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6(Hello! First time poster, open to suggestions about most efficient way to ask questions)
I have a hierarchical/self-referential table that contains categories of laboratory equipment. (Table is in dataverse, this table is one of many that will be used to build Powerapp driven equipment management.)
I am trying to figure out how best to have users receive equipment and place it into the proper category, using Powerapps.
There is great variety in the types of equipment in the lab - and it is best to categorize in some fashion.
Table structure is:
(I have enabled hierarchy on this table - and it all looks like correct under the hierarchical view in the model-driven app).
Current table looks like this:
I have two top level categories (Information Technology and Lab Equipment).
After that there are various layers in the hierarchy that allows one to drill down w/o putting a hard limit on levels.
(I like the self-referential table approach - as the layers of nesting required for all the categories I will eventually build out will vary quite a bit in depth. I'd like to avoid a flat table with multiple columns that either won't get used, or having to keep adding on columns.)
My issue is with how best to have users navigate the selection of equipment category upon receipt. If the user is seeing the entire table records with no sorting -it makes category selection difficult.
I was thinking that cascading drop-downs were the way to go.
For my first drop down, I was able to solve this by filtering on "IsBlank" on the Parent Category, which only displayed records which are therefore top level:
This properly returns only those categories which have no parent (Lab Equipment and Information Technology)
I run into trouble on the second drop down (and assumably every drop down thereafter) -because I'm comparing record to a text:
My take on this is that I'm trying to compare the "Parent Category" lookup to the "Category" text field, and thereby returning the error.
So - am I even approaching this the right way? Is there a smarter way to get the cascading drop-down selection, or help users navigate what could eventually be a fairly complex category hierarchy?
I recognize that I'll have to have an infinite number of drop-down controls on my PowerApps form - and therefore this feels like the wrong approach intuitively - and yet I do not know what else to do!
Many thanks!
As an example of some nice navigation, as well as the very high level of category/sub-category hierarchy - check out Fisher Scientific's left-hand navigation bar:
https://www.fishersci.com/us/en/home.html
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