Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi,

I have a SharePoint list called Marketing Systems, which contains a column of Managed Metadata type. The metadata includes a list of commodity values in both English and French. These values are used to display data for bilingual users.

When I create a virtual table in Power Platform Dataverse, how can I map the Managed Metadata fields to retrieve both English and French values, allowing me to create views for bilingual users?

I attempted to create the virtual table using the default option and checked the Commodity field’s data type in Dataverse, which appears as text.
Alternatively, I tried creating a Commodity table in Dataverse, importing the data via Excel, and establishing a relationship with the Marketing Systems virtual table. However, in this case, the lookup value ID is updated in the SharePoint list.

How can I display the Commodity value (English or French) in the virtual table views and SharePoint list without replacing the text with a lookup ID?

Or, is there another way to create the virtual table without adding a relationship while preserving the Commodity text in both the virtual table and SharePoint list?

ScreenShots:

SharePoint list includes Managed metadata type column

Virtual table in the dataverse: field created as a text field

Categories:

Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

You're working with a SharePoint list that includes a Managed Metadata column (Commodity) with bilingual values (English and French), and you're trying to surface this data in Dataverse virtual tables while preserving both language values without converting them into lookup IDs or losing the original text.

Here’s a breakdown of the situation and your options:

Understanding the Challenge

Managed Metadata fields in SharePoint are stored as complex objects, not plain text. They include:
- Label (display name, language-specific)
- Term GUID
- Term Set ID
- WssId (internal SharePoint ID)
When surfaced in Dataverse virtual tables, these fields often appear as text, but only in the default language or as a serialized string.
Creating a lookup table in Dataverse and linking it to the virtual table replaces the original metadata with a lookup ID, which is not what you want.

Goal

Display both English and French labels of the Commodity metadata in Dataverse views.
Avoid replacing the original SharePoint metadata with lookup IDs.
Maintain read-only behavior for the virtual table (no updates to SharePoint).

Recommended Approach

Option 1: Use Power Automate to Extract and Store Both Labels

Create two additional text columns in your SharePoint list:
- Commodity_EN
- Commodity_FR
Use Power Automate to populate these columns:
- Trigger: When an item is created or modified.
- Action: Use the SharePoint Get Item action to retrieve the Managed Metadata field.
- Use expressions to extract the English and French labels from the metadata object.
- Store them in the respective columns.
In your Dataverse virtual table, map these two new columns (Commodity_EN, Commodity_FR) as plain text fields.
Now you can create views in Dataverse or Power Apps that show the appropriate label based on the user’s language preference.

Option 2: Use Power BI or Power Apps with Language Context

If you're building a Power BI report or Power Apps UI, you can:

Retrieve the term GUID from the metadata field.
Use a reference table (Term GUID → English/French label) stored in Dataverse or Excel.
Dynamically display the label based on the user’s language.

This avoids modifying the SharePoint list but requires more logic in the app/report layer.

What to Avoid

Avoid using a Dataverse lookup table that updates SharePoint, as this breaks the read-only nature of virtual tables and overwrites metadata.
Avoid relying solely on the default text representation of the metadata field—it’s not multilingual.

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