connecting tables & grouping?

[mrQ]

Dear community,

I have the following tables in CDS:

Users

• Default Users table from CDS (including all users in the tenant)

Projects

Assigned Users	LookUp to Users table
Project Name	Text
Start Date	Date
End Date	Date

Time Tracking

Hours	Floating Point Number
Project	Lookup to Projects table
Date	Date

Now each user can be assigned to n projects. I would assign those Users to a project in the Projects table. 

With above data structure, can I achieve something like the following table in Power Apps? If so, how would I go about this? I managed to create a calendar, but I wouldn't know how to connect the project & users like below.

[RandyHayes]

@mrQ 

Yes, you can use the Groupby function in your formulas to produce this.

As a pure example, you can go this route:

Groupby(Projects,
    "Assigned Users",
    "Projects"
)

However, what I am not seeing is the relationship of the Hours in the Time Tracking to the Project and the User.  If there is some relationship that defines the hours to the user, then you can add that into the formula using the AddColumns function.

I hope this is helpful for you and gets you to the next step.  If not, then provide more details on the relationship of the Time Tracking and the User. 

[mrQ]

Hi @RandyHayes 

Thanks for your response.

What I don't know is, how do I achieve connecting the dates and its reported hours per user with the projects? Like in the screenshot (Excel) attached. I managed to create a collection including the Users and their assigned projects, as well as a calendar (plain calendar), but how do I connect those? If even possible...

The hours are reported in the Time Tracking table. It has a Date column as well as a Lookup to the Projects table. To report time, a user would simply add something like 0.5h for the 30th of December 2020 to the Time Tracking table. 

Thank you.

[mrQ]

@RandyHayes 

Just wondering if you already had the chance to check? 

One more thing to add: I wouldn't want to create each date as a new column... I don't think that's a good solution.

[Drrickryp]

Hi @mrQ 

It appears that you have a classical many to many relationship.  The structure of your tables should look something like this.  I would develop the app around the tasks column with dropdowns for User and Project. For more information on how to structure a PowerApp around this design, check out my blog post https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/News-Announcements/Relational-Database-Principles-and-PowerApps-...  In this example, the Tasks table is referred to a junction table and by adding fields to it, you can better describe what happened to a particular task on a particular day.  By employing this structure,  you will be able to see all tasks performed during a project by each user as well as all tasks performed by a user and assigned to a project.

[RandyHayes]

@mrQ 

Sorry for the delay.  Yes, if you want to track the time like that, you are going to need to have something that connects the user time to the project.  Your time tracking table would, at the least need to associate the user to the entry.  This is done already with the created by column, but that would assume that the person recording will always be the one entering.  So, if you can at least have the User as part of that time tracking table, then you could start to get somewhere.

Then, with that in place, you can group by the dates and the users to get the information you want in the way that you want it.  But, until then, you need to have some relationship of time to user to project.

[mrQ]

Thanks both for your responses.

@Drrickryp that was an interesting read!

@RandyHayes I wanted to use the 'Created By' field at first, but I added a "User" field to the "Time Tracking" table now, which is a LookUp field to the "Users" table.

Anyway, to make it simpler for this scenario, I think just listing the projects on the Y axis and the various days on the X axis is enough. Therefore, I would like to display all the projects just for a pre-selected user. So, the following graphic shows my endgoal:

However, I'm still stuck on the logic part of combining those tables all together in one (or many) galleries to make it look like above image.

Since I would like the Users to be able to switch between days, as well as adding Projects dynamically (...), I don't want to create the days or the specific projects as columns.

I managed to create a calendar that is showing today's date +- 7 days and I can switch back and forth 7 days by clicking on the arrows. This should serve as the header-part. Unfortunately, I couldn't wrap my head around on how I would display/set up the rest... 😞

Would I need to create several galleries to achieve my goal?

Thanks and kind regards,

[RandyHayes · Accepted solution]

@mrQ 

Yes, in general you will be working with a nested Gallery.

So, in the formula that you have (and you don't need a collection for this, just set that formula minus the collection in the Items property of your Gallery), you are adding a column to your results called Projects and it has the entire table of projects.  What you would want to do is something similar to the following in your Items property of the Gallery:

ForAll(
    Sequence(7),
    With({thisDate: Coalesce(glbFirstDayOfMonth, DateAdd(Today(), -Weekday(Today(), Monday), Days))},

    {GalleryDate: DateAdd(thisDate, Value, Days)
     Projects: ShowColumns(Filter('Time Tracking', dateColumn=thisDate), "projectLookupColumn")
    }
    )
)

(not doing this in a formula editor, so first replace with the appropriate names from your add, and then correct any typos I might have)

Now, you will need to add a nested Gallery into the primary Gallery and then set its Items property to : ThisItem.Projects

Now, you can place labels in the Gallery to display the Projects for that date.

I believe you will get closer with this, but since I am not intimately familiar with your data or app flow, you might have additional questions or needs...so, try that and post back your progress.

[mrQ]

Hi @RandyHayes 

Thanks for your reply. 

This is what I got... There is still a problem that the project names are not being displayed for some reason (I can look into that later), but you can see that at least the data is being loaded and the rows from the nested gallery are being "displayed".

However, I would like to list the projects only once on the left side, rather than for each gallery item and then have the dates (as it is now) at the top (all according to the Excel screenshot I've provided in my previous post). Is there a way to do that?

Thanks for your effort so for. I highly appreciate it!! 

Kind regards,

[RandyHayes]

@mrQ 

I got the impression from your last post that you were going more with a "Week" list and then a list of projects under it.

If you want to go the other way - a list of all projects (for the week) listed on the left and then summed values underneath dates, then that is another approach. 

What's your poison?