Lookups, these are confusing....

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Posted on by microsoft_fan

Not fully understanding lookups, here's a brief explanation of my scenario:

I have two tables, Table A and Table B.
In table A I want to lookup a row in table B.
I have set up a many-to-one relationship (Table A - Table B) and a column in table A of type lookup.

What I don't understand is how this lookup is made and populated automatically? Without using a 'relate rows' action in a flow, and I haven't provided a foreign key anywhere, but the lookup is automatically populated in Table A with a link to a row in Table B?

I did notice that the two tables somehow share a column. Not just display name, but the actual column name, and they are both of type text. I'm not sure how this happened. Could there be a 'relate rows' somewhere that I haven't been able to find or another explanation.

I have read the documentation on lookups many time, but can't understand how data would be populated without first relating the rows.

Thanks for your help!

__fan__

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Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

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Prakash4691 1,332 on at

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Hi @microsoft_fan ,

Is it auto populating on create or update of table A?

There might be 3 place where you can check,

1. OOB workflow - create, update (trigger)

2. Javascript - onsave, onchange (event handler)

3. Plugin - create, update (trigger)

In power automate look for "update row" action.

Is it the same record of Table B been populated on Table A for all the records?

Regards,

Prakash
microsoft_fan 14 on at

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Hi @Prakash4691 thanks for your help!

It is not the same record being populated. A unique row is being matched along the shared column in each table. I have looked for update row and relate row actions... nothing.

I am not sure if it is changing on create or on update. Is there a way to trace this back, or even to see what process populated the data? This might provide some more insight.

Thanks,
__fan__
Prakash4691 1,332 on at

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@microsoft_fan ,

Try creating a record if it is not getting populated try editing an existing record.

To identify from where it is getting triggered,

1. javascript - check if any onchange event registered for the lookup field or formproperties to check for onsave event handler.

2. OOB workflow - settings->processes, Activated Process view - filter primary entity to Table A and category to workflow. Open if any workflow registered and look for update step.

3. Plugin - Open default solution-> sdk message processing steps, filter primary object type to Table A

If it answers your question, kindly give kudo and accept it as solution.

Regards,

Prakash
AhmedSalih 6,680 Moderator on at

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I went through this confusion before. Here is what I did to try to make sense of what is exactly happening when we create one-to-many relationship.
I added a column in the ONE table (it is B in your case) and its data type was a Whole Number.
This Column will hold UNIQUE values ( No Duplicates) I called ID for example.
In the Many Table (A in your Case) I added the Lookup Column and it is pointing to table B
Then I entered records in the ONE table
Then I entered records in the MANY table and when you try to enter data in the Lookup Field, It will show you the values of the NAME column in the ONE table. That is ok because the actual value of the Lookup filed will be the value of the ID column that you created in the ONE table of that record. So, if you export the MANY table (to check) after you entered some records, the LOOKUP column values will be the values of the ID column in the ONE Table.
NOTE: Using DataFlows, you can import Data to the Lookup Column and it will link to the Values in the ONE table, BUT you have to make sure the ONE table has a KEY and it is that ID UNIQUE Column you created.