Trouble patching a office365 user into a sharepoint list

[David283]

Very new to power apps and learning the basics.  I am trying to build an order app for my small office as a learning exercise.

Part of my app is that I want to have a SharePoint list of a few users who will appear as options to deliver items too, rather than a complete list of all users in the company.  So I have an add user function where I select a user from a combo box, and then patch that user to a SharePoint list with a button click.

That combo box is called 'UserPicker', and its Items code is = Office365Users.SearchUser()

I have set it to not allow multiple selections. It works fine.

The SharePoint list I will be patching too is called OALocations, it has 4 fields other than the standard ones all SharePoint lists get. 

1. OfficeUser ; a person or group field. Required.

2. Title ; Text field and required.  I am using as a name field, storing the DisplayName from UserPicker.Selected.DisplayName

3. UserEmail ; Text field which I am filling from UserPicker.Selected.Mail

4. UserSecurity ; Number field which I am hardcoding as 1, this is for a planed future where I hide some buttons and screens from users that don't have a higher number set.

My button has this for OnSelect:

Patch(
OALocation,
Defaults(OALocation),
{
OfficeUser: UserPicker.Selected,
Title: UserPicker.Selected.DisplayName,
UserEmail: UserPicker.Selected.Mail,
UserSecurity: 1
}
);
Reset(UserPicker)

Unfortunately this isn't working.  If I comment out the line for OfficeUser then the button will run, but gives an error about OfficeUser being a required field.  Otherwise it complains about a claim field and unexpected arguments.

Could someone assist me with getting my user from the combo box into my SharePoint list?

[zmansuri]

To patch a person type field you need to write different code. Because you think you are patching just one value but person type field is whole record.

Do not use patch. you are submitting the whole form. Patch is used on a form which is divided on many screen or some other function. Just take a normal edit form. and use a  button OnClick: SubmitForm(FormName).

I created the exact scenario. Just write button's onclick as i said. And your are good to go.

[RandyHayes · Accepted solution]

@David283 

Your Combobox is based on Office 365 User records.  You need to supply a SharePoint user record in order to set it properly.

Please consider changing your Formula to the following:

Patch(OALocation,
    Defaults(OALocation),
    {
       OfficeUser: 
          { Claims:"i:0#.f|membership|" & Lower(UserPicker.Selected.Mail), 
            Department:"", 
            DisplayName: UserPicker.Selected.Mail, 
            Email: UserPicker.Selected.Mail, 
            JobTitle:"", 
            Picture:""
          },
       Title: UserPicker.Selected.DisplayName,
       UserEmail: UserPicker.Selected.Mail,
       UserSecurity: 1
    }
);
Reset(UserPicker)

This should provide what you are looking for.

I hope this is helpful for you.

[David283]

Thank you Randy.

Other than changing the DisplayName line to - DisplayName: UserPicker.Selected.DisplayName, your code did the trick 🙂

[RandyHayes]

@David283 

It actually doesn't make a difference if you supply the DisplayName or the Email.  SharePoint doesn't care.  SharePoint has its own User management, so this is what Claims is all about. It's like the primary key.  In general, when you update a Person column, it is the claims that is important, but the rest of the record schema is necessary or SharePoint will not accept it.  So, you can use Email or DisplayName...doesn't make a difference.

Glad to help you get moving on.

[David283]

Wow, good to know, thank you!

[David283]

Do I need to do a similar trick in reverse to get that list of users back out of that sharepoint list and into a new combo box?

It seems setting the new box's items to = OALocation.OfficeUser  isn't enough to populate it.

[RandyHayes]

@David283 

What do you mean by populate it?  Are you referring to trying to show the underlying record value or something related to the Items?

[David283]

Once I have 5 to 6 records in my OALocations list, I will put a combo box on a screen that will populate with just those user names (and any future ones i add).  So the dropdown and search abilities of that combo box will just offer the usernames from that SharePoint list as options.

I want a user to be able to pick from just those names (records in OALocations) into that second combo box, and those will feed into a 2rd SharePoint list.

My next question will then be about populating a sharepoint list column with multiple users at the same time.  From what I am reading its a little different from what you showed me above.

[RandyHayes]

@David283 

Then honestly, you don't want to be using Office365 Users for your Items.  You will want to have a Person column in your list and you'll want to set it to a SharePoint Group.  In that group you will have the people you want to be in the combobox and then your combobox Items would be based off of the Choices function for that column.

The better part of that is that the choices will all be SharePoint users, so, you'll not need to convert from 365 users to SharePoint users like we just did.

Now...if your goal is to "build" a list (in re-looking at your original screen image), then I would consider having your list have simple text columns to store the email address and DisplayName of the person you are adding.  This will make what you are trying to get to MUCH easier.