Filtering out Gallery items based on another Gallery.

[MarkSL]

Hi,

I am new to PowerApps and want to know if something is possible and get a steer on how to do it...

I have an Orders table which contains orders up to 10,000 rows.  I want to show key order data in this 'Order Header Gallery' such as Order Number, Order Date, Customer number and then for the user to drill into a row and navigate to an 'Order Detail' page.  This all works fine except I have found that my gallery is limited to 500 rows.

I would therefore like to create a summary page prior to seeing the Order Header Gallery which contains one row per Year and Month, with a count of orders for each.  So something like:

Jan 2019:   350 Orders, 348 Shipped, 2 Outstanding.

Feb 2019:   260 Orders, 240 Shipped, 20 Outstanding.

Mar 2019:   400 Orders, 320 Shipped, 80 Outstanding.

I have created a simple Order_Summary view of my Orders table in SQL which provides this summarised order info.

1, How do I link the selected Year and Month from the Order Summary Gallery to that of my Order Header Gallery?  I am sure this must be possible, is there a term for such functionality or a video I can watch to help me?

2, Is there a way around the 500 row limitation?  Due to the nature of our business, I don't think we would exceed 500 orders per month, but it would be good to know that there was an option if neccessary.

Many thanks in advance.

Mark

[wyotim]

As far as linking two galleries together, what I would recommend is using a filter based on the selection from the first gallery. In your case, something like the below in the OnSelect propery of your Order Header Gallery:

ClearCollect(
    colOrderSummaryItems,
    Filter(
        'Order Summary',
        Date >= ThisItem.Date,
        Date < DateAdd(ThisItem.Date, 1, Month)
    ) 
)

What is happening above is that, based on what is selected in the Order Header Gallery, a collection is made of Order Summary items filtered by dates between the Date value of the Order Header Gallery and the start of the following month. This is assuming you have a Date value to compare against, like the first date of the respective month, which you may have in your view already. If not, you could probably use the date and month to contruct a date value to compare against.

This is a lot to take in, so feel free to ping me back if I can help work out the specifics. Also, searching YouTube for 'PowerApps Gallery' should net some good results. Shane Young is a great person to check out on YouTube in general but I bet he has a video or two that would be helpful.

On the second point, there are ways around the 500 item limit. The easiest would be to bump up the 'Data row limit for non-delegable queries' to the max value of 2000. This is found under File -> App Settings -> Advanced Settings and then at the top. Otherwise, you could construct ways to pull data in in groups of the max value or pull in filtered groups by a defined range, like month and year. How to do this is a bit of a large topic but if you search the forums for 'delegation' you will get some great topics. I will track down a couple good threads and post them here later tonight.

Hopefully that gets you started and, as I said, I'm happy to help further if needed.

[wyotim · Accepted solution]

As promised, a few links on the delegation limit and how to get around it:

 https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Discussion/DELEGATION-Workaround/m-p/187527?advanced=fal...

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Discussion/Collection-Limit/m-p/248155#M72848

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Discussion/Pulling-in-large-ish-SQL-tables/td-p/243777

[MarkSL]

Hi @wyotim 

Many thanks for the reply and for the kind assistance of help!

I found this video from Shane which gave me exactly what I wanted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlhWQg03TL0&t=239s

I created a new gallery1 in my existing app, pointed it to my view and then filtered the datasource of my gallery2 by the selected items in gallery1 (eg Year and Month).

Slightly frustrated though, I had it working, but then it stopped - my Gallery1 just wasn't responding to my selecting of the different rows?  I mapped a label to Gallery1.Selected.Year but it just remained empty as I clicked in different rows?  I created a new blank page in the app, added a new gallery, pointed it to the view which loaded the gallery, but again nothing was being returned by Gallery1.Selected.Year?  I deleted the datasource, recreated it, closed the app, re-opened etc, but no matter what it just wouldn't populate Gallery1.Selected.Year.  Yet if I start a brand new app it works perfectly?!   Perhaps its a bug?

Anyway!  I've decided to restart my app from fresh and have another quesiton if I may:

I have built a UsersDetail view table in SQL, which returns fields like 'UserName, UserEmail, SiteName, LocationCode, Division, Company" etc.  When the app first starts, I load a collection LoggedInUsersDetails with the details from this view, where UserEmail is that of the logged on user:

Clear(LoggedInUsersDetails);
Set(LoggedInUserEmail, User().Email);
Collect(
    LoggedInUsersDetails,
    Filter(
        '[dbo].[View_UserDetails]',
        UserEmail = LoggedInUserEmail
    )
);

This works fine and my collection is populated with the 10 records (Sites) that I am allowed to access.  I have created a Combo box which displays the SiteNames from LoggedInUsersDetails and the user can select one of these and the rest of the app will be based upon this selection. 

Once the user has selected their site, I want to populate some variables with the values for the related row in the collection.

Populating UserSite works fine:

Set(UserSite, combo_SiteName.SelectedText);

But I am struggling to set UserLocationCode.  I am trying to use LOOKUP but it doesn't like it, complaining against the equals sign is an 'Invalid Argument Type':

Set(UserSite, combo_SiteName.SelectedText);
Set(UserLocationCode, LookUp(LoggedInUsersDetails, SiteName = UserSite)

I have also tried FIRST(FILTER... but again this doesn't work:

Set(UserLocationCode, First(Filter(LoggedInUsersDetails, SiteName = UserSite.Value)))

How can I simply set some variables from my collection, based on the SiteName?

