title: unable to concatenate the first 3 characters of one list field with another list field in shareoint infopath form
body: <p>I am trying to concatenate a designator field that combines my autonumbered index field with the first 3 characters of my group field</p>
  
  <p>Index field automatically incremented current Highest index +1
  I have another field that needs to Join the first 3 characters of my group field with the index field</p>
  
  <p>example
  Index: 1008<br>
  Group: ABM Support<br>
  Designator: (Desired result) 1008ABM</p>
  
  <p>I get an error in the InfoPath form when I try to use:
  concat((LEFT(Group,3), Index)</p>
  
  <p>Expected value type: )</p>
  
  <p>Actual value: ,
  concat((LEFT(../my:Group,3)-->,&lt;-- ../my:Index)</p>
  
  <p>I have two Items I need to combine as a Designator for a SharePoint list. I have been able to auto increment the Index number, and I need to combine the index and first 3 characters of the group field to create the designator. I realize now I cannot use a concatenate string i.e. concatenate(LEFT(Group,3), Index). The problem lies that there are no common consistent characters to set a substring statement up. I was thinking to Add a default space at the beginning of the input and use that but not really sure how to go about that. Please advise if that would work and how to go about it.</p>