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Power Apps for Teams - Bugs in the combo box control or gaps in my knowledge?

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Posted on by Mo.jo.jo

Hello all

I am learning to use Power Apps mostly via Power Apps for Teams and I am encountering "faulty-like" behaviour from the combo box control.

I intend working with a column(s) that will contain duplicate values and I would like to get the distinct values for the column(s).

Since we don't have the dropdown control with Power Apps for Teams I am learning/testing by using the combo box.

The combo box is being used within an edit form set to New mode. This is to simulate the business table/workflow I am thinking of setting up for colleagues to work with.

When a table containing duplicates is connected to the combo box (Image 1) it works/displays values as expected.

When the distinct function is used, the weirdness begins. As shown in Image 2, the results from the function are returned but are not displayed/not visible by/in combo box.

In image 3, I successfully use the label control, that comes with the datacard, to visualise the selection made in the combo box to prove that it is there.

I then thought to try the same code but with the combo box outside of the data card. This time the combo box visualises its results, but not in the text format of the datasource, but rather using "random" numeric values, as shown in image 4.

So I tried a test, by using a hardcoded text array as the item property for the combo box, without the distinc function, to check what options I would be able to select, and again the combo box displays numeric values. See images 5 & 6.

The datasources I have tested and experienced issues with are dataverse for teams and also SharePoint. The behaviour of the combo box is consistent for both.

This is quite frustrating for this beginner to understand.

Can someone suggest if there is some learning/code adding that needs adding somewhere.

Specifically, why is the combo box not displaying the values when embedded in the data card and Distinct is used. Is there a substitute function to Distinct that I can try?

And why is the combo box returning numbers for text values.

Would be much appreciated.

Combo box + Distinct hassles

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Building Power Apps

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BCLS776 8,994 Moderator on at

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Comboboxes can be a bit tricky at first!

Try changing the Items property for the combobox to:
Distinct(TestAssignments.'Team Name').Result
This makes a single column table of all the distinct field values in the Team Name column in the TestAssignments table. The Fields setting should be set to Value. Now your combobox should display your team names as choices.

Next, pay attention to whether your combobox has the SelectMultiple property set to true. If so, you need to be aware how this affect a label with the Text property of ComboBox.Selected.Value. A label like this will show the last selected value, even if more than one has been selected. If you need the ability to select and display more than one choice, ComboBox.SelectedItems contains a table of the selections. A table does not automatically plug into label, but you can convert the table into a string with the expression: Concat(ComboBox.SelectedItems,Value," , ")

Hope this helps,
Bryan

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Mo.jo.jo 77 on at

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@BCLS776 thanks for the response. And the useful tips about working with combo boxes. In this case, within Teams, the combo box has multi-select off by default.

The suggested formula did not work though.
I believe Distinct was missing the second parameter i.e. the expression; since the formula bar returned an error.
So I edited the formula as shown in image below to add the expression 'Team Name', and used it within the Items property of the combo box.
Still, the combo box does NOT display the result.
Happy to try something else 🙂

Values still not visible

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BCLS776 8,994 Moderator on at

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Oops, you caught me on a free-typing error. Instead, please try:
Distinct(TestAssignments,'Team Name').Result

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Mo.jo.jo 77 on at

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@BCLS776 No success with that amendment either, the output from the combo box stays the same as shown in the image above i.e. not visible. 😓
I don't think the issue is with the Distinct function, I believe more & more that it has something to do with some property that is making the text not visible within the combo box/turning the result text into random numbers also.

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BCLS776 8,994 Moderator on at

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If it will help you debug, temporarily put this info into a collection and view what comes out in View-Collections. In the OnSelect of a button put:
ClearCollect(colTempDistinct, Distinct(TestAssignments,'Team Name'));

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Mo.jo.jo 77 on at

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@BCLS776 Great suggestion. I can now see results ... kind of.

The output from the collection shows that the values are actually being created. See left image.
But, when the collection is used within the combo box items property, we move to problem 2, the results are displayed as number values that only Power Apps understands. How does one fix that?! 😏

From one challenge to the next

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BCLS776 8,994 Moderator on at

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OK, we know you can load valid data, so now edit the Items property of your ComboBox to: colTempDistinct.Result

If that still doesn't fix it, look at the Fields for the combobox - it should show something like this:

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Mo.jo.jo 77 on at

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@BCLS776 Eureka. You did it. That was it!!

It looks like the result field only gets added to the available fields for the combo box after the distinct function has run.
That field then has to be added to the combo box. See image. I've added notes to it in case someone comes across this issue.
In Power Apps for Teams I do not see a layout option so there is no way to know that the result field also has to be moved to the top position to be what is displayed for the user.
I went back to some of the older code versions and it seems the result field has always been accessible as a field after distinct has been used, but I wasn't looking for it/then adding it.

That is so not intuitive to me when almost all videos I have seen show the options that are in Power Apps studio and then those don't seem to be present in the Teams version.
I think I will run over to SharePoint as the datasource and build at least this first app in the online studio interface that looks familiar.

Not to take away from your awesome 💪 👏 🙌 support.
Thank you so much. You have helped a tonne. ✨🙏🏾✨

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