Dynamic Column Names When Patching a Collection

[eppieb]

Hi,

I have a gallery that is connected to a collection to populate the fields. From this gallery i have buttons where i want another collection to be updated. However it seems that i cant dynamically reference a column name from within the patch function, so ust be hard coded. This will not work as each items changes based on the gallery.

tldr: i need to update a specific column in a collection based upon another collection.

Does anyone have any workarounds for this? Currently trying the below formula, but as field names arent dynamic it is producing static results

Patch( CollectionName,
First( Filter(CollectionName, Identifier = Text(VarIdentifier) ) ), {StaticColumn: "Unacceptable"} )

[BCLS776 · Accepted solution]

You're right - Power Apps does not support dynamic column names at this time.

The workaround is to use an If() or Switch() statement to address all possible cases and decide which Patch() or other data operation the app needs to perform.

Hope that helps,

Bryan

[eppieb]

Thanks for getting back to me. As a workaround i am storing the data collected as rows and sorting it out in PowerBI afterwards.