Binding Collection to EditForm is not working

[macrag]

I have a form where users fill in and save the data directly to Sharepoint List. But in some cases users fill in the form and save it to Collection for further edit (This is mainly due to No internet connection).

What I have tried so far is

1)On screen 1 I have a New Form where users will fill in the data and saves to share point directly when the Internet connection is available

2)If there is no internet connection we Save the form data locally to a Collection using Collect(tempLocalCollection,{},{},{});

2)Added New Screen where I have added a Gallery Control(Gallery1) which is binded to this Local collection(tempLocalCollection) which is working fine

3)I have added an Edit form below that Gallery Control and set the Datasource to the tempLocalCollection and Items to Gallery1.Selected. But my Edit Form doesn't show any fields as it says It can't find any datasource to connect to.

I have looked in to some threads which mentions Edit Form can't bind to the Collection as it is a temporary collection. Please can any one confirm is this is correct or whether we have any other alternatives to achive this as I need to  bind this local collection to an Edit form where users will change data and Submit.

[hpkeong]

Hi

Since you are working on both Internet Connection and No Connection, please look at

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/function-savedata-loaddata/

to use:

- SaveData

- LoadData

- ClearCollect

The Logic is:

When Internet.Connected, Collect data into DS, if Not, LoadData (from later SaveData).

Then SaveData (this is for above used when no connection)

Please search in PowerApps Community Blog where PA Team has a blog talking about Twitter example using

without Internet Connection, using the above formula.

Hope this helps.

TQ

[macrag]

Hi hpleong

Thanks for the Reply. I have gone through the Twitter sample and it works fine when you want to collect new data and add that data back to the temporary collection while being offline.

But my situation is I need to collect the Data entered by user ( atleast 30 fields ) while being offline and allow users to be able to edit that data during Offline and when the Internet connection is available then they should be able to submit the Form so we can perform the validations etc before saving in to the database.

To summarise what I need to achieve is Collect the data using Collect while being offline and Allow users to make changes to that data while Offline and should be able to submit that data to the database when the internet connection is avaiable. 

[v-micsh-msft]

Hi @macrag,

Collection is not a valid data source for Form control.

If you would like to have form control to add support for Collection, then please submit this as an idea.

To work with the Collection, you might need to add controls for each field seperately, and use filter or search to locate the proper data.

For Update, consider take use of forall and patch together.

Adding a thread about patching collection to data source as reference:

Patch a collection of items to SharePoint list

Regards,

Michael

[macrag]

Thanks Michael

Yes, you are correct. Collection is not a valid datasource for Form control as Collection is a temporary storage but when you working offline you have no choice apart from using collection. I will submit this as an idea as this is a very useful feature when you are working on a large form.

also i am trying with binding to invidual fields to see if it works but for some reason it is not saving the data to a sharepoint using collection as i need to get it working using Collect.  Appreciate any help with the below statements

Collect(SubmitLocalData, {StaffMemberName: txtStaffName.Text,StaffType:RbtnStaffMemberType.Selected.Value });

If(Connection.Connected,Collect(SharepointDataCollectionList, SubmitLocalData))

[rlmckean]

Hi

This is an iteresting one ! I say that because I have two screens where a collection is listed ( in a different colour) on the Right hand panel of datasources. However I have a number of other screens where it says no data source connected. 

I use collections in almost all my screens for one reason or another, but the collections are all replicas of a sharepoint datasource. So to create the forms, I use the sharepoint list as the data source, and then change the properties of the form to read the collection. Its all a bit of a bind but it works

I find it interesting ( or maybe I am just a bit slow!) that I can seed a viewform from a galley whose datasource is a collection and the viewform has the datasource as the sharepoint list ( don't do this tpp often)

I have got the offline stuff working - again with collections -  really using the same patch code for both collections and sharepoint lists but just swapping their names around

Cheers

Richard

[macrag]

Hi Richard

That looks very positive to hear you got it working offline with collections but I am struggling on this bit for a while and now i can't get the Collect saving working at all. 

can you guide me what's wrong with my code above or if you can just paste here some formula how you doing then i can figure out the same. There were two things i need to achieve though but I am primarily focusing on saving to sharepoint using temporary collection as it worked for me a while ago when i used the CDS datasource but for some reason it doesn't work for sharepoint

1)Bind temporary collection to a form (are you using Edit form for this) 

2)How can i save the collection back to sharepoint

[rlmckean]

Hi

This will be partially useful ! in that I have tested offline working but at present only viewing !! - however I know how I think it will work but have not tesetd yet!

