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Need Help with Setting Variables

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Posted on by jessicadduffey

Hi friends! I need some assistance with setting variables within my power app. I will try to explain this as briefly as possible...

I am building a multi-screen form app that stakeholders will use to alert my team that an interview needs to be scheduled. Datasource is a Sharepoint site and the app will allow for both submitting new requests and updating existing requests. Here is the first screen of the app:

I'm having no issue with adding new items. The problem I'm running into is when current items need to be updated, and I think it is because of the variables I have set on some of these screens.

Screen section 1 is below with a tree view. The user will only navigate to ScreenSection1 when they are adding a new request:

The user navigates to ScreenSection2 once the Next Screen button is clicked on ScreenSection1, or an item is selected from the gallery on Screen1to edit:

The values are showing up blank when editing a request, presumably because I have no variables set because the user skips over Screen1 when editing an item. So, my question is this - how do I get the form data to show up on this screen for an item that has already been entered and needs to be edited (i.e. it is selected from the gallery on Screen1)?

TIA!

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Building Power Apps

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jrletner 720 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@jessicadduffey I had issues reading all of the code on the screenshots, so I apologize if I'm misunderstanding your issue completely. I have a suspicion that you're not getting what you want because you're using context variables. A context variable is only available on the page it's declared on (unless you actually pass it through the Navigation function). To test this theory, you could do 1 of 2 things:

1. Pass the context variable through the Navigate function:

2. Change the context variables to global variables using Set:
Set(varName, value)

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jessicadduffey on at

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Hi @jrletner - thank you for your response! Sorry that you had issues reading the text on my screenshots. I did set a global variable in the OnSelect property of the gallery (of items submitted already) on Screen 1:
OnSelect:
Set(gblCurrentRecord,ThisItem);EditForm(frmMaster);Reset(TextInput1);Navigate(ScreenSection2)

But, having said that, this is also the variable I set in the OnSelect function for starting a new record:
Set(gblCurrentRecord, Defaults('Diversity Panel Reporting List for Power Apps'))

I thought that because the button for starting a new record is not being selected during an edit request, it wouldn't make a difference that I was using the same variable. Does that make a difference?

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jessicadduffey on at

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@jrletner I think I know what's going on but I'm not sure how to fix it...
When a request for a new record is submitted on ScreenSection1, the information is coming from a different data source (AllOpenRoles). So, all of the highlighted items on ScreenSection are coming from AllOpenRoles, NOT Diversity Reporting List for Power Apps.
How can I tell the app that when someone is editing a request, the item properties need to be from the Global Variable tied to Diversity Reporting List for Power Apps, and if someone is creating a new request, the item properties need to come from AllOpenRoles?

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jessicadduffey on at

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@jrletner ...so I figured this out. This seems to be happening to me a lot lately - I have an issue, I bring it to the power platform community, and once I've talked it through I figure it out. 🙂 I'm using an If(IsBlank) function to check for the variable set when creating a new record, and when it comes back as blank, I am inserting gblCurrentRecord as the alternative. 🙂 Thanks!

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jrletner 720 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@jessicadduffey nothing wrong with some good old fashioned Rubber Duck Debugging!! Congrats on getting it figured out!

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