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What is the best way to populate multiple custom dropdown menus in a form?

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Posted on by Future_Vision

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When I was working in PowerApps for Teams I had a form that had multiple custom datacards. Many of these datacards used comboboxes/dropdowns. At the time I was creating a unique table for each of these controls. I am now wondering if that makes the most sense. I could add a column for each set of values in a single table but I realize that the longest column of values is going to set the list length for each control leaving the smaller controls with a lot of blank items(without employing any kind of formula). I was thinking it might break with cascading controls but I guess that doesn't really matter.

What is the best way to populate these controls? A table for each control or a single table for all controls?

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RandyHayes 76,299 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@Future_Vision

Depends!!

Look at it in the terms of amount of data instead of a set rule for this way or that. If your total amount of items for all the dropdowns/combos is not going to incur any delegation issues, then a single table with all the values for the controls is fine. If the lists can get long, then a separate list might be beneficial.

It's kind of like looking at the Distinct function. It is not delegable. So if your list is bigger than 2000 records, then Distinct will not be accurate. So, you need to provide an alternate method. This is usually done with a separate list that simply contains the distinct values that you want. That list will be considerably smaller and more manageable - and delegable.

I hope this is helpful for you.

(AND....yes, I'm back. I will be starting to chew through my backlog of message, including yours, over the next several days and next week. So, hang tight!)

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Future_Vision 634 on at

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Sorry I never got back to this. I was giving more thought to this and I guess having dependent fields could be a problem with a single data source. I was also thinking from a reusability standpoint that it might also make sense to have separate tables. It also makes easier to find the data you might want to consume if it was in a table named specifically for the data it holds.

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