Thanks that seemed to work fine. Thanks again. The dropdown list gets populated when I click on the column. Is there a way to ensure that its already pre-populated as the grid loads?

I think I figured out the answer to my 2nd question on the filtering. I noticed there is a parameter passed into the action called: _search. This wil be set to true when a filter is used for searching.

The 'index' attribute set in the sj:gridColumn will contain the value the user enters in the filter.