, or they won't use the form at all.  From an adoption and usability standpoint, lists of values of more than about 20 options tend to be perceived as increasingly harder to use, or decreasingly intuitive.

Is there anyway to consolidate your list?  Maybe group the departments at a level that makes it much easier as a picklist, then provide a text field for the specific department?  This way you have the selectable data point for grouping and reporting, and the manually-entered level of detail the users can enter as appropriate.

Thanks, Erik. I actually had a student enter all the department names in manually prior to the holidays. She was able to do so, without any trouble. I realize this must be manually maintained, and that may be an issue eventually. Our departments are used to looking through long lists to find the right department. Such is university life. If we don't standardize on department names, there is no consistency for reporting (e.g. Office of the Provost or Provost's Office...UCD Library, Library, Main Library, Shields Library, Peter J. Shields Library, etc.). 

 Thanks for your response.

 - Karen

I like it - putting the "work" in work study!  I hope this continues to work as a solution for you until we are able to offer something that makes it a little easier to administer.  I'd be interested to hear your feedback on how it goes after it's been in use for a little while.

The best bet may be "Smart Picklists" or "Branching Logic". In other words there is a series of questions which change depending on the answer to the preceding questions. So rather than get a pick list of all cities in the coutry, the list is shortened when you first pick a state and a county

Just to let you know, I had nothing to do one night and almost fell asleep when I got to 750 where I gave up. 

One of the items discussed for future releases was intelligent branching.  I don't know how far this discussion has gone. 

The concept of branching or heirarchically-linked picklists is a backlog item that will be a tremendous benefit in many areas when we implement it, especially if it can be coupled with conditional routing for Project Requests or other items that may be submitted for approval.  Someone from our product management team will have to chime in on details like tentative development timelines, but making the application more dynamic and reactive in general is a component of the overall Daptiv direction.