In this video, Nate discusses how to submit data that has Polymorphic fields, and how to display those Polymorphic values inside your Canvas Apps!
 

Canvas Apps, Record References and Polymorphic Lookups

When working with canvas apps, you often deal with records downloaded from data sources. You can identify specific records using functions like LookUp and Filter or the Gallery control's Selected property. 

Record References

Just like a reference in a research paper, record references in canvas apps refer to a record without containing a complete copy of it. You can have references to records in any table, even mixing them in a single column.

• Record references can be compared with each other and full records.
• A record reference's value can be set with the Patch function.
• You can't access the fields of a record reference directly. You must first determine the table type with the IsType function and then use .Field notation on the result of the AsType function.

Table Types

Table type refers to the unique structure of fields within a table. Two records have the same table type if they come from the same table.

Note: In Power Apps Studio, columns in Microsoft Dataverse are referred to as fields. The term "column" is only used when referring to a column inside Dataverse.

Polymorphic Lookups

Microsoft Dataverse supports relationships between records and polymorphic lookups, which can refer to a record from any table in a set.

• Each record in the Accounts table has a Primary Contact lookup column to a record in the Contacts table.
• The Owner column can refer to a record in the Users table or the Teams table.
• Polymorphic lookups don't always specify the available columns.

Record references in canvas apps are designed for working with polymorphic lookups in Dataverse but can be used outside this context too.

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