PowerApp Galleries = Repeating Tables
In this post, you’ll learn how you can translate the concept of sub-tables, or repeating tables, or sub-grids, to PowerApps. When you’re creating your PowerApps from within SharePoint, by default the app only uses the data from the one list that you are in. You can add what are called Galleries, to display and interact with data from somewhere else. It can be another SharePoint list, a SQL table, a twitter feed, a list of Salesforce opportunities, etc. You can read more about PowerApps at powerapps.microsoft.com.
In this very simple example, I have a SharePoint list of customers, and a SharePoint list of projects. The projects list has a lookup field to customers, therefore there is a many-to-one relationship. For each customer, there can be multiple projects. This example will be just one screen of a PowerApp. Notice that I haven’t done anything fancy at all with colors or buttons, since the main focus is the functionality of galleries.
When you click to select a customer on the left, it shows the details about that customer in the middle, and that customer’s projects in a list on the right. These lists on the screen are called galleries. Here’s how to insert a gallery:
- On your screen, click the Insert tab, and choose Gallery. For mine, I chose the vertical text gallery.
- Once your gallery is on the page, it will have a default set of test information called TextualGallerySample. Look at the top left where you see the name of the gallery, such as “Gallery2”. Click directly on the name to change it. Rename it to something more meaningful. I named mine CustomerGallery and ProjectGallery. Notice here that the drop-down box(Property) says Items, and the fx (function) says TextualGallerySample.
- Instead of TextualGallerySample, type the name of your data source, like mine is “Projects” since it is a SharePoint list called Projects. Just type the name in the function box. Notice that the data in the gallery changes immediately.
- Notice that when you have the gallery selected, the Gallery tab shows several configuration options for the gallery. For example, change the transition to Pop, and that affects the way the gallery items behave when you hover over each of them.
- Select the first item in the gallery. When you do that, it allows you to edit the way the gallery items appear. This is completely free-form, so you can change colors, rearrange, add shapes and buttons, etc. Also, look at the panel on the right. Notice that one of your column names may be listed in there multiple times. Select each field in the gallery, and then from the drop-down box, choose which field from your data source to map it to. Also, they may not show in the same order in the panel as they show on the form. Notice that my Title field is in there twice and then Hours Planned, a different order than on the form. If I want the third box to show some other field in the gallery, I can either change the drop-down box, or completely delete the field from the gallery. You can also select that whole first item in your gallery, and that will let you change the size of it, which will automatically change all of the gallery items at once.
- The next major concept is filtering the projects gallery to only show the projects that are related to the selected customer. Here’s a chart containing a list of some ways you can filter and sort a gallery. This is still using my concept of customers and projects as an example, specifically the gallery of projects. This command is what you enter into the “Items” property seen in the screenshot at step 2.
| Command | Description |
| Projects | Items from my data source called Projects |
| Filter(Projects, CustomerLookup.Id=CustomerGallery.Selected.ID) | Projects filtered to show only the ones related to the customer that I clicked on the gallery of customers. |
| Search(Projects, TextSearchBox.Text, “Title“) | Shows projects filtered by what I typed in the TextSearchBox on the screen. (This is a default box that exists in PowerApps that are created directly from your SharePoint list.) |
| SortByColumns(Projects, “Title”, If(SortDescending, SortOrder.Descending, SortOrder.Ascending)) | Sort the list of projects by title, as the SortDescending button is toggled, ascending to descending. (This is a default button that exists in PowerApps that are created directly from your SharePoint list.) |
| SortByColumns(Search(Filter(Projects,CustomerLookup.Id=CustomerGallery.Selected.ID), TextSearchBox1.Text, “Title”), “Title”, If(SortDescending1, SortOrder.Descending, SortOrder.Ascending)) | Put these all together! |
This is an example screenshot of the items that show at the top of the default gallery in a PowerApp created by clicking the PowerApps –> Create an App button at the top of a list in SharePoint””:
On my SharePoint Power Hour on 12/21/2016, I will do a demonstration of this whole concept, and will go in depth as far as some nuances here and there as you’re working in PowerApps, specifically galleries.
Would you like to learn PowerApps from the beginning? Check out my PowerApps training classes at iwmentor.com
Could you please add me to your slack group for future presentations and also where could I find sample lists?
Hi! Here is the form to join the slack group http://goo.gl/forms/zXM936kkAH
The samples are all automatically in PowerApps
Hi Laura, loved the video. I tried adding an app connecting to on-premises Sharepoint 2013 list and I can add,view and edit content on the list. But if I share the app with anyone else inside my org, it prompts them to sign in when they access the app and it keeps giving an error that the connection could not be added.
This is the message it prompts “App wants to use these services + features”
They have contribute access to the SharePoint list and I also made them a contributor on the App itself. Have you been able to test such a scenario?
Sorry Laurel, I’ve never come across that issue, I’m not sure what to tell you.
Hi Laura, it looks like it works seamlessly with SharePoint Online. But with SharePoint on-premises, a user has to first go to powerapps and add a connection to SharePoint manually before they can begin using the app.
Hi Laura, do you know if there is a template or a tutorial on creating the ‘Submit Ideas’ power app shown may of the talks at Ignite? Here is a video which shows that app. It is a pretty cool app and am hoping you could share some thoughts on building something like this.
https://youtu.be/pcA_KWZ3Srg?t=17m56s
I’m not aware of one, but there are a lot of out-of-box example apps inside of PowerApps
Thank you so much for this presentation. I’m not able to replicate this result with subtable in sharepoint online. I see your data source is different and I don’t think its a sharepoint list. it looks like the default powerapp database. Can you confirm? I’ve gone through this a couple times and when I change gallery to my 2nd table it does not poplulate like yours.
Mine are all SharePoint lists
Hi Laura – these tutorials are great. Have you managed to get signature fields working (using pen inputs) and then save them back up to a list either as an image or base64 string? I’m looking at the patch function to achieve this but can’t get it all to connect together
Yes, but I just haven’t gotten a chance to blog any of the PowerApps stuff like that.
i’ve made some more progress and can now successfully patch the image up to SP but only in a BLOB format… some more research required!
Laura how do you change the valuenodnrhe gallery.select without selecting a record in the gallery.