Solved: Submitting multiple forms to a single table

Toasteroven · ‎08-21-2017

Hi there.

I currently have two pages on my app, each with a form with 10 user inputs named "form1" and "form2". I also have a onedrive data source. A Table named "table1" which is 20 cells wide. I want to be able to submit the forms so that they are both added to the same row on the table, so form1 would take up cells 1 - 10 and form 2 would take up cells 11 - 20.

I have attemped to use the patch fuction but i am unsure of the syntax. I need some code for onselect like submitform(form1) && submitform(form2) (probably completely wrong) so that the both save to the same row.

Could anyone please help?

Many thanks

Meneghino · ‎08-22-2017

Hello @Toasteroven and @DOABrownie

The solution is to use the Patch() function, Submit will not easily be able to submit two forms at the same time to the same row of a table. (Unless you submit the first form, obtain the ID and then submit the second for as an edit to that ID. Since I do not use forms at all I cannot personally recommend this approach)

I understand that you are unsure of syntax, so I am happy to help.

Here is a pseudocode example to create a new record with the 20 columns.

Patch(MyTable, Defaults(MyTable), {Column_A: Form1ControlA.Property, Column_B: Form1ControlB.Property, etc. etc. , Column_M: Form2ControlM.Property etc. etc.})

In order to determine the correct syntax for Form1ControlA.Property, I suggest you create a label in your app and set its Text property to the control value that you need for the first column and test it until you get the desired value.

Please let me know how you get on and we will resolve this. However, as I say to everyone, if you need to customise forms you are often much better off abandoning the standard forms altogether and just using the individual controls.

View solution in original post

DOABrownie · ‎08-21-2017

I am in a similar situation. i want to make mulitple forms and have the data that is collected in the forms addedd to the one Excell sheets so i can colect data from students and teachers and compare these resutls against a level that the students need to be at

Toasteroven · ‎08-21-2017

I have found a potential solution where on the one excel document instead of having one table as a source i have two. So two tables of 10 cells. Then i link my first form with table one and my second form with table two. As they are writing to seperate tables it doesn't matter if one happens after the other, they will still be next to each other and look like they are in the same row.

However this would involve rewriting a whole bunch of stuff and i would really prefer not to do it if there is a simple function i can execute in an onslect button. If not then ill be doing this tomorrow.

Meneghino · ‎08-22-2017

Hello @Toasteroven and @DOABrownie

The solution is to use the Patch() function, Submit will not easily be able to submit two forms at the same time to the same row of a table. (Unless you submit the first form, obtain the ID and then submit the second for as an edit to that ID. Since I do not use forms at all I cannot personally recommend this approach)

I understand that you are unsure of syntax, so I am happy to help.

Here is a pseudocode example to create a new record with the 20 columns.

Patch(MyTable, Defaults(MyTable), {Column_A: Form1ControlA.Property, Column_B: Form1ControlB.Property, etc. etc. , Column_M: Form2ControlM.Property etc. etc.})

In order to determine the correct syntax for Form1ControlA.Property, I suggest you create a label in your app and set its Text property to the control value that you need for the first column and test it until you get the desired value.

Please let me know how you get on and we will resolve this. However, as I say to everyone, if you need to customise forms you are often much better off abandoning the standard forms altogether and just using the individual controls.

DOABrownie · ‎08-22-2017

Thank you so much for your reply so quickly. I’m still a bit lost with the nuts and bolts of the code but I would love it if I could share our specific situation and ask is you could see a solution.

This is for an Aviation Engineering School. (I’m a teacher) I have set up groups and One Nots Class note books for the delivery of the content etc. It’s working really well. The next issue for me (and the school) is the assessment. I need a system that allows the following to happen. There are 10 Attributes that make a good aviation engineer (knowledge, skills, professionalism, timeliness etc etc etc) there are 8 courses that the students’ progress through during the 2 year program. Each of the 8 courses (example the first 5 week course might be Aviation Safety) has 3 or 4 times when an assessment is made. This assessment is the puzzle i need help with. I need the student to mark themselves out of 10 in each of the assessment areas, I also need the tutor to mark the students out of 10 in each of the assessment areas and I also need to compare these values against a required level of ability. For example if the first four assessments timing for the first course showed the following:

REQUIRED LEVEL for say attitude: goes from 4, 5, 6, and 7 (meaning the student’s attitude needs to get better as we progress.

