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[Thomas Hörzer]

Hello community

I recently became a little developer for PowerApps in my company, and I am doing OK, but now I have a problem with a long checklist…

This checklist ask whether a characteristic is true or not

Main Points from 1 to 20 and if answered yes other questions appear

Example:

Is there a mechanical hazard?

Yes or No

Is it because of moving parts / sharp parts / cutting / etc

you chose moving parts

what is moving ? A, B, C, D etc

For a better picture I attach a picture of one point of the checklist…

Well, I only have a SharePoint list to use, and the only solutions I can imagine to use for every question a yes/no field or a lookup function where I write all the items in a SharePoint List – but I’m not quite sure if that will work..

Do you guys have probably a simpler solution for this problem

Ps.: i need this checklist in next steps too, therefore i have to manage the data as well

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Thomas H.
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[Brian Scott]

You may want to try the concept in this video – I have used it several times – not with lists as long as yours, but longer lists. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XXo9wjnJvc

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Brian Scott
Chief Creative Officer
Concord NC
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[Thomas Hörzer]

Thank you so much Brian.

I know Shane’s amazing youtube channel, but didn’t see this video.
Solutions sounds feasible.

Kind regards
Thomas

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Thomas Hörzer
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[Thomas Hörzer]

Brian, 

isn’t there a problem with the 5000 rows limit in SharePoint lists?

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Thomas Hörzer
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[Mark Pearson]

I do quite a lot of checklists/Audit question sin PowerApps.  The way I handle its is I have:
1. List for teh questions
2. List for the Results to the  question.  This list also contacins teh question when answered,  plus a reference to teh location/Site where done/Status.

When a checklist is created I simply create questions in teh result list based on the questions from the master list.  The checker then goes through this list and answers all questions.  As a question is answered an saved teh status is changed and it disappears to the user.

An example of one of my lists is there must be 42 questions answered monthly by our 29 sites.  One day one of teh month a scheduled flow runs that copes last month answers to an archive list,  the creates teh new list for every site based on the questions list.  The site has a 5 day window to completed before another flow starts sending nasty grams.  

By having the questions in a master list I need only add or remove in that ne list and he next time they will change accordingly

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Mark Pearson
National Operations Manager
61409321547
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[Thomas Hörzer]

Hi Mark

thanks for the answer. So you have to SP-lists – is this similar to the solution from Shane’s video?

Kind regards
Thomas

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Thomas Hörzer
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[Frank Voortman]

Thomas,

You might want to consider the newly announced Dataflex (=CDS light) instead of using SharePoint list especially if there are relationships between them. Not sure if DataFlex is already rolled out in your Tenant though but should be soon.

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Frank Voortman
Office 365 Solution Architect
Blaricum
Netherlands643781072
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[Thomas Hörzer]

Thank you Frank

I haven’t heard of that, however, I don’t know if (respectively when) will this be available in my company environment… Therefore I have to stick with SP 🙁

Kind regards 
Thomas

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Thomas Hörzer
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[Brian Scott]

So are you concerned with the 5000 limit for the questions or the answers? You can always break the questions up into multiple lists. I’m sure there are some natural demarcations that would facilitate that. If you are worried about the answers, you can always archive old answers by moving them to another list. You can create a SP list from another list. Use that technique to create your archive list. You can use a flow to automate the process. Have it run once a week or however often will keep you from hitting the limit. Maybe you will need to create a new list every quarter for the archive. Then you can have an app that loads all the archive lists if you need to look through those.
Hope those ideas may be of use.

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Brian Scott
Chief Creative Officer
Concord NC
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[Frank Voortman]

Thomas,

If you wanna know more about Dataflex take a look at this Blog post:

https://jukkaniiranen.com/2020/07/dataflex-is-more-and-less-than-cds/

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Frank Voortman
Office 365 Solution Architect
Blaricum
Netherlands643781072
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[Brian Scott]

Something else you will want to use is tabbed or multi-screen forms. It will make development much easier and it will help with the questions that have sub-sections. It will save you from having the visibility messing up your form layouts too. And if you need to add questions in the future it will help with that as well. There are several videos out there on tabbed interfaces – I know Shane Young has one. This video by April Dunham covers multi-screen forms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8AsxE__Mw8

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Brian Scott
Chief Creative Officer
Concord NC
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[Rachel Davis]

– Good point about the tabbed approach. Wish I’d thought of that earlier for a customized form I JUST finished.? It would have been a way better way to organize all my sections. 🙁

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Rachel Davis
Program Manager, Business Operations
Rockwell Automation
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[Rachel Davis]

From a data perspective, you’re going to want each of these to be a separate field in your list. Make your decisions on choice vs lookup as usual. (Choice fields usually have fewer, more stable options that can only be added/edited by a site owner; Use lookup for longer lists of options that may be more volatile and/or where you need people other than the owner to update the options)

Build the Power App with ALL the fields displayed in the right order and then edit the Visible function so the cards only appear when called. You’ll want to name the key and value fields inside each card to make them easier to reference in formulae.

So in your example, you’ll have 2 fields

• Mechanical_Datacard (Y/N) where the dropdown is named Mechanical.Ddn or Mechanical.Tgl 
• MovingParts_Datacard (choice of parts)

Set the Visible function for MovingParts_Datacard to something like “Mechanical.Ddn.Selected.Value=”Yes” or “Mechanical.Ddn.Selected.Value=true”. This will keep the Moving Parts question hidden until the user selects “Yes” under Mechanical..

Having done some work with complex show/hide schema, I strongly recommend the following:

1. Put as much functionality IN your list as possible using standard choice or lookup fields
2. Lay out the ENTIRE form with ALL fields first
3. Work from the BOTTOM to the top as the layout can change as fields show/hide. You may find you need to use empty custom cards as placeholders to fill empty space and prevent lower fields from jumping up and messing up your layout.

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Rachel Davis
Program Manager, Business Operations
Rockwell Automation
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[Brian Scott]

Many of the apps I end up building are designed to be the only way the users interact with the list. As a result we will lock down the list so nothing shows and create a powerapp screen for the add and edit of the list to re-direct users to the main powerapp. I end up never using choice fields and rarely using Lookup fields because of the added overhead in powerapps. I usually create a second list in SP to hold all the various choices for all the fields in the main list. I read that list into multiple collections when the app starts. I use those collections to populate the Dropdowns and Combo boxes needed for the app. That way all those choices are in one location and to make updating easier.
Ultimately all these options can be mixed and matched to make maintenance of the app easier.

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Brian Scott
Chief Creative Officer
Concord NC
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[Rachel Davis]

Yeah, mine are primarily SharePoint lists that need a few tweaks for the form to make data entry easier. The people who are actually own the list & data need to access the list AS a list. Also, I need them to be able to do some level of maintenance on their own, so it’s important that they be able to add choice options or lookup options without coming to me all the time. 

Whatever works I guess.

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Rachel Davis
Program Manager, Business Operations
Rockwell Automation
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