Parent.Default does not work for simple Textinput (customized field) in a customized data card

[Anonymous]

If(EditForm.Mode = FormMode.Edit, Parent.Default, "0")

Hi all,

Strangely enough I cannot seem to get an answer to what I would consider a simple issue.

I have a SharePoint List with a lot of columns, so I want to minimize the columns to only containing the information I want to keep for forecasting.

I want to insert a CUSTOM DATA CARD as seen below:

In this custom card I have inserted 4 textinput fields. So that the user can write the number for each week of a given month.

However, I cannot seem to set the default to what the user sets the value to be like any other textinput/combobox/dropdown field.

If I write the "Parent.Default" in the Default Property it gives me an error and the same thing goes for:

If(Editform.Mode = FormMode.Edit, Parent.Default, "0")

Is there no way to keep the default value of the textinput field to what the user writes when there is no corresponding column to "store" the value in?

[WarrenBelz]

HI @Anonymous ,

You have four fields in one Custom data card  - there are a number of issues here:

• You probably have not set a Default for the card and therefore there is no Parent.Default
• You have four boxes - what do you want the default set to?
• You have to find a way to write all these values back to the list to get a default displayed - the card needs a data source to write to can only do one as default without some form of concatenation. (obviously a Patch could do this)

You might elaborate a bit more on what you are trying to do with the data.

[Anonymous]

@WarrenBelz 

Thank you again for you dedication to this forum, much appreciated!

To elaborate on the problem, I am struggling with the current scenario:

I have a SharePoint List, which is tracking the weekly costs of a project, which can span over several weeks (fx 1 year= 52 weeks). Apart from that, We can have different consultant, which work with different rates and multiple of them.

So in a horror scenario, I would have a project as the following:

52 weeks

6 TYPES of consultants

5 consultants within each TYPE

This would mean I need to create a column for each week for each consultant meaning:

52*6*5 = 1560 columns

I want to minimize the amount of columns I have to create in SharePoint - and would it even be possible to create that many columns in a single sharepoint list?

My First thought was to create custom data cards within PowerApps and simple create those custom textinput fields as seen above, which I would then populate with weekly days worked.

I do not need to store the specific values for each week, I just want to come to a total for each of the consultants, but our managers need to store the weekly days worked somewhere...

[WarrenBelz]

HI @Anonymous ,

Firstly, would not each week for each consultant be a separate record?

Also you maybe should have a reference list for the consultants and draw required details into the main list as the record is created.

If you design it like this, you may not need to consider the custom card, however back to the structure of this.

If you really want these in one card, you could Patch the result to the required fields, however it would be far simpler to put them all in separate cards and let the form do its work.

Before I go any further, is there something I am missing that makes all of this incorrect?

[Anonymous]

@WarrenBelz 

Your first assumption is correct. However, as I mentioned above a scenario with 52 weeks of work, 6 consultant types and 5 consultants within each type (which is theoretically possible) this would require for me to create 1560 columns for each consultants weeks.

Would this not have severe impact on the performance of the application?

I am willing to do that, but am worried that it will not be able to handle the many columns and make the application unbareably slow.

[WarrenBelz]

HI @Anonymous ,

Firstly, you might need to read this article.

I am still struggling to visualize why you need 1560 columns with a normalized data structure.

[Anonymous]

@WarrenBelz, thank you for the link.

A standard project goes like this:

From a lookup column, the user chooses a project from the PIPELINE-List. Which has preexisting information. It contains information such as consultants, their corresponding cost-rate, number of consultants etc, which then calculates the estimated price/cost of the project.

Now, many of these columns gets pulled into the PROJECT-List, where we are looking to track the ACTUAL costs, based on weekly work that is being done. So EACH consultants work will be tracked on a weekly basis (between 0 and 5 working days in a week).

So if I have a project that has an estimated start-date 1/1/2020 and finishes 31/12/2020 = 52 weeks

If I have 6 different consultant types (this is necessary to track as they have different cost rates)

and UNDER these different consultant types have, let us say 5 consultants

this accumulates to: 52 week columns * 6 consultant types * 5 consultants = 1560

[WarrenBelz]

Ok @Anonymous ,

Good luck with your project