Introducing Gravity Forms Populate Anything 2.0
Populate Anything 2.0 is a powerhouse when working with large quantities of dynamic data. But it does this with a helping hand from our next release: GP Advanced Select.
Not so hot take. Populate Anything is the most powerful, versatile data population plugin in the Gravity Forms ecosystem. It has earned its reputation as the Swiss Army plugin because, on top of dishing out dynamic data like a delivery boy, it reimagines what’s possible with Gravity Forms.
Populate Anything 1.0 was a huge leap forward in functionality, performance, and stability. It’s time to explore 2.0, which is all about speed and improvements when working with large amounts of data.
Our Secret Weapon
Users pushed Populate Anything to its limits by dynamically populating thousands of field choices and values through numerous connection points. Naturally, this can bring The Clunk ™ and we’ve been testing 2.0 as a solution.
When it comes to value population and complex chaining, Populate Anything 2.0 is far faster than its predecessor. For example, turning 25 seconds of loading time into 1.8. 2.0 has also been refactored for improved reliability and future development.
What else?
2.0 Paves the Way for GP Advanced Select
Populate Anything 2.0 might not be a silver bullet for exceptionally large data sets but it can tag-team your data with Gravity Forms Advanced Select, a perk we’re announcing right now. Why?
These two are the big, dynamic data dream team.
Here’s how it works:
GP Advanced Select is a perk designed to improve Gravity Forms field UX, accessibility, and flexibility. When used with Populate Anything, Advanced Select profoundly improves the performance (speed) of heavily populated fields.
With Populate Anything, Advanced Select can:
- Lazy load (i.e. infinite scroll) thousands of dynamically populated choices. Only 50 choices will be loaded by default. And it will load 50 more with each scroll.
- Optionally delay loading of choices until fields are interacted with.
- Use a select’s search value to filter the choices returned, meaning efficient queries and reduced browser burden.
GP Advanced Select is almost ready for launch. We’re putting the finishing touches on it now — expect a release within a few weeks.
Notes on Rolling out 2.0
This time around, we’re scrapping the prolonged beta.
Populate Anything 2.0 is available immediately by manual download for all customers. It will be the default version served for new installations.
This gets new customers and new installations using 2.0 immediately, while still preserving our ability to serve updates to existing installations of the 1.x branch. Once we’re confident 2.0 is ready for existing installations, it will become available via auto-update and we will stop serving the 1.x branch.
We’ll be sure to keep you informed along the way via Gravity Wiz Weekly.
–
Be the First to Try Populate Anything 2.0!
Populate Anything is available now on new installs and by manual download. Stay tuned for Advanced Select in the coming weeks!
To update to v2.x, do you install the new version over top of the old or what is the process?
Hi Will,
Yes, for now, to update to version 2, you’ll need to download the v2.x from your account and manually install it over the old one. It should work without any issues.
Best,
If i have 2 nested form in one form, can i populate entries from the first nested form into the 2nd nested form without having to submit?
Hi Raul,
This should be possible with our GP Populate Anything Perk and a custom snippet. The setup will however depend on your use case, so if you have an active Gravity Perks license, you can contact us via the support form so we can assist you further.
Best,
Great but it would have been preferable to be able to populate the contents of a dropdown with an SQL query on a table of an external database in which I store a list (without using a hack to insert in the PHP code)
Hi Marcus,
I don’t know if this is what you’re referring to as the hack, but we have a snippet you can use to allow Populate Anything connect to an external database to get from. I hope this helps. https://github.com/gravitywiz/snippet-library/blob/master/gp-populate-anything/gppa-custom-database.php
Best,
Would Populate Anything and Advanced Select give me the ability to populate the list with existing tags, but also give the user the ability to add a new tag if it doesn’t already exist?
Hi Kevin,
Populating the List with existing tags is possible but the functionality to add a new tag isn’t currently possible with the GP Advanced Select Perk. I will forward this to our Product manager as a feature request.
Best,
Hi Guys
Any news on GP Advanced Select?
Hi Christopher,
GP Advanced Select Perk will be released any week from now.
Best,
Populate Anything is incredible; we use it for tons of functions. We are looking forward to 2.0 and Advanced Select. While we have been able to load a dataset of 5,000 records from GSheets with 1.0, it was only by paring down the size of the sheet to the bare minimum number of columns. It sounds like 2.0 will easily eliminate that restriction.
GPPA is already an integral part of critical processes. It would revolutionize our service, though, if GPPA could populate from… Airtable. Just a thought….. ;)
Keep it up, Wizards. You guys are amazing!
Appreciate the love, Bob!
Excited to hear how Populate Anything 2.0 handles your use case. When combined with Advanced Select, it can make loading large datasets incredibly performant.
We hear you on Airtable! 😂
Great! How can I activate GP Advanced Select?
Hi Oliver, GP Advanced Select is almost ready for launch. We’re putting the finishing touches on it and expect to release it within a few weeks.
Awesome news Wizards! I’m hooked to those blog posts, keep ’em coming!
Hi Gui, thanks for the kind words. We’ll keep ’em coming!