Write a LookUp Field back to SharePoint as a Person Field

[tagustin2020]

Hello,

Matthew Devaney kindly provided a formula for the person fields in my gallery that abbreviates the name to lastname.first initial (e.g. Agustin, T.). It works great when you are pointing to a person field.

With(

   {UserName: Split(ThisItem.'Created By'.DisplayName, " ")},

   First(UserName).Result & " " & Left(Last(UserName).Result,1)& "."

)

Here is my challenge. I have a column of names that is being brought into the Gallery as a Text value, based on a LookUp so the formula above doesn’t work for that scenario. Rather than ask for help rewriting the above formula to work for a name brought in as text, I would prefer to import the name as a person field if possible.

Here is more context for clarification:

When a user selects a Project Number from a dropdown menu in the New Request Form, the Text property of the Program Mgr/Product Engineer label is automatically populated via the following formula. So far, so good. The information is coming over as a user name.

LookUp('Project List','Project Number' = ddProjectNumber.Selected.'Project Number','Project Owner'.DisplayName)

Here is where things go sideways. In order to write this information back to my Tool Design Support Request SharePoint list, I kept the original text input field that came with the datacard and set the Default property to: lblPMPE.Text

The label is visible to the user, the text field is hidden since its sole purpose is to write data back to SharePoint.

How should I write the text property formula for the hidden field so it is recorded back to SharePoint as a person field instead of a text field? I figure if I do it this way, I can apply Matthew's formula to the Project Owner name in my gallery. I assume that I will have to delete the single line of text column in my Tool Design Support Request SharePoint list and create a person column instead to capture this information. Can you confirm?

Thank you in advance for your help. Teresa

[RandyHayes]

@tagustin2020 

Actually, the formula that @mdevaney  provided should be just as well in your Gallery. What kind of problems are you experiencing getting that to work properly?

I mention it because it will be simpler than dealing with a Person column in SharePoint.  If you can avoid using them, it is better, and I believe you are only trying to use that in order to get a previous formula to work for you - which would be better figured out than worked around.

If you want to proceed with the Person column in SharePoint, then the first question will be, are you submitting data via a form or through a Patch statement?

[tagustin2020]

Hi Randy,

I get two errors:

1) Invalid use of Label1.Text

2) The function 'Split' has some invalid arguments

Teresa

[RandyHayes · Accepted solution]

@tagustin2020 

I don't believe your issue is going to be with the splitting or label contents or anything like that, my assumption is that you have a Person Column in your SharePoint list and you want that to have the person that is the Program Mgr/Product Engineer written to that column.

The Program Mgr/Product Engineer information is currently coming to you from  Lookup on 'Project List' and you state it is in a Full name format (first and last).

You have a label and a textinput control on your form.  The input is hidden (not visible) and the label is visible.  They both contain the name of the person you want to write to SharePoint.

I hope that so far the above is all accurate.

So, first, you need not have a separate hidden textinput control for this, you can work entirely from the Label. I will proceed as such.

Since you are working with a Person column in SharePoint, the key is you need the email address of the person.  So, Display names or other splitting of them is of no value in the person column.

I am going to assume that the 'Project List'.'Project Owner' column is a Person column as well.

If so, then you can simply change the Default property of your data card in your EditForm for the PM/PE column to the following:

LookUp('Project List',
       'Project Number' = ddProjectNumber.Selected.'Project Number',
       'Project Owner')

That person column in the Project List will have the proper signature for writing to SharePoint into a Person column.

Once you have that, you can get rid of the TextInput control that is hidden - it's not needed.

And you can have the Label Text property in your DataCard set to Parent.DisplayName

I hope this is clear for you - let me know if you run into bumps along the way.

[tagustin2020]

Thank you for your help Randy. It all worked out great. I'll mark it as a solution. Can I ask you one more related question? In my gallery I have a "Mechanical Engineer" column. An ME is assigned after a request is submitted. Currently, a small dot appears if the value is blank. Can you help me write an If statement to the affect of "If this item is blank have the column field read "Pending" else fill in the name of the ME that was assigned"?

I tried the following, but it isn't working.

If(IsBlank, "pending", With(
    {UserName: Split(ThisItem.'ME Assigned'.DisplayName, " ")},
    First(UserName).Result & " " & Left(Last(UserName).Result,1)& "."
))

Thank you,

Teresa

[RandyHayes]

@tagustin2020 

Sure thing.  I assume this is a Label in your gallery that we are talking about.  

If so, then set the Text property to:

Coalesce(ThisItem.'ME Assigned'.DisplayName, "Pending")

I'm not entirely sure why you are using the Split function to  split a display name that is separated by a space and then put it back together with the space.  Is this only so that you can have a abbreviated last name (as I see you use the Left function).

[RandyHayes]

@tagustin2020 

To add on to the previous response - if you DO want to have first and first letter of last name, you might want to just substitute the following:

Coalesce(Match(ThisItem.'ME Assigned'.DisplayName, "^.*\s.").FullMatch, "Pending")

If the period you have after the last name initial is important, then go with this:

With({dn:Match(ThisItem.'ME Assigned'.DisplayName, "^.*\s.").FullMatch},
    If(IsBlank(dn), "Pending", dn & ".")
)

[tagustin2020]

Hi Randy,

Yes, this is a label in the gallery. I'm currently using the formula shown below provided by Matthew Devaney. Not sure how to combine it with the Coalesce statement. I tried replacing the formula below with the Coalesce formula, but received the following error message: Unexpected characters. Characters lblMEAssigned.Text. The ME Assigned column is set to "person".

To answer your question of why the Split approach, I had told Matthew that I would like the format to be LastName, FirstInitial. (e.g. Agustin, T.). 

With(

   {UserName: Split(ThisItem.'ME Assigned'.DisplayName, " ")},

   First(UserName).Result & " " & Left(Last(UserName).Result,1)& "."

)

Thanks for all your help on a Sunday. I realize you have a life so don't feel you have to respond today if you are trying to fit in some R & R. 

Kind regards,

Teresa

[RandyHayes · Accepted solution]

@tagustin2020 

No worries, I actually took today to catch up on a slew of apps currently in the design stage.  So checking the forum is no problem.

So, this formula:

With({dn:Match(ThisItem.'ME Assigned'.DisplayName, "^.*\s.").FullMatch},
    If(IsBlank(dn), "Pending", dn & ".")
)

Should work perfectly for you if you are in an EditForm.  Your label is in an EditForm DataCard - correct?

To explain what it does, 

First it performs a Match on the current record of the Form (ThisItem) and the 'ME Assigned'.DisplayName with a regular expression that will return (FullMatch) the first name and the first initial of the last.  To really break that down:

^.*\s.

^ - start from the first character and match .* any number of actual characters until a \s space, then match . one character.  It's just a little cleaner that splitting and concatenating and lefting and so forth.

Now, we store that in a With variable called dn (just because we don't want to repeat in the coming if statement.

And in the If statement, we look to see if it is blank...if so, say "Pending".  If not, then display it (dn) with a "period" on the end.

This works just fine, so if it is not, then we need to explore more of what your scenario is.  The only thing I would think is that perhaps you are not in an Edit Form DataCard?  Or that you are not changing the correct property (should be the Text property).

[tagustin2020]

Thank you Randy. You're the best! I applied this formula to the label in my gallery and it worked perfectly. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain what the formula means. I will keep it for future reference. Teresa