Select approver from a specific group - with my SPL form

[Corleone]

Hello Folks,

I am creating a SPL form (customize with PowerApps) - to track work progress between departments.

I want to create a column in my SPL call "Approver". this field has to be completed by the end user when submitting a new form.

I would like this datacard to have a list of contacts on which the user can select 1 or more approver. 

• How can I make a dropdown list which deployed only the people involve in the project? (I want to restrict it to a small group inside my organization)
• Can this dropdown list be multi selection? So I can send approval email to more than 1 person? (FYI: I will use microsoft flow for this portion)

any idea of how could I do this? thanks!!  

[LRVinNC]

While I always create Canvas Apps rather than using a customized form, the same approach should work.  I would create a second list containing just the individuals you want to be on this approver list .  Set up the approver field on your primary list as a lookup field on the approver list.  That would limit the choices available to that approver list.  To allow multi-select, use a combo box instead of a dropdown.  

[Corleone]

Hi @LRVinNC ,

I followed your suggestion. although I am blocked.

I created a separate list including all people working on the same project! In this SPL I have 3 columns: Department, Name and Email.

Then I created in my form 3 different datacards:

• Datacard for "Department" - Dropdownlist - I want to use a distinct formula here
• datacard for "Name" - Combobox - I want to have a list of names filtered by the department
• datacard for "Email" - labelbox - the purpose here is to collect all the emails from people who has to approve (this information will be stored in my main SPL)

so, far my datacard "Department" is working. but the rest is not doing anything.

please take a look at the new SPL I created, and the datacards:

let me know what do you think!! thanks a lot 😉

[LRVinNC]

It sounds like what you really want to do is pick a department which will then limit the list of people from whom you can pick.  Once you pick a person, their email address is automatically established from the list.  Since you want to use these to send emails, you may want to patch the email to a collection so you have a list of email addresses built ready to use.  

First you want to link the department and name selections.  Take a look at this blog post on dependent dropdowns:  https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/configure-easy-dependent-drop-downs-in-powerapps/

With regards to patching (writing) to a collection as I mentioned above, take a look at:  
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/functions/function-patch
You can just take the the email address from the selected person and store it in a collection of email addresses this way.

Alternatively, if you don't want to use a collection, when it comes time to use the email addresses, you can lookup the selected individuals in your people list and retrieve their emails, but I think using the collection is more efficient.