PowerApps Sum of Sharepoint list column total by month

[DanielWilliams]

Good afternoon awesome community,

I have been using powerapps for a few months now and in desperate need of some assistance. I have a current Sharepoint list I am using to collect data and using the powerapps as the front end entry location. Within my list in sharepoint I have a few fields that are collecting dates entered and total amount of students associated with that date entry. I have figured out how to use the SUM funtion in powerapps(took me a while lol), but now I need to figure out how to make that powerapps box represent "How many students total for the current month", and I am absolutely stuck. I have attached a screenshot so someone with WAY more experience can assist with a better idea to function to create outcome needed. 

1) Main screen so far until I can figure this out:

2) View of the sharepoint list and dummy data for creation.

I hope someone can assist considering I have scoured the interenet and stumped.

If you have a legit solution please post or email me at daniel.williams@cacadets.org.

This community has been great.

regards,

[RandyHayes]

@DanielWilliams 

Are you still running into issues with this?

If so, then what you're going to need to do to successfully sum by month is to group your data by month. 

This can be achieved using the GroupBy function in your formula.

Since I don't have full details on your data, column types or other relevant information, I will give you a basic concept and you can then work that into your scenario.

Let's assume a list in SharePoint - myList

Let's assume a date column - listDate

Let's assume a numeric column - entryTotal

Now, to get a group of sums by month, I can do this...hold on now...it's a few things to get the head around, so I'll go step by step and build this:

AddColumns(myList, "entryMonth", Date(Year(listDate), Month(listDate), 1))

At the end of this formula, we now have all of our data, plus a new column that is the date of the listDate entry, except since I specified 1 for the day, it is just a year and month.

Now - let's group the items:

GroupBy(
   AddColumns(myList, "entryMonth", Date(Year(listDate), Month(listDate), 1)), 
   "entryMonth", "theItems")

At the end of this formula, we have a two column table of results.  One column is the distinct list of all of the entryMonth's (as came from our AddColumns before) and the second column is the group of records associated with that value (ex. if there were 100 entries in Feb 2019 - then there would be, in the second column, a table of 100 records).

Now to sum:

AddColumns(
   GroupBy(
      AddColumns(myList, "entryMonth", Date(Year(listDate), Month(listDate), 1)), 
      "entryMonth", "theItems"), 
   "MonthCount", Sum(theItems, entryTotal)
)

NOW...after this, we have a three column table - 1 column is the Distinct month of the year (called entryMonth), 2 is the Sum of all of the entryTotal fields in that month (called MonthCount), and 3 is again all the records associated with that entry month.

So, now you have months of the year and sums for each month.  What now??

Want to sort it?

By year and month (ascending)-

SortByColumns(
   AddColumns(
      GroupBy(
         AddColumns(myList, "entryMonth", Date(Year(listDate), Month(listDate), 1)), 
         "entryMonth", "theItems"), 
      "MonthCount", Sum(theItems, entryTotal)
      ), 
   "entryMonth", Ascending
)

By Sum descending -

SortByColumns(
   AddColumns(
      GroupBy(
         AddColumns(myList, "entryMonth", Date(Year(listDate), Month(listDate), 1)), 
         "entryMonth", "theItems"), 
      "MonthCount", Sum(theItems, entryTotal)
      ), 
   "MonthCount", Descending
)

Want to know a specific count for a month (let's say March 2019)?

Create a label and set the Text property to:

Lookup(
   AddColumns(
      GroupBy(
         AddColumns(myList, "entryMonth", Date(Year(listDate), Month(listDate), 1)), 
         "entryMonth", "theItems"), 
      "MonthCount", Sum(theItems, entryTotal)), entryMonth=Date(2019, 3, 1)).MonthCount

Want to create a Bar Chart with the sums shown in the chart?

Create a bar chart and set the Items property to:

SortByColumns(
   ShowColumns(
      AddColumns(
         GroupBy(
            AddColumns(myList, "entryMonth", Date(Year(listDate), Month(listDate), 1)), 
            "entryMonth", "theItems"
            ), 
         "MonthCount", Sum(theItems, entryTotal), 
         "monthLabel", Text(entryMonth, "mmm yyyy")
         ),
      "entryMonth", "monthLabel", "MonthCount"
      ),
   "entryMonth", Ascending
)

Set the Labels to monthLabel and the series to MonthCount and you will have a bar chart of all the months and sums (by the way, we added a ShowColumns in that last formula to just limit the data going to the bar chart - less confusion for the chart).

Some of the concepts in these formulas may not be clear, so, I'd think about them in context here and also look up the documentation on them to get a clearer view.  In general the GroupBy is the key for what you needed and it is worth getting to understand it.

I hope that this is all clear and helpful for you.  If not, post back...

