Entity Reference Automation

Entity reference simplifies content editing by auto filling field data based on relations when changes are made to a content entity. This takes concern away from worrying about assigning values on two fields, and means that content can be more organized. The auto fill of fields is handled in the browser, to allow the user to review the values before the change is made.

Example usage:

Case 1: ER Auto can be useful on complicated sites, where multiple taxonomy, entity references, or fields, are duplicated across entities. A site might use two taxonomies. One for access control. the other for filtering content in search and views. If the site usually attaches a set of access terms to a category, then this can be automated using ER Auto. Allowing a content editor only to be concerned with the topic of their new content, not who needs to be able to access it.

Case 2: A tech business, has a knowledge base. They have categories and tags for different topics. They might use ER Auto to associate a "end user" topic to "how to documentation" while other content, such as "API" or "Admin account" might be reserved for more technical users.

Setup

These are the steps to setup a basic reference automation. Use case: New issues should be automatically assigned to the project owner.

1) Field configuration:
- The project content type has an Entity Reference field `owner` that has a target type `user`.
- Similarly, the issue content type, has an Entity Reference field `assigned_to` that has a target type `user`.
- The issue content type also has a Entity Reference field `project` that has a target type `node`.
2) On the config page, for the `project` field, check `Enable Automation based on this field?
3) Select the `owner` field from the first multi select.
4) Select the `assigned_to` field on the second mutliselect.
5) save.

Now when setting the project for an issue, the assignee will be pre populated.