when do values get updated using lookup fields in function fields

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Posted on by HansHeintz

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Say in table department I have a lookup field employee referencing table employees.

I also make a function string field in department with syntax (employee.name).

If in table employee the name is changed will it reflect in the function field of department or only if some change is made to the record in department that reference the emloyee?

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Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

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Shawn11 152 on at

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Hi @HansHeintz if you use employee.name, value of the function field will be calculated once when the record is created or updated, and it won’t automatically update if the referenced employee’s name changes later.

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a33ik 3,306 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@HansHeintz did you use Formula or Calculated field and you called it Function field?

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HansHeintz 704 on at

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Yes I incorrectly recalled a formula field a being called function field.

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HansHeintz 704 on at

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I see my exmaple is not very logical.
It should be a formula field department in the employee table and what I need is department.name
On a slightly differen note.. If I use department.name in my code, does this imply a lookup (time consuming wise) is being done. Or not and is the accuracy of the result also dependent on refreshing the record?
Since in the case of the formula field an update is only done when some change to the employee record is made (say that the department name has changed but still the lookup in employee still refers to the same department), what is the most logical way (code) to refresh the record? I don't expect refreshing the table to accomplish this since it would take to long with large tables.

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ivan_apps 2,187 Moderator on at

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Formula columns don’t persist in the database so the value is calculated on retrieval of the data. Say you are loading or refreshing the grid, the calculation to retrieve the lookup value is done at that time.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/developer/data-platform/calculated-rollup-attributes#formula-and-calculated-columns

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