Fetching Related Records with Power Apps Grid Customizer

Unearth the Power of Power Apps: Grid Customizer Feature

In a recently published YouTube video, Diana Birkelbach [MVP] explores the Power Apps Grid customizer control, a preview feature she eagerly looks forward to. The customizer control is found to show related records directly in the Grid cells, which can't usually include data from child relationships in views. This capability offers a solution for when users need to observe data from a related domain without needing to navigate away from the current view.

The announcement of Wave 2/2022 boosted user engagement as it showcased the forthcoming Grid control that supports "nested grids", addressing numerous customer requirements. However, Birkelbach's video illustrates use-cases that don't necessitate digging that deep. For instance, if a user wants to showcase all related users inside the project list of a table ("project") or needs to display the number of activities planned for every account in the list.

Her video demonstrated a fetch request per row, which can be optimized (fetch in batches), as indicated in the next blog post. For the purpose of her blog, however, she chose to demonstrate the list of team members related to a project.

Implementing the Functionality

The utilization of the Grid customizer feature combined with PCF (PowerApps Component Framework) enables the user to bring about this requirement with lesser code compared to traditional methods. However, since the "team members" is not a physical column of the main table, a dummy column is required. Birkelbach recommends creating a "Related Users" column of type text for this purpose. This column will always be empty and can be customized as and when required.

The PCF for the Grid customizer control then needs to be registered. Following this, the next step involves utilizing WebAPI feature through the PCF "init" method due to the need to make requests. The video demonstrated this through a code snippet, which can also be found on her GitHub repository. The video also provided a look at the "People" react component created.

The cell renderer was shown to be defined only for "Text" columns, and for all other columns except "diana_relatedusers", null is returned, thus applying the default renderer. The video also showcased the React function component, which has an internal "people" state with an initial value corresponding to the record from the cache, or null otherwise.

Birkelbach also discussed how the Power Apps Grid sometimes unloads cells, especially when scrolling up or down, leading to inactive rows being unloaded. The video wrapped up by underlining the importance of checking if the component is still mounted before changing the component state, with a reference to Jason Watmore's blog for more details.

Users eager to learn more about this topic can visit this link for detailed information.

Overview: Aiding Data Visualization and Efficiency in Power Apps

The Power Apps Grid customizer control unlocks a novel way to view and manage data. This feature simplifies the process of associating data from different domains and displaying them in a cohesive, user-friendly format. By eliminating the need for users to navigate away from their current view, data interaction becomes more efficient and streamlined. Whether it's displaying related users within a project list or tallying scheduled activities per account, the customizer control transforms how users interact with data and adds a new layer of efficiency to Power Apps usage.