Pre-populate Subgrid on Main Form with Values From a Lookup Table

[ErickDiaz]

Hi all,

I have a Service lookup table that contains a list of services that can have an status of Active or Inactive.

Every day the user needs to enter a tally for each of the active services. On my main form (based on separate master-child tables), the customer will enter a date and save the record; at this point a subgrid shows up and I'm running a Power Automate process on Create Record to retrieve all the Active Services from the lookup table and pre-populate the subgrid.

The power automate process works as expected, however I'm trying to find a better solution to accomplish the same. Right now, there is no visual indication for the user to know that there is a process running in the background and when it's done. The user has to get out and reopen or refresh the record to see the data on the subgrid and sometimes the data is incomplete because the process is still running but the user doesn’t know that.

I found a few samples on the web using the subgrid FetchXML with JavaScript but, from what I understand this is currently not supported.

Anyone has an idea on how to improve this process? I'm new to Power Platform so any suggestion is more than welcome.

Thank you,

Erick

[dpoggemann · Accepted solution]

Hi @ErickDiaz,

I have done this exact approach a number of times and the flow works great to create the records but the async nature of the flow does not help with the UI experience as you mentioned.

What I have done with a number of customers is actually create a real time workflow instead to go through and create the child records for the parent.  If you do through a real time workflow (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/data-platform/overview-realtime-workflows) it will show up immediately after complete without needing to refresh the screen (although you need to wait until it completes since it is synchronous vs. asynchronous).  Depending on your entities you might need to write a custom workflow action to go and find the records you need or information you need to create the child records, this will depend on your system...  

Hope this helps, worked for me a number of times and much better user experience.

Thanks,

Drew

[ErickDiaz]

Hi Drew,

That's great, I'm relatively new to Power Platform and didn't know about real-time workflows.

It looks like this is exactly what I need, thank you very much for your help!

Best,

Erick

[ErickDiaz]

Hi @dpoggemann,

Do you happen to have an example or an article showing how to loop through a Service lookup table inside the workflow to get all the active services GUID so I can assign them to the Daily Service table where the users will enter the tally?

Any help is appreciated!

Thank you,

Erick