Making a button visible for certain users in a sharepoint list

[Nathan5]

Hi guys,

so first of let me explain some things about the app that I Have currently someone else was working on this in the past but isn't available anymore to pick it up further.

So the app is a place with all our services where users can subscribe and get an email if there is an outage.

Now this is done by the admins thats including me So I can see the admin button that we have added but now we want to make that for Product owners so  they can put there own Service on available again if needed or a planned  maintenance.

So they will need to see the admin button for there service

Now I want to do that with a new sharepoint list where I have the following.

Name: sees everyone is the AD

Service: is a lookup from another list on the site

So I get to the point I create a Collection and A Var with the following code

ClearCollect(ColServiceAdmin, ServiceAdmin);
Set(VarServiceAdmin, ColServiceAdmin);
Refresh(ServiceAdmin);

Not sure if this is enough to do it but once I go to the Icon that needs to be visible I do VarAdmin is this is for me and someone else.

VarAdmin Or VarServiceAdmin

But with VarServiceAdmin after the Or I'm getting an error message that state invalid argument type. expecting one of the following: Boolean, number, text, OptionSetValue

Can anyone help me out with this?

[RusselThomas]

Hi @Nathan5 ,

Presumably, you need to check the current users email against an email in your collection to see if they qualify to view the icon.  If we look at your statements;

ClearCollect(ColServiceAdmin, ServiceAdmin);  <-- collects data from ServiceAdmin source 
Set(VarServiceAdmin, ColServiceAdmin); <-- sets your variable VarServiceAdmin to be the same as your collection
Refresh(ServiceAdmin); <-- refreshes your ServiceAdmin source

If we check you Visible: property expression;

VarAdmin Or VarServiceAdmin

 The expression needs to evaluate to either true or false.  The way you've expressed it, either VarAdmin OR VarServiceAdmin need to be true for the icon to be visible.  In this case, VarServiceAdmin is a table - not a true or false value.

Again, assuming this is working for admins, then if you look through the app, you should find where VarAdmin is being set - and in theory, it should be set to true or false based on whether the user matched up to some list somewhere.  You would need to apply the same logic to VarServiceAdmin, just using the ServiceAdmin source.

Unfortunately, if you're using person/group columns in SharePoint to store user objects, you can't just do a straight filter or in statement to see if the user exists in there. 

I would always recommend adding a plain text field and storing the users Email in there as a string. If you had a such a column, you might be able to set something like this;  

Set(VarServiceAdmin, User().Email in colServiceAdmins.AdminEmailColumn)

Where the variable VarServiceAdmin will be true if the users email is in the "AdminEmailColumn" column of the colServiceAdmins collection - whatever that column name happens to be.

Then your Visible property should work, as it will resolve to a true or false value.

Hope this helps,

RT

[Nathan5]

@RusselThomas hi Russel thanks for the quick response on my topic

---

@RusselThomas wrote:

I would always recommend adding a plain text field and storing the users Email in there as a string. If you had a such a column, you might be able to set something like this;  

---

Do you mean to add a plain text field in the sharepoint list where the mail is being added?

This is the code that is being used to set the VarAdmin it refers back to office365 groups

Set(VarAdmin, If(User().Email in Office365Groups.ListGroupMembers("xxxxxxxxxxxxxx").value.userPrincipalName,true,false));

[RusselThomas]

Hi @Nathan5 ,

Yes - so for admins they're checking group membership using the O365Groups connector - for this to work, admins would need to be added to that group/team.  For your serviceAdmins however, it looks like you're keeping a list instead?

If so, then you can keep  your person/group column Name: field, but add another column and call it something like AdminEmailColumn and capture the service admin users emails in there. 

To make it easier, you can create a 'serviceAdmin' screen on your app (if there isn't one already) to add/remove users from this list, and make that screen accessible to only Admins. 

You can add an Edit form, set it to your serviceAdmin list as the source and set it's default mode to New.

The form will automatically set up the fields, including a ComboBox for the Name field, a dropdown or text input for your Service field depending on what you've configured it in SPO as, and a text input for the AdminEmailColumn field. 

The combobox will let you search and add users from AD to the list.

Take note of your ComboBox name, it's likely to be something like DataCardValue3 or something.

You can then set the Text: property of the AdminEmailColumn text input to something like

DataCardValue3.Selected.Email

When you select users in the combo, the text input should then update itself with their email address, and this will get saved back to your list.  You can then use it to check the current users email against in the logic discussed above.

I also suggest you add a label to the serviceAdmin screen just to test - set it's value to User().Email - this will show how PowerApps detects your email address.  Then find your name from the combobox and ensure your test label and the text input values match. 

(Sometimes the email value for a user could be coming from one of two places - the Email field or the userPrincipleName field - both are email addresses and for the most part are usually identical - but in some organisations they are not identical as one is actually usable for an alias to your principle name.  If they are different, we'll have to add a step to get the right one, but we can cross that bridge if we need to).

Kind regards,

RT

[Nathan5]

@RusselThomas  for us the UserPrincipalName and email are not identical so we would have to cross the bridge my brain is still processing everything that you have written down as I'm completely new to powerapps

[RusselThomas]

No worries Nathan, let's get there first - we all started somewhere, you just have a handicap in that you're already deep in an existing app trying to make changes to it.

The User().Email is usually the userPrinciple, so if we store that we should be fine.  If it doesn't match your test label, we can do a lookup to Office365Users and get the right one easy enough.

For now, don't worry about the serviceAdmin screen and edit form - just add the single line of text AdminEmailColumn column to your ServiceAdmin list and manually capture a your own account and email into it - we can then test the visibility of the icon. 

Once you've got the visibility on the icon working, you can worry about making it a little more user friendly with a screen that auto-captures everything for you.

Kind regards,

RT

[Nathan5]

So I added a single line of text to my sharepoint list with the name AdminEmailColumn and typed in my UserPrincipalName.

When I'm adding the following code like you mentioned before, AdminEmailColumn is red underlined with the following message Name isn't valid This identifier isn't recognized

Set(VarServiceAdmin, User().Email in ColServiceAdmin.AdminEmailColumn);

[RusselThomas]

Hi @Nathan5 ,

So PowerApps caches your data source information on first connect.  Thereafter it assumes that while the data inside the source changes, the data source columns and configuration doesn't change - which it shouldn't.  When you're building though, you're often adding columns - so each time you do this you have to 'tell' PowerApps to fetch the data source info again - which includes columns, data types, and column configurations.

If you select Data Sources (database icon on the left) and look next to your ServiceAdmin list source, you should see a three dot menu ...

If you click this, you can select "Refresh" - this will tell PowerApps to go fetch the data source info again.

This should fix the error - let me know how it goes.

I should emphasise, you only need to do this if you mess with your data structure (like adding/removing columns or changing data types) - you don't need to do this when you're just adding/removing data.  For your session, PowerApps understands when you manipulate data and will auto-refresh the source data each time you do.  If you want to see when others have added/removed data you can use a function called Refresh() - but for refreshing data source info, using the three dot ... menu and clicking Refresh is the only way.  Either that or restart your whole edit session 🙂

Kind regards,

RT

[Nathan5]

So The error is gone and the Var is working but now it shows the settings icon for all the services but it only needs to show the user the icon for the one that is added in the SPO list

[RusselThomas]

Hi @Nathan5 ,

Glad to hear it 🙂

Can you share a few screenshots that show the gallery, the icons and perhaps the visible property of the icons you're trying to show/hide?

Also, I assume you're an admin as well, so you will probably see all the admin-related icons, as well as the serviceAdmin related icons?

Kind regards,

RT