Set values for Managed Metadata (aka Taxonomy) columns in PowerApps and Flow! (First Release)

Microsoft

Hi everyone,

 

 

As of today, you will be able to set the values of your managed metadata columns (sometimes also called taxonomy columns) in PowerApps (for both multi-value and single value) and in Flow (single value for now, but multi-value coming soon...)

 

Here's a sample multi-value taxonomy column that was tied to a termset for languages.

TaxonomyColumnMulti.PNG

 

 

We are not fully all the way there: the default values are not yet showing up if they are set, and we don't yet let you disambiguate between different paths while you are typing, but we think this is a great net new add for our customers who love and use the managed metadata columns. 

 

Please give it a try, and let us know your feedback. In your First Release tenant, you can create a new app, or custom forms, or go to an existing app and refresh the schema to get the new columns.

 

We expect to start rolling out to Production in the last week of November if we don't hit any blocking issues. 

45 Replies

I also have the same issue, is any solution available? 

Hi everyone, sorry about the late reply. Unfortunately adding new values through PowerApps is not supported yet. We have it on our list of things to fix, but I can't yet provide an estimate on when it will be available.
I'm having the same issue - have you found a workaround or way to increase the number of items displayed?

Hi @Liam Harrison@Angela Engelbrecht, sorry about the inconvenience. We are limited to showing 20 items but we will keep bringing up items that match as the user types in. Is there a reason you want to show more than 20 items at a time? We figured users wouldn't need to scroll among that many items. 

 

We can try to get the number bumped up to a higher value like 50 at a time, would that help your scenarios?

@Kerem Yuceturk - thank you for your response.

The term set I am referencing has a list of all services and sub services offered. Because there is no way of representing the hierarchy we are now seeing a flat list of all services. Not all users are aware of all the services offered. In the older list form they would click the tags (icon) to view all the terms in the set .

 

Increasing the number of items to scroll would possibly resolve the issue for now however if this list of services grows we may run into the same issue again. Users may end up selecting a close match instead of the correct one as it wasn't visible at the time.

 

Thanks again,

Angela

Thanks @Kerem Yuceturk,

I can see why the limitation is there but for this particular scenario I don't think it would help unless you could push it up to 500 or so.

 

Perhaps another way to look at it is from the users' point of view. Imagine I need to put United Kingdom as my country. It's a bit of a jarring experience if I'm filling out a form, I get a drop down box and the country I'm looking for just isn't there. The fact that there's a drop down implies that that's the best way to interact with this field, but it's not in this instance. It would be better if I only had the option to type/search or if I was prompted to access multiple pages of results if I wanted to browse. Both these options would help me get to the value I want.

 

As it stands I come to the field, hit the limit and that's it, there is no indication that I could search instead. So if I'm expecting to browse to the value I have no idea what to do next.

There is a trick @Angela Engelbrecht that might help.

 

In your form, you can choose to display the path of the item, alongside the label of it. To do this:

1. Select the combo box control displaying your managed metadata field

2. In the properties tab, click on the data source name, next to "Data"

3. In the panel that opens, change the layout from Single to Double

4. This adds a secondary text field, in which you can display the path of the items.

 

ShowPathForManagedMetadata.JPGManagedMetadataFields.JPG

@Liam Harrison, agreed the default text doesn't give enough of an indication. 

 

Maybe as a workaround, you can type in some other text into the InputTextPlaceholder property to say "Type to see more options" or something similar (see picture below). Going up to 500 items is probably not feasible for performance reasons, and it is too many items to scroll through for a user as well. 

 

AlternativePrompt.JPG

Thank you so much for the above. I will give a try today and report back if I have any issues/questions.

Thanks very much,

Really good to get some clarity on the position. 

Hi @Kerem Yuceturk,

 

I have built a PowerApp that is not directly connected to a SharePoint list.  However, I have created a list with the MMD field to serve as input into my PowerApp.  The MMD fields are being surfaced as drop-down lists with no option to type the values.  Therefore, displaying a higher number, such as 50 would definitely help.  When could we expect this?

 

Thanks,

-Haniel

I need to load all terms from a term set (using choices() function) into a powerapp collection so I can add an extra column for my display field. Loading 20 items is not enough. There should be a parameter to the choices() function to specify the limit of terms to load and not hard blocking the number of items to load. User will decide based on performance...

 

 

It is hard to understand these types of limitations...

 

 

Also dealing with the 20 term limit working in Flow. The selector only shows you the first 20 terms of your term set, alphabetically. So it will also flatten out your term set, if you have nested terms, and simply display the first 20 terms, wherever they come from in your structure, in alphabetic order. Typing in the selector, only shows terms from the 20 displayed, so you cannot find any of your other, possible hundreds of terms. Would love to see this addressed, because as it stands, this is not useable in Flow.

And we have found a solution, as is so often the case after I post in a forum. :) 

 

To apply the term from your term set, enter in a custom value in the form - termlabel|termID

Hopefully this will help anyone else running across this.

@Daniel Galant, that works if the term set is static - i.e. values are not changing.  But if they do, you would need to update the PowerApp each time the values change.

I'm really struggling with two items related to Managed Metadata:

 

Currently the PowerApp works fine:

It uses a SharePoint list data source that includes a Yes/No column named "Highlight"

 

Scenario A - makes a star visible if this column = true

          If(Highlight=true,true,false)

 

Scenario B - filters the list to only show items where this column = true

          Filter(Events
          ,EndDate>Now()
          And
          Highlight=true
          )

 

I am changing the data source column to Managed Metadata. 

The Term Set has 2 Terms in it: Highlight, Don't Highlight. 

The column name is "Highlight_x0020_Indicator"

 

There's a few reasons I'm making this change, here's a couple of them. 

  • SharePoint's Highlighted Content Web Part provides more flexibility with MMD over boolean. 
  • Deliver a consistent column set-up across my full SP ecosystem with Universal Site Columns and Content Types 
  • I'll be using this approach everywhere to call-out important news, events, documents, etc., and MMD gives me me more flexibility for changes in the future.

For the life of me, I can't figure out how to make the PowertApp scenarios work properly when the source is MMD over boolean.  It is probably some simple trick required when working with MMD and PowerApps.

Does anyone have ideas here?

Thanks in advance.

I figured this out, and thought I'd post the solution in case it can help anyone else.

If you want to use a Managed Metadata column from a SharePoint list to filter data in PowerApps, you cannot use the field natively, like you would a normal S/P field.  You must use the GUID of the term. 

 

 

Through the exercise of figuring this out, I discovered, there’s a hidden list that you can get all sorts of details about Terms, including their GUID. In the past I've created a bogus Flow to pull GUID details.  Using this hidden list is so much easier!  (Note that you must have used the term in on the site for it to show-up in the list)

Path for hidden list:
…../Lists/TaxonomyHiddenList/AllItems.aspx

@Kerem Yuceturk It has been over a year for this much needed feature.  Is this rolling out soon?


@Kerem Yuceturk wrote:
Hi everyone, sorry about the late reply. Unfortunately adding new values through PowerApps is not supported yet. We have it on our list of things to fix, but I can't yet provide an estimate on when it will be available.

 

@Kerem Yuceturk,

 

Do you have any update on this? We are completely reliant on MMS fields and adding new values through PowerApps is much needed.