Autocomplete is useful when the supporter knows what they want to choose, but you can't work that out from their postcode or where they live. It's preferable to an ordinary select/dropdown field when there are too many groups to quickly scan through.
CleanShot 2026-08-07 at 16.46.32.mp4
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Use an Autocomplete field when you want your supporters to email their members of the German Bundestag
Imagine you had a custom dataset about river health where you had grouped water companies, local authorities and other organisations by the rivers they're responsible for. Someone could start typing "River Thames" and select it. You could then show your supporter the relevant targets for them and that river that you'd already grouped under the River Thames.
A trade union could run a campaign about working conditions in hospitals. A union member could start typing the name of the hospital where they work, choose it, and then email the Trust leaders or other employers responsible for staff at that hospital. Their home postcode wouldn't help in this case because they might live far away from where they work.
In each case, the supporter knows the thing they care about, ie the river or workplace. Autocomplete lets them find it quickly, and the custom target dataset tells Impact Stack which targets should be contacted about it.
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Let us know if you’d like to make a custom dataset to use Autocomplete like this. You can always reach us at [email protected]
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On the Form step of creating your Action, drag in a Select field from the Flexible form fields on the left hand hand side.
Select the Autocomplete dataset that your supporters will select from. This dataset will have details that the supporters will recognise and be able to select without difficulty.
The example below is from the German Parliament. See above for other examples that might be closer to the needs of your organisation.
Then your supporters will be able to see the targets that are relevant to them.
