Choice Column Question

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Hi All

I have a question concerning choice column in Dataverse.

Why is it necessary to use them?

I have the feeling everything is more complicated when using Choice columns (filtering, flows, etc)

Why not just create a collection on the app 'onstart' and define your choices there?

We are transitioning from Sharepoint to Dataverse but we also want to keep following best practices, hence the question.

Thank you in advance & kind regards!

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Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

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Drew Poggemann 9,287 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @Anonymous ,

Choice column provides the standard options to be selected in Dataverse and will ensure that this is the only list of options the user can select from. Model-driven applications will automatically display the information in a dropdown list as well. There is also a Choices option which allows for multiple to be selected instead of just one.

Overall I utilize this regularly for limited sets of options for a field that is static. Example US States, things like this... If the data will change over time and is dynamic, I would suggest creating another table in Dataverse for these options and then use a "Lookup" column in our related table to set the value instead of a choice.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @dpoggemann

First of all, thank you for your feedback.

I was wondering, is there a possibility to add a dropdown in model-driven apps from custom collection?
Because when we develop our current choices, we just write our dropdown values in collections on onstart.

If not, we can always opt to use extra lookup tables, I was just wondering if the OnStart collections is a wrong approach, since it's much easier to reference to in filters/flows/etc...

Thank you in advance

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Drew Poggemann 9,287 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @Anonymous ,

The concept of a custom collection in the model-driven app doesn't exist unless you utilize PCF or Web Resources etc. with JavaScript I would expect. You can in the model-driven app provide a "Lookup" field by default that will show the values (primary name) field from the table you create with the options. It is not a "dropdown" specifically but if you click on the magnifying glass it will show the options.

There should be no reason you couldn't pull the options into a collection OnStart of a Canvas app though. I don't see this as a "wrong" approach.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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@dpoggemann

Thank you very much for your clear explanation 🙂

Kind regards.

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