New CDS Field groups Documentation

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Posted on by Olivier

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Could we get some documentation on the new Field groups usage?

The Default Field Groups are:

DefaultCard

DefaultDetails

DefaultIdentification

DefaultList

DefaultLookup

DefaultReport

Also, it seems like building apps from Data doesn't take into account some of the Field group settings.

Thank you for any inputs on this.

Olivier

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Building Power Apps

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v-micsh-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Deleted. Please refer to @Meneghino's posts.
Meneghino 6,949 on at

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Hi @Olivier
Documentation is here
So far I think the most insteresting is the DefaultLookup group, as it should help to display more than the PrimaryId field in lookups by adding other fields to this group.
However I have tested and it was not really working yet (please see this post). I suspect that this feature is still in development so that is why documentation in incomplete.
I always create apps from scratch, once you become familiar with PowerApps, it is much easier than creating from data.
Olivier 192 on at

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Thank you Meneghino,

I had found the document you pointed to. It is obvious that Microsoft has some grand plans with the Field Groups, and I like where I think this is going. But it would be nice if Microsoft could explain how to leverage the various groups, that they provide as standard, in building applications. At first I thought that maybe custom entities' Field groups were not supported yet, but experimenting with the standard entities didn't yield better results. I would have thought that with the various groups being specified, "Build from data source" would be better than it is currently. e.g.: a browsingGallery would expose the fields specified in the corresponding group, an detailsForm would show the fields specified in the details Group, ... This seems starightforward, yet I haven't found any relationship between "build app from source" and the Field Grouping... I will investigate manual design, but have you been able to find Groups that actually DO something in building the apps?
Thanks,

Olivier
Meneghino 6,949 on at

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Hi @Olivier, I have experimented a little bit with this but have no immediate need for groups as there are work-arounds.

One group that would interest me would be the DefaultLookup group if it means that we can improve performance of lookups. I do that at the moment by caching the lookup tables via collections. This is very efficient and PowerApps goes really fast with this and other tricks, however they are extra steps that you have to design and DefaultLookup could/should eliminate the need for that.

On the other hand, I understand the logical difficulties in getting it implmented. For example, in CDS you can give different rights to different users for different tables. What do you display in the lookup if you have given a user the right to the base table but not to the lookup table? No value? Just the PrimaryId? All the fields in the DefaultLookup group? I suspect these are the details that the programme team are working on before releasing the features.
CWesener Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the discussion on this topic, and sorry its taken me so long to spot it. We initially defined the list of field groups you mentioned in your original post with the intent of making these available in PowerApps scenarios much like what was described in the thread. At this point in time we only use the field groups to support some basic scenarios - for example when you create a new PowerApp based on a CDS entity and allow PowerApps to create the three pages (Gallery, View, Edit) field groups are used as part of the logic to determine what is put on these forms.

We are looking at the best way to take this forward, and will most likely update this feature so it's clearer to users as to how and when to use Field Groups. I appreciate the feedback and let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,