So I have a sharepoint list that holds details of quotations called 'Quoteclient'

To view the quotations for a  praticular enquiry ( indexed by 'quoteno) I create a collection 'Quotes' like this

ClearCollect(Quotes,Filter(Quoteclient,Quoteno=CQno));

the gallery is like this

Interestingly the data source is 'Quotes'

But I believe this only works in galleries and not forms

So to the edit screen for an item from the gallery - here the datasource is the sharepoint list 'Quoteclient' and its Item property is gallery.selected

So when the record is edited, or a new record is created the code is as follows where CQid is a context variable carrying the ID of the Quote record selected

SubmitForm(EditForm2);
Patch(Quoteclient,First(Filter(Quoteclient,ID=Cqid )),EditForm2.LastSubmit); 
Patch(Quotes,First(Filter(Quotes,ID=Cqid )),EditForm2.LastSubmit)

So for offline work, there would be a  conditional

If(connection.connected

followed by code above

if offline then the only code at this point would be 

Patch(Quotes,First(Filter(Quotes,ID=Cqid )),EditForm2.Updates)

if it was a new record it would be 

Patch(Quotes,Defaults(quotes),EditForm2.Updates)

(I have changed to Udates from lastsubmit as I guess the submitform will error if off line)

I think you could also use a Collect statement to the same effect.

There then needs to be code to save data when back on line. The Twitter example given sets it all out very clearly about the start and finish of the process.

As mentioned above I have yet to test my off line code ! - so no doubt the above will be corrected along the way !

Cheers

Richard

[rlmckean · Accepted solution]

Hi

This will be partially useful ! in that I have tested offline working but at present only viewing !! - however I know how I think it will work but have not tesetd yet!

So I have a sharepoint list that holds details of quotations called 'Quoteclient'

To view the quotations for a  praticular enquiry ( indexed by 'quoteno) I create a collection 'Quotes' like this

ClearCollect(Quotes,Filter(Quoteclient,Quoteno=CQno));

the gallery is like this

Interestingly the data source is 'Quotes'

But I believe this only works in galleries and not forms

So to the edit screen for an item from the gallery - here the datasource is the sharepoint list 'Quoteclient' and its Item property is gallery.selected

However if you are working offline, the datasource should be changed to Quotes ( using a conditional in the property)

So when the record is edited, or a new record is created the code is as follows where CQid is a context variable carrying the ID of the Quote record selected

SubmitForm(EditForm2);
Patch(Quoteclient,First(Filter(Quoteclient,ID=Cqid )),EditForm2.LastSubmit); 
Patch(Quotes,First(Filter(Quotes,ID=Cqid )),EditForm2.LastSubmit)

So for offline work, there would be a  conditional

If(connection.connected

followed by code above

if offline then the only code at this point would be 

Patch(Quotes,First(Filter(Quotes,ID=Cqid )),EditForm2.Updates)

if it was a new record it would be 

Patch(Quotes,Defaults(quotes),EditForm2.Updates)

(I have changed to Udates from lastsubmit as I guess the submitform will error if off line)

I think you could also use a Collect statement to the same effect.

There then needs to be code to save data when back on line. The Twitter example given sets it all out very clearly about the start and finish of the process.

As mentioned above I have yet to test my off line code ! - so no doubt the above will be corrected along the way !

Cheers

Richard

[macrag]

Thanks Richard. Yes, i agree with the work around and I will give it a go and let you know how it goes. Thanks for the very details screen grabs. I just want to clarify to my other issue why saving with Collect is not working for me is due to an issue from my end as Sharepoint list has a built in field called Title which is expecting a value in my collection, even though I have renamed that to another column which is i found out rather in a painful way.

once you pass the Title value then you can use Collect to save in to the sharepoint list without any issues. 

Once agains thank you guys for your time in answering to this perticular issue. But I still expect Microsoft to introduce a seemless integration to collection and Editform as that could simplify the whole process