Issue with new Powerapps version 3.19014.8 - Dropdown values defaulting to Blank

[PSahu]

Hi Team,

There is a new PowerApps version (3.19014.8) which got published recently..it has completely messed up our apps. For all dropdown components, the default value has been coming as blank which is not how it was set when we created it. We did set all our default value to show the first value of the collection which is completely ignored now. it has messed up so many validations we added for a blank vs filled dropdown. The correct previous version was 3.19013.14.

Please help revert this change back or let us know an easy way to fix so many bugs which have appeared because of this upgrade.

Regards,

PSahu

[FilipK · Accepted solution]

Hey everyone, we appologize about breaking your apps, but this was an intentional change to fix a bug and a scenario where Dropdown and Listbox were showing incorrect values.

Previously, Listbox and Dropdown used to erroneously always show the first item as selected, even when this was not configured in the properties.  Even if user had null for the Default, or an item that wasn’t available in the options, those controls would show the first item in the list as selected.  This is a bug and incorrect behavior as it misrepresents the selected value in the back end.

It looks like some people relied on this behavior to have the first item selected by default.  In order to get that behavior, people will need to set the value of the Default property to the first item in their dataset (i.e. First(DATA_FROM_ITEMS).FIELD_FROM_VALUE) ).

Does that fix the problem for you?

[ericonline]

Thank you for fixing that issue!

[Anonymous]

Yes, it did.  Thank you!

[leyburn19]

Do you know what you did?  The amount of dropdown in one my apps is massive,  let alone I have 40 operational app that are now crashing right across the country.  The appology does not cut it.  The hours involved in this to fix are not going to be reimbursed and it will be a lot personal time and family time down the drain

This is a really bad problem you have created.  Form where I sit I would rather you put the bug back that you fixed as I had no issue,  but now I have literally 100s

[Mike2500]

Was there a prior communication about this breaking change? If so, could you post where this communication was posted and clarify how we should be monitoring for these types of announcements? If not, I'd suggest that impementing changes that break applications and following up a few hours later with posts on how to apply fixes is not perhaps the best way to instill confidence about the platform.

[leyburn19]

Ok I have confirmed one my critical apps is fine still.  I guess this issue will araise the moment I take to design and save,  it will then upgrade (is that the word?)

[FilipK]

Correct, the apps won't break automatically.  Only once edited, saved and republished will they pick up the new runtime version.  This give you a chance to implement a fix, before they become broken.

Having heard the feedback, we realize that we should have given everyone more notice about this change.  So we are rolling back the old behaviour via a hot-fix that will happen today.  We will then advertize the change to everyone and give everyone more time to adjust.  If you have already implemented the suggested fix, do not worry, your app will work correctly with both the old and the new behavour, so you are done dealing with this issue.  If you are already dealing with this, it's probably a good idea to implement the fix as you won't have to worry about this in the future.

[Meneghino]

Thanks @FilipK for finally clarifying this and for fixing that annoying by.  It is actually quite a big change for some apps, but better to have the bug fixed than not.

Even better and more robust would be to be able to set the Default property of a DropDown to a record (i.e. {Id: MyItem.Id}) instead of having to match the text (i.e. LookUp(MyItems, Id=MyItem.Id, Title)).  Just a thought for the future.

[PSahu]

Hi Team,

I understand the fix and it is simple to replace the default "1" to First(TableName).ColumnName. But I found this issue when I was updating an app in my development environment. But imagine we face this issue when I am exporting the Dev app to a Live app. The live app will be saved in the upgraded version and break..and I have no way to revert it back to prev version. It is a very big risk we take everytime when we are exporting a live app. The Prod app will be down/not accessible to users untill I find the fix and apply to the app(which will be lot of work for a big app and with complete regression testing). What is the use of developing and testing an app in Dev environment, test end to end..and it will break when exporting to final Live app only because it will save in an upgraded version automatically.

Just a suggestion to let us maintain the version of app which we are exporting and importing to a new/existing app.

Or please provide the new features as preview feature/settings like in PowerBI which can be switched on/off in emergency.