Dropdown

The Dropdown component displays a list of available options and stores the option selected by the user.

Dropdowns are commonly used with:

Static entities,
Dynamic static entities, and
Expression-based option lists generated dynamically at runtime.

Figure 1:

Dropdown mental model.

How dropdowns work

A dropdown separates:

The list of available options as defined by the options source, and
The option selected by the user.

When the user selects an option from the dropdown, the selected value is displayed in the component while the binding stores the user’s selection.

Attention

A dropdown must be bound to a screen variable. The option source, such as a static entity, only provides the available dropdown options. It does not store the user’s selection. Without a binding, the dropdown has no place to store the selected option and may not display or behave correctly.

Common option sources

Dropdown options can be provided from multiple source types.

1. Static entity

A static entity is the most common approach for reusable lookup data such as:

Countries,
Currencies,
Cost centers, and
Department lists.

Static entities may be:

Maintained manually through the static entity editor, or
Loaded dynamically from spreadsheets, integrations, APIs, or server-side scripts.

2. Expression-based option list

Expression-based option lists generate dropdown options dynamically at runtime.

For example, available options may change based on process flow state or previously selected values.

Filtering

Dropdowns can optionally enable filtering to help users search and select values from large option lists.

Filtering is commonly used for lookup-style dropdowns such as:

Country lists,
Material libraries,
Product catalogs, or
Large reference datasets.