Check for completeness form returns circular reference

[debarbanson]

Hi all,

Been cracking my head on the following and could really use some help.

I have a form which looks as the below. All fields except select number of load terminals, refer to columns in a sharepoint list.
What I would like to check is the following:

If the number of load terminals = 1, check if Load Terminal is filled, check for arrival date hour, time counts from date hour etc. and if that is all the case, in the field Status Load Terminal (also sharepoint column) indicate "Complete" or "Not Complete").

However when I start my if statement in the default attribute of the Status Load Terminal as follows:
If(Dropdown3.Selected.Value (that's the name of select number of load terminals) = 1 And DataCardValue1.Text (refers to the field Load Terminal 1) <> "", "Complete", "Not Complete" I get an error message stating there is a circular reference.

If I would leave out the Dropdown3.Selected.Value it is OK and I get Complete as result. Any clues on how to solve this?

In the end I would like to populate complete/not complete in the Status Load Terminal Screen because then in a gallery overview I created I can refer to ThisItem.Status Load Terminal and based on the result Complete/Not Complete I can color the specific item in the gallery.

Do hope the above makes a bit of sense. If there is another way of easily tracking if all fields contain a value so I can show the Complete/Not Complete in the gallery overview, that would also be appreciated. Many thanks in advance for any tips.

[debarbanson]

It's hidden due to visible property of the datacard, it will only show on the screen if the selection of load terminals is set at 2.

[RandyHayes · Accepted solution]

@debarbanson 

So you need to look at the properties of that datacard (Default and Update) and any other formula you might have in that.  Somewhere you have a formula that refers to an "output" from one of the datacards.

You might start by breaking your formula in the Status Load Terminal down.

Try this in the Default property of the DataCardValue3 control:

    If(Dropdown3.Selected.Value = "1", "Test1", "Test2")

If that gives you a circular reference (which you seemed to indicate that if you took it out of the previous formula, was what made the error go away), then track back from the Dropdown.

NOW...one bit of clarification.  You said that the Load Terminal Data Card was an added custom datacard.  But, you also provided me with a Default property.  If it was an added datacard, the datacard would not have a default property.  So, could you clarify what is going on there?

[debarbanson]

Many thanks Randy, found it. Instead of referring to dropdown3 to see if 1 or 2 was selected, I need to refer to the same field as dropdown 3 is referring to. So by checking if LoadTerminal2 contains text, I know 1 or 2 has been selected when uploading the voyage. Solved!

[RandyHayes]

@debarbanson 

Circular references are a pain to track down sometimes.  I'm glad you found it. 

More annoying (in forms particularly) are circular references that are NOT circular.  Forms throw circular references for scenarios where you might be impacting the value of a particular column of data in your input but does not impact any Update value.  Hopefully you don't run into that one.

Bon Voyage!  And Happy PowerApping!

[debarbanson]

Hi Randy, I ran into another issue 🙂 By changing the default property of my datacardvalue, it automatically puts my form in unsaved mode which is quite annoying.
Scenario as follows: I go to my gallery overview, select one of the items and navigate to an edit mode screen. There is a save changes icon which should only appear if a change is made to one of the fields, otherwise it is not visible.

Since I changed the default property of the datacardvalue, the first time I open the edit screen, the save button is visible. If I save it (although there were no changes made, I only opened the gallery item in edit mode) and go back to the gallery overview and edit the same item again, it does not show the save changes button upon opening the item. Only the first time. The moment I remove the formula and in the default property set Parent.Default, it stops triggering the unsaved modus...

It's heavily annoying since I have navigation buttons which check for the unsaved modus and if so notify the user they can't leave the screen before saving the changes. I tried using the ResetForm function on the OnVisible property of the screen since that helped others, but in my case it doesn't. Any clue how to work around this?
As mentioned yesterday, it's important for me to have the complete status in the form/sharepoint list since I can now show on the gallery overview if everything is complete. I have a warning icon to popup if status is Not complete and a checked icon if complete. see screenshot. As far as I know I can only create such logic if I am able to refer to the ThisItem.field from my datasource, that's why I have the complete/not complete as a column in Sharepoint and as field in my form. Many thanks in advance for your wisdom!

[RandyHayes]

@debarbanson 

Yes, in general,  a form is considered unsaved if the Default and Update of the datacard properties do not match.

Your Default properties on the DataCards should look like : ThisItem.fieldName

Your Update properties should come from the datacardvalue control in the datacard.

You should always account for the Parent.Default value in the control in your datacard.  This is one of the greatest uses for the Coalesce function.

So, not sure what your current Default property is on the datacardvalue control is, but it should look something like this:

   Coalesce(Parent.Default, yourExistingFormulaHere)

This way it will favor the underlying record value over what your formula produces.

[debarbanson]

Hi Randy,

Many thanks for your reply. Tried again with the Coalesce function but did not work unfortunately. I removed the datacard from the form and added it back in to start from scratch.

Datacard Default = ThisItem.StatusLoadTerminal
DataCard Update = DataCardValue3.Text

In The DataCardValue3 Default I now have:
Coalesce(
Parent.Default,
If(
LoadTerminal2.Text = "" And ErrorMessage23_1.Text = "" And ErrorMessage24_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage25_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage26_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage27_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage28_1.Text = Blank() And CountRows(DataCardValue10.Attachments) > 0,
"Complete",
If(
LoadTerminal2.Text <> "" And ErrorMessage23_1.Text = "" And ErrorMessage24_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage25_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage26_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage27_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage28_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage29_1.Text = "" And ErrorMessage30_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage31_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage32_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage33_1.Text = Blank() And ErrorMessage34_1.Text = Blank() And CountRows(DataCardValue10.Attachments) > 0,
"Complete",
"Not Complete"
)
)
)

What am I overlooking?

[debarbanson]

Is it perhaps possible to first use the submitform function on save icon and then put a Patch statement behind it to update the status load terminal with the text I have in a label (which contains the big if statement to determine "Complete" or "Not Complete"?

[debarbanson]

Yes I fixed it, I have done the following:
The Save Icon has an onselect submitform function

The form itself I changed the OnSucces property to:
Patch(Voyages,LookUp(Voyages, ID = frmEditLoad.LastSubmit.ID),{'Status Load Terminal': Label7.Text}) and that seems to do the magic 🙂

[RandyHayes]

@debarbanson 

Too bad you are double hitting your data.  This can all be incorporated into the form submit.

What is Label7 in this case?  If that really has the value you want, then your Update property can simply be Label7.Text