PowerApps latest updates breaks our app again (The "IF" or "ISBLANK" statement won't work )

[mzhang]

PowerApps team,

We have an order processing PowerApps app that has been running for 10 months, the PowerApps version we have been using is 3.18104.19. Yesterday, we had some PowerApps outages that appeared caused by the backhand PowerApps platform issues, because we saw the "Server error" posted on the app. We think it was most likely that PowerApps had been updated. 

Now we found that our app does not run correctly; we have a field "Full_Name" for the user who starts a new order, the data in this field is as follows; "If (IsBlank(ThisItem.Full_Name), User().FullName, ThisItem.Full_Name)". The logic is that if this field is blank, then the order is a new one and the User().Name will be used, otherwise it is an existing order, the name should be as is. This way when the order administrator processes an order made by a user, the original username won't be changed to that of the admin. Now we found that when the order admin processes the orders, the names for orders will be changed to that for the order admin. Our logic for this field is completely lost. This behavior will interrupt our business logic because we can't find out who made the original orders.

This is not the only time that we found a previously fine app suddenly malfunctions due to MS updating the backhand end PowerApps platform. The design of the PowerApps platform is flawed; user’s mature software apps is running on a platform which is constantly updating with updates which have not gone through quality QA processes. The end results are the updates breaking our apps from all directions. We have production apps which need a stable environment!

I appreciate if someone can look at the problem I described here.

[Hemanth]

Hi mzhang,

Reading the description of the problem, it seems like the IsBlank(ThisItem.Full_Name) is returning true when you don't expect it to. am I correct? 

Can you please provide the sessionID for when you reproduced the issue? 

If we want to access the app to understand the surrounding formulas and data flow happening in the app resulting in this change of behavior, do we have your permission to access your app?

Thanks,

_hemanth

[mzhang]

_hemanth,

The If statement I listed reads like this; if the Field of Full_Nmae is blank, then enter the value of User().FullName in Full_Name field, otherwise, enter the value of ThisItem.Full_Name in this field (keep the existing value). There are two statements combined;  an IF and ISBLANK statements We have this logic in the app worked for 10 months until yesterday. When an order admin processes an order, the Full_Name field already has an value, therefore, the value of User().FullName should not have been used, but it is used now.

By the way,  can you tell me how to get the sessionID?

Thanks.

[Hemanth]

Hi mzhang,

Thsnks. here is how to get the sessionID : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/get-sessionid 

Yes, from your description it seems like an issue in ThisItem.Full_Name not having a value when you expect it to have a value and not the issue with the underlying functions itself. we will investigate once we have more details.

Do we have permission to access your app if needed to understand the root cause?

Thanks,

_hemanth

[mzhang]

_hemanth,

Yes, you have my permission to access the app. The sesion ID is:

Session ID: a853ad27-b6f3-4702-bfe3-85a692a417a0
PowerApps 3.18111.17

[R3dKap]

Hi @mzhang,

Your formula to fill out your Full_Name field seems so simple that I don't see any reason why an update of PowerApps would influence it.

Anyway... While @Hemanth will probably find interesting information in your session data, could you consider the following:

• Does the problem appear for everyone or just for a few people ?
• Could there be any other place in your form or any other formula that could influence the field Full_Name ? A Patch update by example that would erase the Full_Name field in some cases...
• Let's assume that there are no bugs in PowerApps itself and that your formula to fill out the Full_Name field works correctly. I then see only one reason why the order admin name would be used to fill out the Full_Name field: it's that the ThisItem.Full_Name field is INDEED empty even after the initial creation of the order by the user. So, would there be any reason for the User().FullName to return a blank value for some users when creating a new order ? Could there be something wrong with the users name/full-names in the AD ?
• If I'm not mistaken, the false part of an if statement is not mandatory... which means that the following formula would do the trick as well:

If(IsBlank(ThisItem.Full_Name),User().FullName)

Just trying to explore all possibilities here... 🙂

Let us know about all this,

Emmanuel

[Hemanth]

Thanks. we will investigate and get back to you.

[sridutt]

@mzhang, I see that you have 2 data cards updatedbycd and fullnamecd overlapping eachother in EditOrdReqFm3. Is that intentionally done for some business logic?

Additionally, since you mentioned this is happening with latest powerapps release can you confirm if restoring to previous vesion resolves issue for you.

[mzhang]

Sridutt,

Yes, we have two different fields, one is Full_Name, the other is Updated_by, therefore we have two different data cards in that Edit screen. It is our business logic. Let me say that our app have not had this problem for 10 months until a few days ago. We have probably close to one thousand records generated during this period, if we have had any problem in our app design in this area, it would have been found long time ago. 

Our latest saved version was 3.18104.19 that we made a couple of weeks ago, can you give me a link to use that version?

Thanks

[sridutt]

@mzhang you can restore last saved version and publish it to verify it. If you want to make changes to that version of powerapp use direct link: https://create.powerapps.com/v3.18104.19.93879413/studio/#.