Hi my fellow citizen developers.  Lookups are a great way to relate objects together but can lead to a bad user experience if the lookup search isn’t configured well.

In this post we will be looking at a simple example of using a lookup field to define the instructor for a class.  So below shows the instructor field where we enter the last name of the instructor to be assigned to the class.

When we click on the lookup icon we see several results from our lookup search.  Unfortunately we have no additional information to determine which Ben Smith is the one we need to assign as the instructor.

To help users find the right instructor we need to include additional information in the lookup search to help them choose.  To do that we need to modify the Search Layout on the object that is holding our instructor information.

Go to the search layouts for the object you are using, in this case I am using Contact.  To help my users find the right contact record I am adding the contact’s title, department, reports to and email information in the Lookup Dialog.  So when a lookup search is done, more information is displayed.

Now with this information my user should be able to select the correct contact to assign as instructor for the class.

Hope this helps you with your configuration setup and user experience design.