Parent / child relationship

[MS5]

Hi,

I have the next situation: I have to provide a portal in which a user can create different types of proposals where all of them have many values in common. In order to create one, the user must first choose a field from a list and depending on the value chosen the form will have the common fields plus the fields relevant to the proposal linked to the field chosen. I don't know if it's possible to have all of the fields from the parent entity in the childs form.

Which solutions is better in this case, to create different entities linked to a parent entity which has all the common fields or to create one entity with all of the different fields (common fields + specific fields of each type of proposal)?

I also want to display these proposals in the same list, is this possible in the case of separate child entities with a parent entity in common?

Last question, would it be possible for the list from which the user chooses the first field to be dynamic, for example for user1 I need it to be A, B and C and for user2 B, E and D. In this case this field would be owned by the parent entity.

Thanks in advance!

[OliverRodrigues]

Hi, everything you need is possible to achieve with Power Apps Portals / CDS, it is really all about how you model your data

in relation to your type of proposal, it is really how you want to report everything and how you want the data to be available for input etc

are you sure what is the type of relationship between the proposal and the child entities? if it is 1:N then you definitely need it to be a child entity

if you are sure it is a 1:1 then I would consider how many fields you might have in total including all proposal types, I believe the maximum number of fields an entity can have in SQL Server is 1024, so if for some reason you think you get close to that number please go for child entities

otherwise it is common enough for us to have everything in a single entity to make life easier when reporting etc

bare in mind that you will have a very large entity in your database, if possible to share some of the fields for different proposal types is an option, you should consider

in regards the filtering fields etc depending on your proposal type, you will need JS logic to control that, but it is all possible 

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[MS5]

I prefer storing everything in one entity because the total number of fields is not high and it makes it easier when displaying forms and lists, but I don't know if I am going to be able to apply security to it. For example, is it possible to allow users to access entities which have a value X on a given field but if the value is Y not to give them access? I am looking for something the platform supports, hardcoding this functionality into custom JavaScript of something of the sort isn't an option.

How would you implement the dynamic list for the field I mentioned?

Thank you! 

[OliverRodrigues]

security in Portals works based on entity permissions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/configure/assign-entity-permissions

basically it relies in a relationship between the target entity with the Contact record (most common)

based on what you need to show/hide the records? would it be type A for a certain group of users, etc? or something like: type A is only back-end users in CDS.. and Type B is available in the portals?

[MS5]

But in the case of choosing to use only one entity with all of the fields, I can't use entity permissions since the permission itself depends on the value of a given field, and not on the type of entity. In the case of choosing to create different entities this could be a solution.

I don't need to hide records, I need the option set of an input field to be different depending on the type of user. For example, when creating a new proposal, the first screen would show only the field I am talking about, if the user is of type A, it would only let him choose X or Y as values for that input. If the user is of type B, it would only let him choose X or Z. I don't know if I am being clear, please let me know if you need more information.

Thank you!