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Dataflows: Lookup Column Not Populating

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Posted on by 439 Season of Giving Solutions 2025

Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking for some help with Dataflows (Create and use dataflows in Power Apps - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn).

 

We have set up a Dataflow in our Test environment to ingress data from the Dev environment. The data source in Dev is Dataverse, and the data target in Test is also Dataverse. We have built the tables and relationships in Dev and performed a manual export and import to Test (normally, this would be done using Git Hub Actions ALM but that is currently not working). IE the same tables, schema, etc exist in Dev and in Test.

 

We have three tables:

Campus

Campus Zones

Buildings

 

Buildings has a Lookup Column to Campus. Buildings also has a Lookup Column to Campus Zones.

 

We ran a Dataflow to bring in the data from Dev to Test for the Campus table. This worked perfectly. We then ran a Dataflow to bring in data from Campus Zones (from Dev to Test) - again, this worked perfectly.

 

We then ran the Dataflow to bring in the data from Dev to Test for the Buildings table. It populated but the Lookup columns for Campus and Campus Data are both blank. No error messages/outputs, and the Publish and Refresh status for the Dataflow both have green ticks.

 

I am not sure what the issue is here. I tried waiting 20 minutes between running the Dataflows for Campus and Campus Zone, versus Building. It made no difference. I checked the GUIDS in Dev and in Test and they match. In Test, if I was to create a record in the Buildings Table, the Lookup Columns are working fine; IE the correct options are selectable from the drop down from both the Campus and Campus Zone tables.

 

So if I was creating manual records, no problem, but I want to bring in the correct entry (from Dev to Test) for each Lookup field (Campus and Campus Zone) in the Building table.

I saw this note:

"When importing relationships, remember that the parent table dataflow needs to be imported before the child ones. The data for the child dataflow will require data to be in the parent table for it to correctly map, otherwise it might throw an error."

(Source: a slightly different page, but related: Migrate data between Microsoft Dataverse environments using the dataflows OData connector - Power Ap...).

 

The relationships are:

Campus [1] -> Building [Many]

Campus Zones [1] -> Building [Many]

 

Therefore, to my understanding, I followed the correct approach by ensuring the Parent data (Campus and Campus Zone) was in place before running the Dataflow for the Child data (Building) as Building needs to "Lookup" the fields for Campus and Campus Zone as the Parent tables.

 

I have run the Dataflow again over 12 hours since the Dataflows for Campus and Campus Zone were run, in case there was some requirement for the related data to be at rest for a period of time, but it made no difference.

 

Any help on this would be much appreciated. Many thanks!

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I have the same question (0)
  • Jonathan Manrique Profile Picture
    2,687 on at

    Hi @pp365 

     

    You need to create Keys to be able to relate the lookups of the tables

     

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/dataflows/relationships-in-standard-dataflows

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m24yu-dwK8Q

     

    If I have answered your question, please mark your post as Solved.
    If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.
    You can accept more than one post as a solution

     

  • pp365 Profile Picture
    439 Season of Giving Solutions 2025 on at

    Hi @Jmanriquerios ,

    Thank you very much for this. There will be a slight delay until I can attempt implementation but once done I will be certain to respond to this post and mark your response as 'Accept as Solution' if all resolved.

    Many thanks!

  • Thami Profile Picture
    on at

    Creating a key worked for me!!

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