Best practices: where should I store lists?

[STS1SS]

New to Power Apps. I have some experience coding and building apps. In the past I have uses various methods to store lists; Excel, CSV, XML, SQL etc.

When I say lists, I mean things like an Asset Type, Job Title, or a Status Type. Generally short lists of a couple to perhaps a dozen or so. Primary use is pickers, combo boxes, or drop downs etc. to maintain consistent data.

I thought I'd ask folks who have experience in this environment for recommendations.

I would appreciate your thoughts, including a brief reasoning would be helpful as well.

Thanks.

[cha_cha · Accepted solution]

Hello @STS1SS 

Here are my thoughts on this. If your organization doesn't have an extra budget, use SharePoint. Put the lists on a communication site that is accessible to everyone. Or you can create a dedicated area for this Shared Data.

Something to think about this, too, is that if this list is something you don't foresee going big, you might as well put them together in one list. The reason for this is that you might have some apps that will use a lot of lists. You can do something like Title, Settings, and Value columns in SharePoint. Ideally, power apps should not exceed more than 30 connections (Reference), so if you use, let's say, 20 lists just for this standard information, then it's going to be a roadblock later as it will limit the number of lists (and connections) you can use for your app.

If your organization has a budget and is utilizing SQL or Dataverse, use it. Just do a similar setup as mentioned with SharePoint. Remember that when you start using this storage, you'll have to pay for the premium Power Apps license.

As for the Job Title, it might be best to maintain it in the Azure Active Directory for each user and then use the Office365Users connector to get this information. This also helps ensure user information, precisely their Job Title, is synced across your Microsoft Apps.

[STS1SS]

@cha_cha

Thanks.

So, my I'll share personal opinion about this, you basically affirmed my thoughts.

Our org is pretty big, I don't expect budget to be an issue.

Regarding the "right" way, My thought is a table either in DataVerse or our own SQL. The table has only a few fields: "ListType" and "ListItem" being the relevant fields. In this way I can code an editor, or an edit on the fly functionality against that table relatively easily.

I'm just not sure what other users/app builders think or do in this environment. So thought I'd ask for input.

Thank you.