Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Lately I have become disenchanted with SP lookup columns in PA. They seem limited and cumbersome (searching, patching, performance, etc.). I've read where some advocate for just using lookup fields to store the "lookup" data, and then write textual data in the referring row. That solves some issues but seems like a regression, too. For those who say "use dataverse", I'd love to, but our company is stuck on using the free SP connector. I'd love to hear other's thoughts and feedback on how they use SP lookup columns or any other tangential thoughts on this topic.

Thanks

Categories:

Building Power Apps

There are some commandments for Power Apps that are common practice unless your doing something more fancy. Here are some of them that I follow and I tell people to follow unless they dont mind dealing with headaches, more technical code, and more bills from MSFT for fancier things.

1) Use number, text, date columns only. I say this becuase almost any complex column is going to cause you issues at some point and will always make your code more confusing and annoying to write/follow for yourself and others.

2) If you need to use lookups then make an intermediate table or add columns as references to the other list rather than using lookups. For example I have an app that has drivers list and vehicle list. When a user checks out a vehicle I simply store that User's ID from SP as the checkeOutBy column for that vehicle. This is a lookup but its is all text and controlled by the functionality of the app.

3) Choice columns are annoying as well. Simply make the column type text and then use a dropdown that only displays the options/choices you want to be available. This is just as effective but easier to use/build.

4) Dont use excel as a database. Its slower and cant do as much as SP. Also excel is not a database 😛

There are more like this but hopefully you get where I'm going with this. Just create simple lists with simple data types and make the app control the flow of data. Build your own lookup essentially. The other option is to take a deep dive into the different ways to handle lookups etc