Thanks 🙂

[MarkSL]

Hi @wyotim 

Thanks for the very helpful reply.  I actually found this video by Shane which gave me exactly what I was looking for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlhWQg03TL0&t=239s.

I created a Gallery1, pointed it to my summarised view and then filtered my datasource of Gallery2, based on the Gallery1.Selected.Year and Gallery1.Selected.Month.

Annoyingly though, it was working just fine, but then simply stopped working.  My Gallery1 just didn't respond to any button clicks.  I created a label to display Gallery1.Selected.Month and it just remained blank.  I tied everything, deleting the page, re-creating everything, dropping the datasource etc but it just will not work with my existing app.  I've created a brand new app and it works just fine?!  Perhaps its a bug?

Thanks

Mark

[wyotim]

Glad you were able to get it working! I’m not sure on why it would just stop with the first app you made. If you run into that again, feel free to add me in to the topic and I’d be happy to try and troubleshoot.

[MarkSL]

Hi @wyotim 

I've been progressing with my App and really enjoying this new discovery!

I wanted to check that my concept of using a summarised gallery to decide what to pull into the detail gallery will work over a larger dataset and so created a brand new app simply containing two galleries.  Gallery1 loads from from a view and Gallery2 uses a Filter in its Items, eg:

Filter('[dbo].[ViewOrders]', LocationCode = Gallery1.Selected.locationcode)

My SQL view will return 15k rows if no selections are passed, but between 150 and 800 per LocationCode and it responds very quickly.

I've gone to preview the App and whilst it loaded quickly and was responsive for the first two clicks of Gallery1, it then stopped. 

When I click on new records in Gallery1 nothing appears to happen and I can't see any of the dots along the top of

the app and I can't see any active processes on my SQL server?

Is there some way of finding out why its not being responsive?

One of my concerns about PowerApps is that I don't really know how well its going to scale or what tools are in place to help monitor it.  The plan is to roll this out to 250 users who will be accessing it a few times a day to view, add and edit records in our SQL database.  I'm a bit concerned now that it appears to stop without reason!

Thanks

Mark

[wyotim]

Hi Mark,

That is odd behavior. One question: are you using an on-premises SQL server or Azure? There could be an issue with your gateway if it is on-prem. Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with gateways but we could add some people to the conversation who do have more experience if needed. 

If it is Azure, you might check your DTUs and see if you are getting maxed out there. I wouldn't think this is the case but it could be worth a look. 

Another question: are both galleries on the same screen or are you navigating between screens? Either way, is there code in the OnVisible property of either screen that might be effecting how data is being pulled in?

Otherwise, I am a bit stumped as to why it would work for a couple times and then stop responding. I have a couple views that are in the 15k row range that I can make a similar test app in. I'll try replicating your scenario and see what I can find.

[MarkSL]

Hi @wyotim 

Again, thank you for taking the time to look at my issue, it really is a pleasure to join a forum that is active and has such helpful people!

Looking at other posts from lthe last 24 hours, I wonder it was an issue with the PowerApps service.  My issues were exactly the same as those described here What happen with all gallerys and also here Gallery control broken?

My datasource is On Premise SQL and I was able to connect to my Power BI reports through the same gateway without issue.  My two galleries are both on the same screen and I am not doing anything with OnVisible of the screen in which they reside.

However everything seems fine today.  I went into my app earlier today and clicked through many rows in my summary gallery and the detail gallery was loading in no more than 1 second and I went through many rows!

One issue that I am seeing is that I wanted to have a label which displays the number of rows in my detail gallery.  A google suggested that the syntax CountRows(GalleryName.AllItems) should do it, and I am sure I tried this the other day without issue, but today it is generating the warning "The function CountRows has some invalid arguments".  I have checked that my Gallery name is correct and made sure I selected it from the intellisense offerings.  I've noticed in the threads quoted above that users are saying that this has stopped working for them as well as the reported unresponsive galleries.

As for Azure, I do hope to move my application DB into this, but its not something I have done before.  We currently have an extension to access onsite SQL until Jan 2020 using PowerApps For Office 365, but after this all my users will require a Plan 1.  Therefore I am hoping it will be more cost effective to spin up a DB in Azure that upgrade 250+ users to Plan 1!

Anyway, thanks again and fingers crossed it was a one-off.

Mark 

[wyotim]

Mark, 

Glad to hear things are working now! It must be a service issue as you said. All the syntax and scenarios you have described have worked in my tests, which means I must be coming in after the fact. So, sorry to not be much help but glad it is working! 

Concerning the gallery count, the syntax of CountRows(GalleryName.AllItems) is indeed correct, so that must be part of the gallery issue you and others are describing. And again, I made a test that worked for me, so I must be behind the times again. 

For what it's worth, I highly recommend Azure SQL. Depending on your location, the pricing can be quite nice especially compared to the Plan 1 cost. Plus, no servers to maintain! You also might check out Visual Studio Dev Essentials. One of the many perks they offer is a free year of select Azure services, including SQL DB. I used this to help get things started for the company I work for, which really helped me as I had zero SQL experience before this. We then transitioned the free plan into a pay-as-you-go plan and rolled things out seamlessly. Just something to tuck away as you get closer to 2020.

Anyway, hope the issues have faded out and that you can get back to building some sweet PowerApps!

Tim