Good way to allow people to select a lot of things?

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+1 Q:

Good way to allow people to select a lot of things?

I'm using jQuery, ASP.NET, SQL Server, and the other usual suspects to design a company CRM. After they put in contact info, notes, dates, places and so forth they have to be able to select many different people to be "CC'ed." A group of people will be required to be one either "CC'ed" or "ToDo." The rest of the people can be nothing or "CC" or "ToDo." Currently we have it set up as a huge databind to templates with radio buttons for each option. Looks like shit. Anyone have any suggestions? I'd like to use a template with a datasource and have a good way to retrieve their answers and use them.

I'm leaning jQuery direction but like I said I'll need there to be up to 3 possible options for the people. This is going to be all opinion so I'm just looking for options.

Just to re-clarify, this concept is similar to email but I don't want them to have to type anything in as it is a set group of names that they're allowed to select from.

Looking for quick simple and pretty. somewhere in the range of 120 names.

Typing with intellisense. Sorry - any graphical thing will look overloaded.

Or: A table with filter options on top (again, typing). THere simply is no other way.

TomTom 2010-06-04 15:39:03

Well I lean graphical because with the amount of people I worry people might complain about forgetting to CC names - if its graphical they can see the names they might otherwise forget about

jphenow 2010-06-04 15:50:09

It still will not work once you go over a specific amount of entries.

TomTom 2010-06-04 19:26:37

What I would most likely do to achieve this is implement the auto filter pattern that you type in a text box a few letters of the name and then it would filter down all of the overall results to those containing that pattern. Then have a select all button that will let you check all of them, and then the user can manually uncheck a few instead of having to check all.

The other thing to do would be to offer some type of categorization of the data so that they could filter by category that would put people in probable groups that would want all them all together. Like IT, HR, Executive or something similar.

Chris Marisic 2010-06-04 15:39:32

I've thought about some type of filtering. I'm trying to talk my boss into letting me add a field to the database that would hold different tags for filtering and go about it in that fashion.

jphenow 2010-06-04 15:51:03

+2 A:

If you intend to look down the jQuery route, I suggest that this widget could possibly help you out (even if only for inspiration sakes). http://quasipartikel.at/multiselect/

I'm struggling to "visualize" your form for terms of "real-estate expendature" etc.

Mike 2010-06-04 15:42:55

This is really interesting. The people are already broken into three groups based on hierarchy a little and if I separate them a little and have a few of these I could do it like this. This is simply an odd request, I agree with you all. Selecting over 50 people in a web form simply becomes awkward no matter how one lays it out :/

jphenow 2010-06-04 15:52:52

That multi-select example definitely fits with the first half of my answer.

Chris Marisic 2010-06-04 16:17:37

Great find. Added to toolbox

Eduardo Molteni 2010-06-09 00:31:25

+1 A:

Not directly what you are looking for, but this plugin may help http://devgrow.com/slidernav-jquery-plugin/

Eduardo Molteni 2010-06-09 00:30:49

This is my favorite definitely - Sweet find I'll have to book mark this one.

jphenow 2010-06-09 21:33:02

ansaurus

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Good way to allow people to select a lot of things?

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