STUDENTS PERCIEVED LEVEL; he rates himself say 10, 10, 10, 10, (student thinks he is awesome in his attitude during the first 4 assessments times:

TUTORs PERCIEVED Students LEVEL: 2, 2, 2, and 1 (tutor believes the student has a bad attitude and is below the required level and it also shows that his attitude is getting worse. It also shows the tutor and the student have very different opinions of his attitude.

I wish to present this data from all of the courses the run for the 2 year program onto some polished visual platform with the progression graphs that show the tutors line (of the student) and the students line (of himself) and the required line. I have currently done this in Excel and it works however it is a time consuming process for the tutor and student to enter the data in the right places (as you could imagine)

I can share the excel spread sheet with you but it here is the excel sheet, feel free to edit as you...

Do i use Forms to collect the data from the students and tutors and get it into the spread sheel that way? Do I use a spreedsheet at all? should I use Power Apps and build a common data base in an envroinment and make apps (never done that before).

I really need help with how to build this and what system to use.

All the students and teachers alike have email address within the organisation of the school Office 365 world.

Thanks again.

Toasteroven · ‎08-22-2017

Hi there.

I Appreciate your reply and i will work to implement your solution.

However It looks like from this code if i had 100 columns i would have to repeat this 100 times. This seems like an awful amount of code for what should be a really simple "do both of these at the same time" . Additionally I am not a programmer so I am still having isues with the syntax of your pseudocode. I substitute in "table1" in for "MyTable" and "Column_A","Column_B"... etc are changed to my headings. "Form#Control#" are changed to Textinput1.Text....2....3 etc.

The result of this is being told that patch has invalid arguments. What am i doing wrong?

Additionally some of my column names are extremey long, for example "P2Q2 Do all team members have the necessary training, inductions and authorisation to complete the task?" It is simply not practical to have all of my column titles in a massive block of code.

This is causing me undue stress. Is there not something as simple as Patch(Table1,(Form1,Form2)) to join them together??

EDIT this is what i have done

"Patch(Table1, Defaults(Table1),{Date: Label5_1.Text, Email: Label11.Text,...... etc etc"

Thankyou

Toasteroven · ‎08-25-2017

Can i get a followup? I still need the help and noone has responded

Toasteroven · ‎08-26-2017

Got it working eventually. For some reason i had to make a new table for it to work it just didnt like the old one with spaces in the column names. Thanks for the help

DOABrownie · ‎08-26-2017

Hi again Toasteroven. so i was the guy that asked simal questions to you man. i am fully stuck on what to do here and how to get this working at all. The 'pseudo' code that the 'support' guy sent a few days ago really made no sence to me. how did you get it to work???

Toasteroven · ‎08-26-2017

ok so make sure two things

1) you have a connection to the correct excel document table

2) That the excel document has no spaces in th colum names (dont ask me why it just hates it. replace spaces with underscores maybe)

ok so the syntax is:

Patch(Table1, Defaults(Table1){a: info, b: info,.....})

Let me walk you through it.

In place of "table1" put the name of your table. e.g if your table was named "students" then it would be written as Patch(students, Defaults(students),{a: info,b: info....})

next in place of a,b and so on you put your column names EXACTLY as they are in the excel document (this is the part that hates spaces). so if i have a table in excel of 4 cells that goes group1 results teacher feedback

then the syntax is now Patch(students, Defaults(students),{group1: info,results: info,teacher: info,feedback: info).

Finally you update the info portion. This is what you want to past into the cell. so for instance Textinput1.Text, Dropdown4.Selected.Value etc. it is very important to remember the information type like .Text

So if i have an app that takes 4 text inputs that i want to write to an excel spreadsheet onselect i would write

Patch(students, Defaults(students),{group1: textinput1.Text,results: textinput2.Text,teacher: textinput3.Text,feedback: textinput1.Text)

Let me know how you get on and if you need any help 🙂