Rapid data entry causing dropped patches

[Jalindo]

Hi everyone,

Originally I had a gallery setup that a user could enter a full line of data (multiple columns) and then hit a button to submit which would patch the line to a SharePoint list.  This worked fine, but request from end users was that the gallery patch after a value is entered into each column.  The concern was that a person might get distracted and not save their changes.

So I rewrote the patch so that, after a value is entered into any column, Patch runs and patches that specific column to the SharePoint list. This worked fine when entering data slowly, but I noticed that if a user quickly tabs through each column and enters values, that some of the patches get dropped due to "Conflicts exist with changes on the server, please reload. Server Response: IPRD failed: ETAG mismatch". What seems to be happening is that the user enters data fast enough that new patch commands are getting triggered while the previous patch commands have not yet finished, causing a conflict to be detected and dropping the later patch commands.

I researched the error and the solution I was finding was to Refresh the data source prior to patching.  I added refresh, but the issue seems to be continuing.

Below I will outline the code on one of the columns and what it does.  Each column is a different month and the example below is for February:

Refresh(dsRD);
Patch(dsRD,ThisItem,{Feb:txtFebHrs});
ClearCollect(collectiondsRD, dsRD);

dsRD is the name of the SharePoint list data source itself.  The gallery is based off a collection called dsRDGallery to avoid the delegation error and so that the subsequent ClearCollect doesn't make the gallery lose focus for data entry.

The first line, Refresh, was what I had found as the solution to the ETAG mismatch error when researching this issue, but it didn't seem to solve it yet, so I might not be using it properly. The suggestion was that refreshing the data source before patching would avoid any ETAG mismatch from occurring.
The second line, Patch, is patching the Feb value into the item. txtFebHrs is the value in the textbox. Each column does the same, but for a different month.

The third line, ClearCollect, refreshes a collection because another gallery on the same page is summarizing everything on the SharePoint list and I am using that collection to summarize it.

This is being done on a gallery with Gallery.Items set to the following:

Filter(dsRDGallery,cbxProjectName.Selected.Result=Project.Value)

A duplicate collection was used here to avoid ClearCollecting on the data source of the gallery when the patch runs, which would make the gallery lose focus.

Any best practices or advice would be appreciated very much.

[Jalindo · Accepted solution]

After working on it a bit, I was able to find a solution.  Basically, I was overengineering the solution and the Refresh and ClearCollect functions were adding delay to the Patch, causing the possibility of record mismatches.  Once I commented those out and reworked how I was summarizing the other visual, everything worked very smoothly.

Lesson for me in the future: When it's not working, consider simplifying back, and then building the code back up again from there until it either works or you isolate the problem.