Power App broke - Monitor showing thousands of lines from other screen controls

[schenley]

Hello,

Over a year ago I built an app that several units use for strategic planning.  We did not have access to the premium SQL connector, so we used SharePoint lists as the data source.  Because of the relational and unit-specific nature of the data, I've had to add a lot of formulas for filtering/sorting tables and dropdowns.  There are also global variables set by user interaction with dropdowns and tables and buttons.

They requested enhancements to the app in January, and we tested and everything was working as expected.  Yesterday I heard that the "Add New Actions" screen had a "Saving your data..." popup that was not going away.  When I looked at that screen in the studio, I realized I had a second form hidden on that screen (to save the action title and unit to a related list).  It's triggered by a timer and includes a data source refresh, so that the new Action would be available in the lookup column when the form tried to save.  The popup is supposed to go away after this second form submits successfully, so I determined the hangup was between the Action being saved (which it was - I checked the list) and the second form submission. 

I opened the Monitor and tried to add a new action.  While changing individual fields everything looked simple.  Then I clicked the "Save" button and the number of lines in the monitor exploded.  It looks like controls on other screens are requesting data even though those screens are not being viewed.  I thought that wasn't supposed to be the case.  For example, there is an "Actions View Table" on another screen that is generating hundreds of alternating "getRows" and "getRowsCount" operations.  I'm also seeing hundreds of lines of a Text function that has completely blank details, except for the result - "The number passed in is a blank value." 

It looks like updating a global variable (VarAction) with the Save button is causing other places that use it to update, and maybe updating the one data source is causing the tables that use it to update.  But I'm also seeing a table's filter script that does not include that variable - it also does not use the data source that was refreshed. I have no idea why that table would be doing anything while this other screen is showing.  I do have some elements referencing a template screen, but not the other screens.

As a workaround I'm going to be disabling the components that save to that secondary list, so that people can save actions and have the correct popup appear when it's successful.  I can set up a Flow to fill in the missing step.  But I'm very concerned about the background activity going on with this app.  Any suggestions on how to improve its performance are appreciated!

[Johany_Navarro]

I have a similar issue when a user clicks on a list item a simple Patch() function is run.

Set(
    AdtProcess,
    AuditProcessesGallery.Selected
);
If(
    IsBlank(AdtProcess.EditingBy),
    Patch(
        'SharePoint List',
        AdtProcess,
        {EditingBy: Text(User().FullName),
        LockedAt:Now()}
    );
    Navigate(AuditEditFormScreen),
    Notify(
        "This process is being edit by " & AdtProcess.EditingBy,
        NotificationType.Error,
        2000
    )
)//IF

 That function somehow is getting more than 4000 rows on the monitor list. As you wrote other controls on different screens are being triggered like Filter() or LookUp() function. I changed some validations and logic on those controls and it got better however still getting more than 2000 records. I also created a new blank app, added the SharePoint list, and run the same Patch(). It worked perfectly.

I have been researching for 2 weeks without success, I really have no clue where or what else to check 😐😐😐

[Reigningfear]

This is something I've been dealing with for close to a year. Monitoring is almost unusable for any length of time because I'll sometimes rack up 10k+ rows of just Filters/Lookups. I do have a lot of galleries and other functionality but this did not always happen. 

Probably should have posted about it earlier but glad this exists now. Hope this gets some visibility. 

[Johany_Navarro]

Your app performance was affected?

[Reigningfear]

Thankfully no, though I was very worried about that. It does affect the performance in the studio though. I also see it when monitoring other users sessions but it doesn't seem to affect performance. it's almost like it creates a row for every record found during a filter/lookup for your gallery instead of grouping them.

[Johany_Navarro]

Unfortunately, in my case it is, when they click on a list item the app takes around 12 seconds to navigate to the form 😯😯😯

[Anonymous]

Hello. I found the fix for this and did a post here

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/quot-The-number-passed-in-is-a-blank-value-q...