[DanielWilliams]

Thank you sooo much for responding. I am currently working on getting it work and will get back to you. Thank you again and will be messaging you soon. 

[DanielWilliams]

By the way, this is the site list I am working with. 

[DanielWilliams]

Okay, so I posted the data I am working with and have tried to place the function in and I am not sure about the "entryMonth and "theitems"? Meaning, the rest is making since, but not sure what columns are associated with those criteria. Sorry, still learning Powerapps and I truly appreciate it. 

Regards,

[RandyHayes]

@DanielWilliams 

So give me a little more detail on what you are struggling with now.

If it's the GroupBy function, it takes a little to get your head around the concept, but once you do, it will be your best friend..

First, before groupby, let's mention the AddColumns - you can add columns to any datasource in order to help out when needed.  In this case we wanted to have an entry month.  There is no column in your data that has an entry month specifically, so, since there is an entry date, all we needed to do was turn that into a month.  SO, we did.  We added a column to the datasource that would be just the year and month of the listDate.  Now, every record in our table has an additional column with the calculated value of the year and month of the listDate.

Next, we will use the above column to group.

GroupBy will take a list of records and essentially do two things:

1) Based on your column you want to group by (in this case the entryMonth) it will do a Distinct function on that.  So, for as many distinct entryMonth's there are, you will now have a table with a column of entryMonth's (distinct - not duplicated)

2) The next parameter of the GroupBy is the "matches" column.  In other words, you tell GroupBy, for every record that has the matching entryMonth, put that in a table in the "theItems" column (you can obviously call this whatever you want).  Now, if there are, say, 10 records that match the entryMonth, you will have one record - in the entryMonth column will be the entry month column value, in the "theItems" column, you will now have a table of 10 records.  This repeats for each distinct entryMonth.

See if that helps in your learning...and, feel free to post back.

[DanielWilliams]

As I work with the information you provided, it makes since to a point. I think I am getting hung up on these points listed below:

1) I have a sharepoint list with these fields I adjusted to match your points for testing - 

      myList= This makes since

      entryTotal= 4 seperate rows with fake data(Numeric counts of number of students)

      listDate=  dates that end user can pick from date picker on form ("3/25/2019" example)

      theItems= I added because you had it there(I don't know about this one)

      entryMonth= You mentioned this one, but not sure if I needed to add this as well to datasource or    

                             AddColumns does that for me.

One questions I have is am I supposed to be placing this into a label field or text field or button? This is what it looks like for example:

I do thank you for your patience lol, I can do simple things in powerapps, but trying to push into more involved things. So the end product I am aiming for is a total sum of students entered for the current month to display on a "dashboard"(Just a designated Screen). Thank you again.

[RandyHayes]

@DanielWilliams 

So, one of the things I just noticed is that I had a typo in some of my examples...that's what happens when I'm writing formulas freehand 😉 I'll actually go back and fix them now.

I'm not entirely up to speed on your exact data scenario or how you have things put together, but there might be some misunderstanding here...let's see if we can clear up some things:

1) I have a sharepoint list with these fields I adjusted to match your points for testing - 

      myList= This makes since myList was intended to just be a generic name for your SharePoint list. It is not a column in your list.

      entryTotal= 4 seperate rows with fake data(Numeric counts of number of students) entryTotal was not a representation of rows in your list - it was meant to be an actual column in your list that would contain a numeric value.

      listDate=  dates that end user can pick from date picker on form ("3/25/2019" example) Again, intended to be a column in your list that contains a date.

      theItems= I added because you had it there(I don't know about this one) This is not something you add to your datasource, this is something that represents the items in your group by matching.

      entryMonth= You mentioned this one, but not sure if I needed to add this as well to datasource or    

                             AddColumns does that for me. This is not something you add to your datasource, this is something that was added with AddColumns to create a "groupable" value.

So, here's what I did - Attached to this message is an App that has some sample data in it (data is created in the OnStart of the App) - you can click on the "Show me the data" button to see the data.  Just two columns - I believe that was what you had highlighted in your first post.

Then, all of the examples I put in the other replies are in that App.  You can click on the properties of any of them to see what is going on.

In particular, the galleries (Items Property),  the Labels (Text Property), and Bar Chart (Items Property).

I hope that makes things a little easier to follow.  Let me know if that helps or if you need more.

[DanielWilliams]

You are awesome for being so patient with me. I will take a look at it. Thank you. I will take some time to work on it today and tonight and get back to you on how it went. Thank you again and God Bless. 

[DanielWilliams]

It is taking me some time to play around with my data to reverse engineer your beautiful template. Just trying to figure out what the functions are saying and how to make it work with my columns within my sharepoint list. I will make sure to continue to keep you up to date. Thank you again.