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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Apps / Conflicts with Primary...
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Conflicts with Primary Name Field

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Posted on by 373

Hi,

 

Suppose someone with little Dataverse experience (that is, me!) created an Employee table, then it'd be an easy mistake to make to put the actual employee's name in the "Primary Name" column. All is well - until you get a duplicate "John" or even "John Smith", even if you set a key as an autonumbered field "Employee Number".

 

So - suppose I now create another column in the table which isn't the Primary Name field, and called it "Employee Name"; what goes into the Primary Name column and how do I manage this? I'm assuming it can't be left blank?

 

thanks

 

Martin

I have the same question (0)
  • Gowri Halan Profile Picture
    262 on at

    @Martin_W It can be left blank. Issue is when you add lookup of this entity in any other entity, You will see (no name) Message as it might refer primary name field. You can use OOB field as employee name field. If you want to apply Duplicates logic on name then try Duplicate detection rule. or you would need to write prevalidation plugin.

     

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/set-up-duplicate-detection-rules-keep-data-clean 

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/developer/data-platform/tutorial-write-plug-in  

  • Verified answer
    Drew Poggemann Profile Picture
    9,287 Most Valuable Professional on at

    Hi @Martin_W ,

    Overall having the Primary Name field contain the employee's name shouldn't be an issue and you may have duplicate names that are actually valid (two John Smith).  As mentioned by @gowrihalan04 you can setup duplicate detection rules which will help you to warn someone if they are creating what looks like a duplicate but it doesn't stop them from creating.  If you have a field that is truly an alternate key (i.e.  employee number) you can setup an Alternate Key which will enforce uniqueness on the key (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/data-platform/define-alternate-keys-reference-records

     

    Also, if you have a situation where you want to create a different field for the name and then populate the Primary Name field programmatically, I usually do the following:

    1. Set the Primary Name field as Optional vs. the default of Business Required
    2. Setup realtime workflow that triggers on creation of the record, or update of specific fields, to update the record and set the name field as a concatenation of a couple of fields or whatever logic you want to use.
    3. On the data entry form for creating the record, set the Name field as Read Only 

    This way the Primary Name is populated when adding / updating the records without the user having to enter anything and you will be able to click on this name in your views and not see "(No Name)" in lookups etc.

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