How to Default a People Picker to current user & save to SharePoint List source

[DeannaT]

Hi,

I am trying to create a very simple PowerApp based on a SharePoint list.  This list has a Person field.  When I initially create the PowerApp, if the user types in a person's name and chooses one, it saves fine.  As soon as I try to default the Person field in the PowerApp to "current user" (using any of the User(). syntax options), my PowerApp stops saving back to the SharePoint source list. 

Any ideas?

[v-monli-msft]

Hi Dean,

I have seen similar issue in other thread too, I have reproduced this issue and will report this to the product team. Thanks for your report.

Regards,

Mona

[Alicia]

Hello,

I'm having the same issue. Are there any updates on a fix yet?

[Anonymous]

I'm encountering the same issue as well. Only setting a default value on the Person field triggers this issue, Defaults for other fields work just fine.

I'm thinking of a few workarounds:

• Have been suggested to create a custom form from scratch using individual elements, then using the Patch function to save the data. (seems like a fair bit of work though)
• I'm going to see if there's any way to pass the required default value from another screen, maybe something like this which would suffice for my case:
  • Using the button which navigates to the required form, calculate the required default value for the Person field and pass it to the form screen via the Navigate function.
  • OnLoad of the Form screen, set the value of the required field, instead of using the Default function of the form itself.

Edit:

that didn't work.

If anyone else figures out a way around please share. bloody annoying bug!

[Anonymous]

My solution, seems to work, although it might be a long workaround and I've only tested it with myself - not with other people using the connector.  If there's a shorter way through the actual control I'd love to hear it;

PowerApps doesn't appear to present the standard "Person" object you can trawl through for the current user - it creates a few variables from the local user context and presents those to you as the User() construct we know and love.

Currently we have access to;

• User().Email
• User().FullName
• User().Image

through this construct.

The consrtuct however does not appear to be an actual user object in the context of Active Directory persons.

When accessing a "Person or Group" column in a SharePoint list, as of release 2.0.440 PowerApps allows us to view it, and update it, with nice options for choosing which parameter of the object to display, such as Department, DisplayName, Email, and so forth.  Nice! 

Typing a user name into the control at runtime will go and trawl people and groups and pull back something relevant in a nice picker list you also have some control over, resulting in an actual user object being selected which can update the list.  DOUBLE NICE!

Note: The SharePoint column does get referenced with a very weird (and supposedly unique) data field name which I'm guessing SharePoint or PowerApps use to identify that column is a people column and therefore any data cards associated with it should use something special, like the people picker.  Expect something like srfg or equally Middle-Earth-Orcish.  You'll notice this with any special columns like Choice, Date or Dropdown selection columns that result in a special card control...Your column is still easy to identify though as the column name appears just underneath it in the form customisation view.

When you add the People column to the card, (click the visible/not-visible eye icon on the Form Customisation screen for your column), it automatically provides a dropdown people picker with some default display config, and if you check the advanced options the Default value will probably be "ThisItem.<datafieldname>" for the card and "Parent.Default" for the actual control.  You will need to unlock this to edit it.

Trying to pre-populate it with text from one of the above User() variables however, will just not work - we're trying to plop what amounts to text into a user object - we need to enter a user object.

So?  Go get the user object 🙂

Create a new Data Source for your App using the Office365Users connector.

For your "Person or Group" dropdown in the Edit Form, change the Default value for the card (or the actual control) to;

Office365Users.MyProfile()

This will drop in the current user context as an object SharePoint understands.

You can then decide whether to display the name, email, department or whatever of your current user.  You can also choose how many fields and of what type to show in the results list when people override.

As many people auto-build apps with the standard view/edit/update controls and screens, the default of which shares EditForm1 for both edit and add new functions (pencil icon and "+" icon) - you may want to test for the form mode being New, otherwise this default will overwrite whatever was there before on existing items.  

In my particular case, the "ReviewedBy" people column data field was sfrg, and my Edit Form was EditForm1.   I achieved this by changing the Default value of the control to the following;

If(EditForm1.Mode = New, Office365Users.MyProfile(), ThisItem.sfrg)

Hope this helps!

R

[Anonymous]

Have finally found a workaround for this one which seems to work, hopefully this may help you.

Essentially I have abandoned the SubmitForm function altogether and used Patch to create a record, manually referencing the input fields for each corresponding property.

The following worked for me to save a Person column correctly (in this example, Approver is the column name and DataCardValue1 is the Person input field in the Edit form):

Patch('IT Equipment Requests', Defaults('IT Equipment Requests'),
	{
		Approver : {Claims: DataCardValue1.Selected.Claims, Department: DataCardValue1.Selected.Department, DisplayName: DataCardValue1.Selected.DisplayName, Email: DataCardValue1.Selected.Email, JobTitle: DataCardValue1.Selected.JobTitle, Picture: DataCardValue1.Selected.Picture, '@odata.type': "#Microsoft.Azure.Connectors.SharePoint.SPListExpandedUser"}
	}
)

[Anonymous]

The scheme for the Person that allow me to Patch a person is  Microsoft.Azure.Connectors.SharePoint.SPListExpandedUser.

When I set the default value to "

Office365Users.MyProfile()

"

The Patch function fails because  "Claims", "Email" and "Picture" are undefined.

What would the correct Scheme for the Office365Users ?

[maruthi2513]

I am looking for the Same. I have tried the options provided but no luck.

[Anonymous]

Here is how I did it with a user's manager, but the solution to do their profile (or any person's profile, given their id) would be quite similar:

When a user first goes to a particular form, I load their manager in the OnVisible function into a context variable:

UpdateContext({managerProfile: Office365Users.Manager(Office365Users.MyProfile().Id)});

They fill out the form, etc. and upon clicking the submit button, i call Patch(). The following object will write the Manager profile back to the Person field in SharePoint:

Claim_x0020_Approver: {'@odata.type': "#Microsoft.Azure.Connectors.SharePoint.SPListExpandedUser", Claims:"i:0#.f|membership|"&Lower(managerProfile.Mail), Department: managerProfile.Department, DisplayName: managerProfile.DisplayName, Email: managerProfile.Mail, JobTitle: managerProfile.JobTitle, Picture: User().Image}

Eventhough the image property isn't available for the Manager's profile, I just use User().Image one and it still seems to work OK 

[maruthi2513]

Hi .. Thankyou for you Quick reply, I was able to Manager Context. 

I have a confusion on calling the patch().  OnWhich Event Should i call the patch(); I alrady have

Submitform(Editform1)  in the OnSelect Method.  I do i concatinate  the Form Details with the patch() method.