Collect answers to questions and photo attachments into a SharePoint list

[mnc2023]

New to PowerApps, but ambitiously promised to create an app (in record time) for a challenge event.  Hoping a very kind expert can point me in the right direction!

The app will ask users to answer questions, but also take photos.  The answers and attachments need to be stored in a SharePoint list, one row per team. Obviously each team will only be able to access their own answers. At present each screen patches the answer to each question (in column 1 for question 1 etc) as they go along. Would it be a better idea to collect answers into a collection and then submit them all at once?  What is the best way to do that?

I ran into problems with how to upload the photos. There seems to be a solution involving a form control with attachments (that I have not been able to replicate at present). Is this a good approach:

• Collect answers to questions into a collection
• Create a form control that looks up just the row in my datasource pertaining to the team using the app
• Populate the form with the answers to the questions (from previous screens) using the collection
• Collect images into a different images collection using the camera control
• populate the attachments datacard with the images collection
• Submit the form to update the SharePoint list. 

I only have a few days so really appreciate a steer to getting all the data into SharePoint!

Thanks in advance,

Maria

[v-jefferni · Accepted solution]

Hi @mnc2023 ,

Since you cannot use a collection as the data source of Form controls, the approach you post won't work. Since you have questions as columns and users will fill each field on separate screens, you can use separate forms as well, each form for a question, and on the last screen use a Camara control for users to take pictures.

www.matthewdevaney.com

For the pictures, you can reference below video, save captured images into the Attachments control in a form, and at last you can submit all of the forms onto SharePoint list.

Power Apps SharePoint List Attachments | Save Camera Pictures, Pen Input & Images - YouTube

Best regards,

[mnc2023]

Thanks for your reply @v-jefferni .  I hear what you're saying about collections and Forms so have left the patch formulas in place for now. I have not created separate screens for each question, but have one Question screen that shows the questions based on a variable that is set on a previous screen. Next time I will just create the extra screens!

Although I had seen a different video from Reza Dorrani already, the one you shared was more helpful. The final part of the puzzle is the scoring mechanics and I'm working on that now.  

One last question for you: I noticed that when using the app on my phone it is unable to register User().Email in the Title field of my SharePoint. This is how I am connecting my Form to the correct row in the datasource. Is there a better way of doing that?

Form Items property:

LookUp(SharePointList,Title = User().Email)

[v-jefferni]

Hi @mnc2023 ,

The formula should work, except for emails in the header column that are not equal to the user's email because of case issues or spaces.

You can try OnStart of the App use a variable to store lower-case Email of the user, remove spaces that may exist:

Set(varEmail, Trim(Lower(User().Email)))

then use the variable in LookUp function:

LookUp(SharePointList,Title = varEmail)

Best regards,

[mnc2023]

Hi @v-jefferni 

Thanks for your advice. Spaces are not the problem, it's just that the mobile app doesn't register the user email. Not sure how it tracks the current user but it seems to be recording the data into SharePoint and substitutes the Team Name (first entry) into the Title column instead of email. If it works, it's good for now. I'll have to find out a better way for next time.