How to set a pre-populated default value of a Dropdown in EditScreen for a SharePoint Choice field?

[ejules]

Hi Everybody,

I'm currently trying to simply set the Default value of a Dropdown in an Edit Form (Form is opened and the Dropdown should have a pre-selection). Even though I did extensive research I couldn't find a solution for a Sharepoint choice field (as I don't know how to find the ID's of those choices and how to reference it?

I have the DropDown with the Selections from Sharepoint ("Inland", "Ausland") and would like to be the Default for a blank form to be "Inland".

 

Thank you so much for your help.

Regards,

ejules

[vwyankee]

@GraemeNZ - Using only - {Value: ""} works if you're only using a new form, but will not if you're using the same form for displaying records. If you are using it for both view and edit/new forms you'll need to have the condition in there as noted in my post(s) above so that it displays the saved value when reading the record.

[GraemeNZ]

Hi. Thanks for the heads up. In my situation, I have an app so that a customer can edit their own information, and when they need to add a new record the choice field for customer defaults to them. So fortunately the simple solution works fine for me. 

[GraemeNZ]

Hi @vwyankee - Turns out I need your solution after all 😀 At first I came unstuck, but then I realised a few hours later I needed to put this formula in DefaultSelectedItems, not Default where I had it. Thanks for your help in this thread.  

I came across a way to 'hide' the drop list by pasting a label over top of the combo box control so it looks like the user can't change this value, and changing the tab so the user can't tab to it either.

[GraemeNZ]

Hi @vwyankee - nope, still stuck. Now I get a circular reference error...

[vwyankee]

@GraemeNZ - If you're getting the circular error it means you're reference this value somewhere else. These errors can be very frustrating when you're learning. Where else are you referencing that control?

You are correct to have it as the DefaultSelectedItems property for a combobox (Default for drop-downs and text input boxes). Also, one very simple thing I wasn't aware of back when I posted before was if your formula is referring to the control that your on you can use Self instead of the name of the control. IE: If(IsBlank(Self.Selected.Value)....

[GraemeNZ]

Hi @vwyankee - The only thing I can think of is the gallery has a filter based on the same datacard? 

My situation is that I have two SharePoint lists with customer ingredients and manufacturers. We need customers to access those lists to add and edit their information. Each customer must only be able to see their own ingredients, so I will build a separate app for each customer. Each app must also default to the correct customer when they add a new record. Each gallery (for ingredients and manufacturers) has a filter based on customer value. 

See my post and some screenshots here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/Combine-SortByColumns-with-hard-coded-Filter...

I wonder - currently there is a 'new record' button which changes the form view to Edit. Do I need to instead create a new screen so that clicking the New icon takes the user to that new screen which doesn't need a hard-coded filter because there is no data there to view, but only a blank form...?

I'll give this a go and see where I get to, but please let me know if you have a better suggestion... 😀 

[vwyankee]

@GraemeNZ - Thanks for the reference link for context. From that and the screenshot above it appears you have the gallery on the left and what you select shows the form on the right, correct? If so, then yes, you shouldn't filter the gallery on the left based on what is selected in one of the fields in the form on the right as that creates a circular reference. There should be a parent to the gallery that determines what shows in it, not a child determining what shows in the parent. Hope that makes sense. Once your parent gallery is filtered from something outside of the child form that formula will work in the data card.

In your other post it appeared you were hard coding the gallery filter for customer, which would allow you to use the formula to default your combobox. That said, it also sounds like you may be building multiple apps when one can do what you need if you have a way to identify the logged in user with their respective company. When the app loads (App -> OnStart) you can set a variable based in their profile (or a SP list with their name and company) that identifies the customer and then have your gallery filtered by that variable. Then you can use that variable as the value for the data card regardless of what customer is logged in.

[GraemeNZ]

Hi again @vwyankee - lots to work through here... I started off with using a variable, but when I tried this with a user they couldn't see anything except the blank app (no data). Now I wonder if that might have been due to another error I resolved later on...

In the original (which I kept in case I need to refer to the code), I have this OnStart:

The security list looks like this, and each item has unique permissions so Spring Users can only see 1 item in the list, therefore isSpring:

Then my Next icon on my screen had an OnClick formula like this, which either went to the FIW screen or the Spring screen, which then needed to be hard-coded to filter for Spring...

...but if I understand you correctly, I should instead use the variable to filter the gallery and also set the default value for a new form based on the variable?

Does this look right? Can you give an example of how to code the filter on the variable please?

[vwyankee]

You could use a simpler approach with using a single variable by setting it to whatever the user has permission to see in the SP list. IE - Set the global variable to the Title of that SP list. You can use !IsBlank or First operators since there's only going to be one result. You'd then have a variable (maybe named something like gvCurrentUserType or similar - I use "gv" to make it obvious it's a global variable wherever I use it and "var" prefix for local variables) value with either FIW Approvers or Spring Users.

Whether you have a button to navigate or just have the main landing screen your destination for the logged in user you can then filter the data based on the variable. Your gallery would have a switch to indicate what data would show. IE - Items property of gallery:

Switch(gvCurrentUserType, 

"FIW Approvers",

Your formula to filter for FIW Approvers,

"Spring Users",

Your formula to filter for Spring users

)

You can take it a step further to simplify if you determine what customer the user is based on that initial lookup and set that variable (let's call that gvCustomer). Your gallery items property (taken from your other post) could simply be (note where gvCustomer is):

Search(
   Sort(
      Filter(
         'testRaw Materials List',
          Customer.Value = gvCustomer
      ),
      Title,
      If(
         SortDescending,
         Descending,
         Ascending
      )
   ),
   TxtIngFilter.Text,
   "Title"
)

[GraemeNZ]

Hi @vwyankee. Today I finally got time to have another go at this. Thinking about the whole thing made my head hurt, so I took it in stages. I created a label (LabelCustomerValue) where the text function is: 

I placed this label on the bottom of my form so I could see what result it returned, and it was Spring Sheep as expected.

Then I set the gallery function to:

This worked as expected, now the gallery only showed items where the customer was Spring Sheep.

Then I set DefaultSelectedItems for the DataCardValue on the form like you'd said: 

This resulted in Spring Sheep being added into the datacard when a new item was entered, and I checked that this was also entered into the SharePoint list correctly.

Finally I copied LabelCustomerValue and called the copy LabelCustomerOverlay. I placed this over the combo box on my form, set the fill colour to white, and set the visible property to:

This means if a user is editing an existing record the overlay isn't visible, but if it is a new record the overlay sits on top of the combo box so the user can't click into it. I also changed the tab value of the combo box to -1 so the user can't tab to it either. 

Once testing is complete, I'll change the visible property of LabelCustomerValue to false so it is always hidden, but can be used to store the value of my customer set by the global variable.

Thanks for all your help 😀

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, can I ask for some guidance on combining my global variable statements? I added another customer to the Security list, and added another variable to OnStart using the same structure I had before (see below), but you suggest I could simplify this?

I'm not sure how to combine these into one variable statement.... The FIW Approvers will always be able to see the other items in the security list, so I'd need to be able to stop the variable selection at the first true condition. For me, this would mean FIW (true), Spring (false), NuMega (false).

Once that is done, I presume I change the LabelCustomerValue text function to a Switch formula, which will go something like Switch(GlobalVariableName,isFIW,"FIW",GlobalVariableName,isSpring,"Spring Sheep",GlobalVariableName,isNuMega,"NuMega") ?

Looking forward to your reply, GraemeNZ