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PowerApps Portal: How to prevent multiple users from modifying the same web form at the same time?

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Hello Community,

On the Power Apps Portal, is there a way out of the box via configurations that we can prevent multiple users from modifying the same web form at the same time so that they don't accidentally overwrite each other's data changes?

In this scenario, those users do need to access the web form, so it's not about restricting them from accessing the web form page altogether, but rather to ensure we can avoid data being overwritten due to concurrent users.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you!

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oliver.rodrigues 9,368 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Okay I see now your issue. That sounds an unusual requirement to me.. I can think of a few things but not sure it would work:

Have custom Modified By/On (Contact) fields (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_l_AXBJjxo)

Maybe via Web Form Data (or JS) set the custom Modified On and Modified By with the current logged in user

Create a Plug-in with PreImage and PostImage and validate if there was already a record update between the custom Modified On date and Now.. and if this update has been made by a different user maybe check also the field values to see if you are updating for a different value

Finally throw an exception with the message you want preventing the user the save the record

You might want to force retrieve the record via Liquid to get latest data, or prompt a message if the user wants to overwrite the data (this could be a flag, and you can check the flag in your plugin)

not sure that would be the best approach.. but it wouldn't be anything straight forward in my opinion

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Hi @OliverRodrigues ,

Thanks again for your reply. I think I forgot to mention that in my scenario, both users are accessing the web form to update an existing record, they are not each trying to create a new record. That's the reason for the concern of the data overwrite when multiple users are working on the same web form record. The use case here is we are implementing a web form on the portal to retrieve a record from Dynamics 365 for portal users to access and update. The users will need to access the same record at various times throughout the year, and as per the client's business process the users will be updating different parts of the record (and therefore different web form steps) at different times throughout the year, until they are ready to submit.

So it's during this process we will have multiple users access the same web form (the same entity record) at the same time, even though they could be working on different tabs of the record (i.e. working on different web form steps).

I know it's a tricky scenario to deal with...

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oliver.rodrigues 9,368 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I think I understand your problem, but I can't really see any issues here.

Your Web Form is tied to an Entity (Table) from your CDS (Dataverse).. let's say for example "Application".

When User A starts a new "Application", this will create a new record (ideally you should associate that with User A).

Then when User B starts a new "Application", another record will be created in your Database, and this won't overwrite the previous Application, it doesn't matter if the users have started at the same time, or if they are in different pages, steps, etc.

Each "Application" will have its own Web Form Session and they shouldn't mix.

have you started your implementation? did you face any issues?

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Hi @OliverRodrigues ,

Thanks for your reply! Perhaps let me explain the nature of my question further:

If I have a web form that has 3 web form steps, let's call them step 1, 2 and 3. My understanding is that every time the user clicks the next button to move to the next step, the data is saved back to the database.

So if user A and user B on the portal access the same web form at the same time. Both users start the web form from step 1, and the following happens:
- Initially when both user A and B opens the form in step 1, we have a field with the value "10", so both users see the value "10" from their browser session
- Then, user A update the field to "100" and moves to step 2, while user B is still viewing his session in step 1. At this moment, I believe the value "100" is updated and saved to the system, but from user B's perspective he is still seeing the previous old value "10" in his browser session.
- Then, user B moves to step 2 without making any changes in step 1. At this moment, because the field was still showing "10" in step 1 from user B's perspective, when user B clicks next to move to step 2, the value "10" in step 1 would be saved to the system, and therefore overwrite the value "100" that was previously updated by user A.

Is my above understanding correct? If yes, I am looking for a way to prevent what user A has updated in step 1 from being overwritten by what user B does when user B moves from step 1 to step 2 (without making any updates to step 1 in this case).

The nature of my question is users have to step through the web form steps in sequence to get to their desired step. If there is a scenario where user A is only interested in filling the data in step 2, and another user is only interested in filling the data in step 5, it appears they have no choice but to step through from step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,...etc, and along the way when they click the next button they will be saving the data from previous steps.

If I miss anything or if there is a better way to manage this, would appreciate your inputs.

Thanks!

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oliver.rodrigues 9,368 Most Valuable Professional on at

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That sounds a bit strange. Whenever you start your "web form" record, it creates a new Web Form Session record, this is to make sure each user have their own data.

A few questions that might help with your issue:

are you relating your "Web Form record" with the Contact entity?

are you sharing login/pwd with multiple users? is that why they need to be editing the same record?

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