Updating the #SharePoint People Picker

So I was working with a friend on a custom SharePoint list. When users create a new item certain fields needed to automatically populate with information from their profile. We ran into issues when trying to populate the people picker.

Scripts like SPFF can be used to accomplish this but we needed something else because we wanted to read in the current user’s information from the SharePoint web service. Additionally we wanted to avoid passing information using the query string because users would be able to access the form through multiple links.

So to prefill the form with some information we used a simple jQuery script in a Content Editor Web Part on the NewItem.aspx page. Initially we tried to target the input by using its title. This did not work so I looked at the code of the page using FireBug. It turns out that the field is actually a hidden textarea and what you see on the screen is actually just a div with a class of ms-inputuserfield. Here is part of the code we used to populate the people picker.

<script type="text/javascript">
var user = "dcavins"
$(document).ready(function() {
$('div.ms-inputuserfield').text(user);
});
</script>

This script can used along with the SP web services to prepopulate the people picker and other fields of a list. This is useful if you have a contacts list where you want people to be able to add themselves or a task list where users are supposed to assign items to themselves. Prepopulating fields makes it easier for the user saving them time.

The Rich Text Field is similar to the people picker in that it also hides the actual textarea and uses a div instead. In a later post I will explain how to use the web service to prepopulate list fields with information from the current users profile.

Useful Links on this topic

Set a People Picker’s Value on a Form