Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi all,

My app is built with Dataverse tables. My 'Job Elements' table has a lookup to the 'Jobs' table, which in turn has a lookup to the 'Customers' table.

In this example, I am filtering my 'Job Elements' table on a related value in the 'Customers' table. However, I have found that using the <> operator (also tried Not in), specifically when filtering on a secondary lookup table, is showing me the same results as =.

eg. Here is my gallery correctly showing all rows in 'Job Elements' where the related customer has invoice frequency of "Weekly":

Now, if I change this to <>, I get exactly the same results:

Here it is again for "Daily":

This is especially strange as the URL for the request in the monitor tool does show the 'ne' operator, but the results returned (even in the monitor view for this call) are as if this was 'eq'.

I've also tested with a random string to make sure it wasn't showing me some cached results or something, and the result is the same (this should show ALL results but shows none):

Is this an understood limitation of filtering on lookup columns, or is this perhaps a bug?

Categories:

Building Power Apps

Hi,

Yes, this behavior is a known limitation (or inconsistency) when filtering across multiple lookup levels (i.e., grandchild-to-grandparent) in PowerApps using Dataverse.

✅ 1. Flatten the Data (Best Approach)

Add the InvoiceFrequency directly to the Jobs table and replicate it in JobElements using Power Automate or a calculated column. That way, you avoid needing to go through multiple lookups.

✅ 2. Use a Collection with Full Evaluation (Non-delegable)
If your dataset is reasonably small:

ClearCollect(
LocalJobElements,
Filter('App-XSP-JobElements',
JobsLookup.CustomersLookup.InvoiceFrequency <> "Daily"
)
)

This forces PowerApps to load all data locally and then apply the filter — but this will break delegation and cause performance issues on large datasets.

✅ 3. Use a Custom View or Power Automate

Pre-filter your data using a custom Dataverse view or fetch it via Power Automate with an HTTP request to Dataverse Web API, then pass it to PowerApps.

Thanks!

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