Unexplainable behavior filtering gallery with combo box

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I have a flexible height gallery with data from one SharePoint list. Each data field in the gallery represents a movement with a Status. I am filtering the gallery depending on the Status (7 different statuses available).

To filter the gallery I am using a combo box (cbFilterStatus) with all the 7 statuses in Items ["Status1","Status2",...]. I then use following code on Visible function for all items within the flexible height gallery data field: ThisItem.Status.Value in cbFilterStatus.SelectedItems

At first glance this works perfectly. But when trying it out a bit I realize that if I only choose any of the last 5 statuses (Status 3-Status 7) in the combo box it does not show up in the gallery, unless I also choose one of the 2 first statuses (Status 1 & Status 2), in which case the filtering works fine. If I go backwards unchecking alternatives from the combo box there is no problems, I can unchecked Status 1 & Status 2 and still see any of Status 3-Status 7.

Is this a bug or is there something I am missing?

[RandyHayes]

@Anonymous 

So if I'm understanding...you are trying to make entire rows in your gallery not-visible if they do not match your filter dropdown selections?

If that's the case, you might want to consider changing the Items property of the Gallery to do the filtering rather than individual visible/non-visible on the rows.  

Ex.

Filter(yourDataSource, Status in cbFilterStatus.SelectedItems)

This way your items will be only the ones you want and you'll not need to worry about visible or not within each row.

In theory, what you are doing should work, but flexible height Galleries are a bit picky on how they display things.  I find it best not to taunt with that process.  Do your filter at the Gallery level rather than individual rows.

I hope this is helpful for you.

[Anonymous]

Hi @RandyHayes,

Thanks for your reply, however the reason I am using the flexible height gallery is that otherwise I get delegation warning when trying to filter gallery with combo box on gallery level. I already have a fixed filter on gallery level only showing "active" rows, excluding Status8 which is the "archived-status". On top of this I use the flexible height to hide the rows which Status is not in chosen the combo box.

The SharePoint list will eventually have 1000+ entries, but only max 50 active at a time. So it is important that I do not have any delegation warnings.

[RandyHayes]

@Anonymous 

Understood...You can approach this a few different ways.

1) If you know the list will never be over 2000, then you can ignore delegation warnings.

2) If you can Collect your 50 or so into a collection, you can then filter as mentioned before against the collection on the Gallery without delegation issues.

Don't consider a delegation warning as an error - it's a decision point.  Never going to exceed 2000, ignore it.  Going to exceed, then consider collecting by a delegable function into a collection.

Again, your scenario might work to some degree, but I believe your results will be unpredictable based on the actions of how the data source is loaded and how the flexible gallery will respond.  My experience shows that when trying to work around issues in PowerApps in an unusual way, you will find yourself trying to hunt down problems later when things unexplainably no longer work as expected. 

[Anonymous]

Hi @RandyHayes, 

The SharePoint list will exceed 2000 rows eventually and to avoid any performance issues I want to get around any delegation warnings in this gallery.

I experimented a bit and made a new SharePoint list with three rows each with numbers 1-8:

I also created a new blank canvas app with a flexible height gallery and a combo box (exact same setup as in my first post), If i only select 1-5 nothing shows up in gallery:

When I also select 6 or 7, 1-5 shows up in the gallery:

When I then deselect 6 (or 7), the filter works flawlessly as intended for all the other numbers until I start from blank again.

I do not see any reason why this approach would not work, so I will keep the issue open/unsolved until I find a satisfactory solution.

[RandyHayes]

@Anonymous 

So, to make sure I wasn't going crazy, I performed the same experiment.  I did not see the problem you are experiencing.

Test 1

A Flexible Height Gallery with the Items property set to [1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,7,8,2,6,7,8,3,4,5,6,2,2,1,1]

A ComboBox with an Items property of [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]

A Label in the Gallery template and set the Text to ThisItem.Value and the Visible property to ThisItem.Value in Combobox1.SelectedItems.Value

Performed steps you mentioned as not working, but worked just fine for me.

Test 2

A SharePoint List with only a Title Column.  Created a random series of items in the list with the Title set to a value between 1 and 8 (just like you had - Called the SharePoint list Jonas in your honor 😊)

A Flexible Height Gallery with Items property set to Jonas datasource

A ComboBox with an Items property of [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]

A Label in the Gallery Template with the Text property set to ThisItem.Title and the Visible property set to ThisItem.Title in Combobox1.SelectedItems.Value

Performed steps you mentioned as not working, but worked just fine for me.

Are you doing something different that what I outlined above?

[Anonymous]

Hi @RandyHayes,

Thanks for taking your time with this, I have tried this morning exactly replicating your steps above with both SharePoint list, Collection and Items property in gallery as the data source. However I am still unable to get it to work as intended. I have made a gif showcasing my code and the problem I am experiencing. If you can see any obvious reason for the error please let me know:

Filter with combo box problem

[RandyHayes · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous 

Okay...so I had the exact same setup (or so I thought).  Same Items. Same formulas.  Same Combobox, etc.

And I could NOT get mine to perform that way.

Then I started to look closer at your Gallery output.  I noticed that mine was a little more spaced than yours between the rows. 

So, I set the Padding on the Label and the Gallery to 0...AND now mine experienced the same behavior as yours.

If I set the Gallery padding to 0 and the Label to 1...still had issue.  If I set the Gallery padding to 1 and Label to 0, still had issue.

When I set the label to 1 and the Gallery to 1, it then worked fine.

So...conclusion - the padding is the issue in a Flexible Height Gallery.  However, I'm not surprised.  I like the Flexible Height Galleries a lot, but I tend to use them ONLY when I can find no other option because they are flaky.  And even worse, they sometimes exhibit different experiences on different devices.  This is seemingly just another case of "flaky" for these Galleries.

Ultimately, I believe you should still attempt to work around the delegation issue from a collection or other means rather than using the gallery to do it.  I say this because, even though you might get past the delegation warning with this approach, you still have a record limit to deal with.  Even if you may only be dealing with a few results in your list, if the main list it is getting it from is beyond the record limit, you might have very unpredictable results.  Gathering a collection alternately and then using that as your items source will ensure that you have the items you really want.

EDIT: Oh, and of course, you might want to report our findings as a bug/issue.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

You are right! The Template Padding = 0 caused the filtering issues. Once I set the Template Padding to 1 the filtering of gallery works just as intended. I never expected the padding to affect the filtering process so I did not even mentioned that I had it set to 0 in my examples. Indeed the flexible height gallery seems to be somewhat flaky 🙂

I will look into your suggestion of working around the flexible height gallery with collection instead!

Thanks for your help @RandyHayes!

[RandyHayes]

@Anonymous 

Yes, the only reason I investigated the padding was because my layout looked different than yours.

But, once I discovered it, it didn't surprise me...again, the flex height gallery acts quite flaky and, even worse, seems to act differently on different devices.  Nice control, but I have to say I use it sparingly because of that factor.