Customise and manage Autonumber ID columns in SharePoint

This is the follow-on video showing you how to create a Central ID management system for all your ID number needs in SharePoint. Now you can freely customise your reference ID numbers with prefixes, suffixes, any number format you want and you can reset the autonumber any time and with any starting number. I'm looking to win some brownie points here. :-)

I am sorry it is 45 minutes long, but it is worth it for those of you wanting to completely manage all your ID fields in one place.

IN THIS VIDEO
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01:06 - Reset ID number using a new list (option 1).
06:06 - Reset ID number in an existing list using a central ID Manager (option 2).
08:25 - Part a: Add Prefix and suffix to an ID (Central ID Manager)
09:23 - Part b: Apply Format masks to an ID
14:40 - Create the Flow to generate an ID with Prefix, suffix and Format mask.
37:52 - The correct variable data type (float) to use with SharePoint numbers.
42:09 - Change the starting ID number (test).

[SirHellride]

Absolutely amazing demonstration. You have no idea how deep I searched for an understandable code example to make this happen.

[ryansutton]

Fantastic Tutorial! Been looking for a solution like this for a while and perfectly fits my needs.

[colindrew]

Excellent video, this is really going to help manage our unique references for our new system. Thank you!

[JulieBaker-fk]

Fantastic. Amazing. Exactly what I required to provide a customised numbering system not starting at 1 for a document request list we have recently migrated from on-prem ishare to SharePoint online. Thank you!

[samanthasmirnovas]

Great - exactly what I needed! Thank you!

[lornatic]

Thank you I've been looking to do something like this for a while.

[minjookim]

I have put this idea forward to our IT team. They love it, and they are now making a central ID system for our document management. Thank you x x

[stevebowler]

Hi John, This is great presentation. Clear, well explained and easy to follow. Thanks👍

[glyncalluthers]

I know this video is 4 years old now, but hey it still really cool, and really helpful. I tried it on the latest MS 365 and was able to follow it successfully, so thank you very much. I would like to add the same AutoNumber to a library, but struggling to see if this is even possible.

[eladiobardelli]

Excelente video gracias John, saludos desde Chile.

[David-bgbv]

Hello John - This is excellent and well presented. Loved the review of the failure detail. Great tutorial and very useful.

[jasonblais]

Great video. For whatever reason i couldn't type FormatNumber and then pull in the ID, so i used the option available under Expression called "Format data by examples" and it provided this, which worked perfectly:
concat('Case ', formatNumber(float(items('For_each')?['ID']),

[danielfonseca]

Hi John, Thank you so much! these 2 videos are very usefull for me. I gonna update my flow right now due a request to reset the Id number hehehe

[mirkosen]

Hi John, this works great for Items in a List, Thanks! What about Files in a document library? Can I make the new created files name (Or some Content type in the row) be generated from the same ID's List? I'm having trouble getting it to work... Looks like the ID's List can't be selected..

[chriskellum]

Mr. Day, thank you very much for this presentation, it has been very helpful for me to develop a SharePoint List which autogenerates a self-configured unique number. I have an additional question regarding the Get ID Information step. In the IDs list generated during the presentation, the ID number from that list is hard coded into the Get ID Information flow step. Can it be a variable?

I'm wondering how you would go about having the ID selected in the IDs list based on input from a field in the Bookings List? For example, let's say that you add a field to the Bookings list for the location of the booking, like Manchester (MAN), London (LON), Paris (PAR) and New York (NYA). When the user enters their booking for Manchester the ID would be MAN001, for London it would be LON001, PAR001, NYA001. Then the next time a MAN, LON, PAR or NYA was added it would be the next number for that location, i.e. MAN002, LON002, PAR002, NYA002. Essentially, you'd be able to look at the bookings list and see (based on the Booking Number) how many bookings you have in any of those locations.

Basically, the *ID field in the Get ID Information Step Flow would be kind of like a VLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH in Excel where it would see what the user entered in the Bookings List and find that related value in the IDs list find the number for that location, add 1 to it, then format it with the proper prefix/suffix and put it in the Bookings List then update the next number in the IDs list for that location.

[conaxlearn]

This looks like a great idea to manage IDs for various entities. I'm just wondering if this handles concurrency well enough? Say we have two users, each creates one booking at the same time. The flow may then triggered at the same time. However, if User A's flow calculates the new ID first, then user B's flow also calculates the new ID before User A's flow updates the new ID back to the IDs list, they would both end up with the same ID, wouldn't it? Of course chances of that happening is quite slim, but when (if) it happens, that would create an headache. We would need to somehow lock the IDs row to ensure only one flow is access it at any given time but that would add a lot more complexity to the system. 😅

[nielswillems]

Thanks realy helpfull, only one remark, when you copy several docs at once they all get the same number

[skubrats]

This is great, thanks! How do you handle when you have update item for a multiselect field that is set as required? Unfortunately, I'm not able get this to work correctly without overriding the original data in those fields.

[atanasneykov]

Hello John. Very nice learning! I have create mine database but found something should be repaired. I have managed to create two same unique IDs... guess because when theflow is running and some one create in the same time a record it can take the same ID number and then in the records we will have two identical numbers. How to avoid duplicate numbers? There must be some way or block the process while it's running and another user can't use it? Or there is another way?

[AntonRacing-gjlq]

wow thank you so much for the tutor! but what if the sharepoint list hit by more than 10 person in same time john? will the booking number got duplicated?