I'm trying to categorize symbology by a particular portion of a column (the left 3 characters). This layer is based on a SQL view that I don't have access to modify -- and I don't want to create a copy because it needs to be updated daily. (So I suspect creating a calculated field isn't possible)
I want it to look something like this:
ID Name Category
1 ABC123 ABC
2 ABC828 ABC
3 DEF381 DEF
Then color by the category column (which doesn't exist currently). I know I could manually change the symbol and description on each item, but there are hundreds and more show up randomly. The first 3 letters should be consistent though.
Any way to accomplish this without database access, while retaining the ability for the layer to update dynamically as the data changes in the source?