My solution, seems to work, although it might be a long workaround and I've only tested it with myself - not with other people using the connector. If there's a shorter way through the actual control I'd love to hear it;
PowerApps doesn't appear to present the standard "Person" object you can trawl through for the current user - it creates a few variables from the local user context and presents those to you as the User() construct we know and love.
Currently we have access to;
- User().Email
- User().FullName
- User().Image
through this construct.
The consrtuct however does not appear to be an actual user object in the context of Active Directory persons.
When accessing a "Person or Group" column in a SharePoint list, as of release 2.0.440 PowerApps allows us to view it, and update it, with nice options for choosing which parameter of the object to display, such as Department, DisplayName, Email, and so forth. Nice!
Typing a user name into the control at runtime will go and trawl people and groups and pull back something relevant in a nice picker list you also have some control over, resulting in an actual user object being selected which can update the list. DOUBLE NICE!
Note: The SharePoint column does get referenced with a very weird (and supposedly unique) data field name which I'm guessing SharePoint or PowerApps use to identify that column is a people column and therefore any data cards associated with it should use something special, like the people picker. Expect something like srfg or equally Middle-Earth-Orcish. You'll notice this with any special columns like Choice, Date or Dropdown selection columns that result in a special card control...Your column is still easy to identify though as the column name appears just underneath it in the form customisation view.
When you add the People column to the card, (click the visible/not-visible eye icon on the Form Customisation screen for your column), it automatically provides a dropdown people picker with some default display config, and if you check the advanced options the Default value will probably be "ThisItem.<datafieldname>" for the card and "Parent.Default" for the actual control. You will need to unlock this to edit it.
Trying to pre-populate it with text from one of the above User() variables however, will just not work - we're trying to plop what amounts to text into a user object - we need to enter a user object.
So? Go get the user object 🙂
Create a new Data Source for your App using the Office365Users connector.
For your "Person or Group" dropdown in the Edit Form, change the Default value for the card (or the actual control) to;
Office365Users.MyProfile()
This will drop in the current user context as an object SharePoint understands.
You can then decide whether to display the name, email, department or whatever of your current user. You can also choose how many fields and of what type to show in the results list when people override.
As many people auto-build apps with the standard view/edit/update controls and screens, the default of which shares EditForm1 for both edit and add new functions (pencil icon and "+" icon) - you may want to test for the form mode being New, otherwise this default will overwrite whatever was there before on existing items.
In my particular case, the "ReviewedBy" people column data field was sfrg, and my Edit Form was EditForm1. I achieved this by changing the Default value of the control to the following;
If(EditForm1.Mode = New, Office365Users.MyProfile(), ThisItem.sfrg)
Hope this helps!
R
