Lookup challenge ( lookup() function or otherwise )

[RADSr]

I have a list of products to which I want to assign categories and I'll want to repeat this process for multiple iterations.

So I can build an insight: 

PRODUCT, <formula column w/ category text>

The challenge is that I want to pick the category name from a list and then populate the formula column with the category *code.*   I'd use a lookup for something like that, but since the product list doesn't have a category ( or code ) associated with it I'm kind of stuck.

I have tried  lookup(category_name, $category_key, 'NA' ) but the lookup function is barking at me because it seemingly does not like session variables as the input key value.

I have an idea, but it's quite kludgy and I'm hopeful our Community has something elegant up their collective sleeves.

Thx!

[RADSr · Accepted solution]

OK - until something better comes along here's what I've done.    1) Created a formula column in the Incorta table concatenating name and code w/ a pipe delimiter  NAME|CODE   which makes the presentation variable easy to read and sortable alphabetically.    2) Created a presentation variable in the dashboard using the formula column.   3) Created formula column in the insight:

trim(

    substring(

        $PV_NameCode, 

        (find(

            '|', 

            $PV_NameCode

        ) + 1), 

        255

    )

)

Not mentioned in the OP - but really cool - is that this will enable me to pull data from an ERP, examine and segregate data, assign data new attributes, and then push the new attributes back to the ERP ( I'm thinking using a flat file to a data destination for that last bit ).