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Hi All,

I am looking to build a simple solution with PowerApps, it I a declaration application which allows users to put data in form and submit it to the data source. In this case it is, SharePoint.

Requirement: One of the business user asked for a helping hand in building the application. Now the application only consists of a new form with multiple data points to be filled in and submitted.

However, there is one point that i am stuck on. Actually, i follow a different approach for it but would want to understand if that can be done in a much optimized way.

So the user would want to fill in few columns and he/she might want to enter more data points in that regard
.
Example: he/she would want to fill in Email and phone number of more than 1 employee maximum would be 7. so in my approach I create 14 columns and one dropdown which allows the users to select number of columns they want to edit and the on selection of dropdown of number of columns to be entered the columns are visible.

Is there any better way to allow users to enter 10 column values but in the same line item?

Cheers!

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timl 36,415 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @Anonymous

From a design perspective, it is not good practice to create 'wide' lists with variable numbers of duplicate columns. Therefore, I would recommend against building such a screen.

Instead, it is better to create a child list. In your case, you would have your Declaration list and a separate related 'Declaration Employee' list that would store the email and phone numbers of your employees.

@Drrickryp has a good blog post here that describes this practice in detail.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/News-Announcements/Database-Design-Fundamentals-and-PowerApps-An-Overview/ba-p/184485

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@timl However, the whole data has to be viewed as one single form only as it is a declaration kind of thing. if i go with relational database then also generating the pdf of the data gets a little tricky.
so following relational database makes me worry on three aspects:

adding data through single form.
Viewing data as single form through gallery control
Emailing the user about the request created. Email should contain the data that was entered
Finally, Generating PDF (this is a major concern). Not sure How do i achieve this if i go with relational database design
So as a total, I have 5 columns where maximum data entry can be 7. So it means 35 duplicate columns if i try to store it in one list
I have 4 columns where maximum data entry can be 2. so around 8 columns if i try to store it in one list.
I have one column which would require maximum 15 entries. so around 15 columns more.
so the total goes upto 60 + additionally other columns the user will enter.

i am not sure how do i go about this..

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timl 36,415 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for clarifying that. My inclination would be to always design something in relational way, but I get how this is complex because it doesn't quite fit well into the UI that you require.

To comment on some of these points,

In terms of adding data through a single form, you could add a child grid and to enable the user to use that to add additional child rows for each employee. You could build all of this into a single screen, and your user might be amenable to this layout.

To view data in the gallery control, you can add nested gallery controls to the template item of the gallery so that shouldn't be a problem.

You can build formula to pick up all the necessary email addresses.

Generating the PDF output should be no different to the way that you would do it with a single table. The typical way is to build HTML that you convert to PDF and when you build this HTML, you can call the ForAll function to help retrieve the records in child tables.

Hope that's of some help.

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