Setting up Enhanced Account Lookup and Auto-complete

The standard lookup dialog for accounts lets users search on the Account Name field only. If your account names are not unique and users would prefer to search on Account Number or other fields, you can do this by enabling enhanced lookups for the Account object.

You may also want to enable auto-complete so that when users start typing an account name into an Account field, the list of results dynamically updates to show recently used account names that match the string being entered.

The enhanced lookup and auto-complete functionality is provided by Salesforce. This topic explains how to enable the functionality for the Account object. Refer to the Salesforce Help for more information.

We recommend that you enable this functionality because it will allow your users to find the accounts they need more quickly.

Customize the Account Search Layouts

The enhanced lookup functionality makes use of the search layouts explained below. These layouts may have been pre-configured in your org by Certinia Customer Support, but you can follow the steps below to check the layouts and make further changes if required.

  1. From Setup, click Customize | Accounts | Search Layouts.
  2. Click Edit for the Lookup Dialogs layout. This layout determines the columns that are display by default in the account lookup's search results list. (Users can customize the columns further by clicking My Columns in the lookup window.)
  3. Ensure that the columns you want to be displayed by default are in the Selected Fields list, then click Save.
  4. Click Edit for the Search Filter Fields layout. This layout determines which fields are available to users to filter the search results further.
  5. Ensure that any fields users may want to filter on are in the Selected Fields list, then click Save.

Enable Account Search Settings

Once you are happy with the search layouts detailed above, enable the following settings:

  1. From Setup, click Customize | Search | Search Settings.
  2. In the Lookup Settings list of objects, select the Enhanced Lookups and Lookup Auto-Completion checkboxes for the Accounts object.
  3. Save your changes.

See Using Enhanced Account Lookups and Auto-complete for details of using this functionality within Accounting.