Gallery limitations

[karl_oliverio]

Is there a limitation on how many records can be displayed by a gallery? My datasource is a document library and I am expecting thousands of documents to be stored there. Is there any alternatives or solution to display such amount of data on gallery?

[Office365Master]

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@Pstork1 wrote:

Pagination is one solution to the problem, but that essentially does what I mentioned in my previous response.  If you filter the list on an ID column soemthing like this Filter(datasource id >= minID && ID <= MaxID) where MinID and MaxID are variables that contain a sliding set of values per page 0,500 - first page; 501,1000 second page, etc. But there is no support in PowerApps for automatic pagination. So you need to design and build it yourself.  Again, you can't retrieve more than 500 to 2,000 records at any one time. You can get the first 500 and then the next 500 etc.

Another common response is to copy the list in batches to a local collection since collections aren't limited in the same way. But there are limits on how much data can be stored locally so I suspect you will still run out of room before you can cache everything you want to display.

The bottom line is that a gallery just isn't designed to display a list of 50,000 items.  But honestly, what user would actually scroll through a list that big anyway.

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Interestingly enough there are actually ways of retrieving up to 5000 records in a single batch using Flow and v2 of the Graph APIs where automated pagination is possible to leverage to return batch. To put it further perspective, I've created a demo app upon which I will be posting hopefully within the next week.

I posted a video on YouTube today that showcases numurus functionalty that not only address a significant number of features users have been asking for as far back as 2+ years, but furthermore demonstrate features and functionality that very few people would have believed would not even have been possible to incorporate in their own apps a year if not longer from now.

Seeing what is in fact possible now will no doubt have many App Makers super excited, in my opinion at least. Even with the remarkable demo app I've created, it only scratches the surface of what else you could potentially do so check it out, or don't :

https://youtu.be/SYqscqPo9wM

Sample screenshot attached of a screen in PowerApps with a Gallery control populated with almost 5000 photos stored a Site Assets library returned by a single call to a Flow.

[Pstork1]

Understood.  I get that you can retrieve massive numbers of records in several different ways.  My point was that from a user experience point of view, the user won't use that many records.  Imagine a Mobile app with 5,000 records in a gallery.  Any idea how long it would take a user to scroll through that many records?  They won't do it.  Better to build the app in a way that gets and presents an appropriately filtered list of records to the user in the gallery.  My comments weren't about technology, they were about design.

I learned a long time ago that "just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

[Office365Master]

I don't disagree with that at all. In the demo app I created I return a lot of detailed metadata information for every record. Interestingly enough it nonetheless handles that amount of data quite well. Howerver there certainly is no practically use case for implementing a solution designed to accomodate for that much data.

[Pstork1]

Exactly my original point. Too many users get stuck on how to retrieve massive amounts of records that in an application that is then unusable.  Instead its better to provide a more refined filtered listing.  Performance will improve and user experience will be better. I will however admit that the very limited delegation available can make that a challenge. But its a challenge worth tackling.

[Office365Master]

I have uploaded a now final video demo of the app I have created that is now narrated and displays even more super awesome functionality I have implemented subsequent to my earlier reply on this topic. 

https://youtu.be/gKL92VU6QwA

Specifically as it pertains to this particular thread the demo video now showcases how users can consume and view content stored in Lists or Document Libraries in Galleries within their apps with 10k+ items in any List or Document Library using a new paging feature I have since implemented in the demo app (per attached screenshot).

You can now also change the list view threshold to up to 5000 overriding the current 2000 item threshold limitation in PowerApps. Consider how quickly I was able to do that since my earlier reply.

That said I can equally now attest to why there is a maximum 2000 threshold limit that you cannot increase is because when I set the threshold all the way up to 5000 and instantiated a Flow to return that many records I frequently experienced timeouts in my app, and then app session crashes. The amount of memory my web browser (Chrome) was consuming was insane as I was returning a substantial amount of data for each record.

The point however stands that is no way users would browse through 5000 items in a Gallery. The paging feature I have now included in the demo is fully automated using the Graph APIs.

I will be posting a blog within the next week (hopefully) on exactly I made all the cool stuff I've demonstrated in the demo video possible within a single PowerApp.

Watch this space or check out my web site:

https://masteroffice365.com

[karl_oliverio]

Hi @Office365Master , may i know what is your solution to this? Currently in our office we have 5200+ documents. We already overcome the limitation of 2000 but the problem is that it takes minutes to collect all the data that we need. We are collecting items by 500s but the speed is unacceptable. 

Can you help us with your solution?

[cmegow]

@Pstork1 The article you posted was very useful.  I thought I had my delegation issue under control, but alas, I'm not able to overcome the issue.  Could you look at my code and help me understand what I'm doing wrong.

Here is my Items for my gallery:

Filter(
    If(
        ComboBoxFundingLookUp_1.Selected.FundLookup = Blank(),
        'Archive PO List',
        Filter(
            'Archive PO List',
            'Funding Source Archive' = ComboBoxFundingLookUp_1.Selected.FundLookup
        )
    ),
    StartsWith(
        'PO Number Archive',
        TextInput2_1.Text
    )
)

This gallery will overcome the delegation issues if the user firsts selects a funding source from ComboBoxFundingLookUp_1 and then starts typing in TextInpu1_2.  If they don't select anything from ComboBoxFundingLookUp_1 first, the list will not search all the records even though I've used StartsWith in the filter.  Thanks for the guidance.

[Pstork1]

Please post this as a new question on the forum.  You'll get more responses that way and people will be able to find the answer after we help you.  Send me a link after you've posted it and I'll take a look.