"Long List" property of PickList

Here is one of the vanilla feature I want like to share, you might be knowing already, but recently I came across.

On Opportunity form applet, "Country" field is configured as a dropdown (static picklist) from which user can select the value from dropdown list. While "Account" field is configured as a dynamic picklist and with the help of pickapplet, user can select the value. The bottom line is, both fields are using some picklist to help the user for selecting the value.

The one difference, I observed, in these two cases is that whenever I try to open the dropdown list to select some new value in "Country" field, system opens up the dropdown list and does an additional step in locating the current value in the list. That means you will see the current value of field being selected when dropdown list get opened.

While this was not the case with "Account" field. Whenever I open up the pickapplet (Account Pick Applet) to select some new value, the cursor always point to the first record in the pickapplet.

I think you got the point which I want to highlight here and let me tell you the reason behind this.

This behaviuor is due to the "Long List" property of PickList.

This property is responsible for positioning the cursor to the current value in the dropdown list, if FALSE. That means if "Long List" = FALSE, then we are telling Siebel that "my field doesn't contain a big list, so please always locate the current value in the list whenever dropdown list get opened." And since, dynamic picklist are generally big in record counts, so we rarely use this property to be TRUE for them.

Note: Long List = FALSE, is not recommended for dynamic PickList. It will result in performance issues when you open the pickapplet