Forum Discussion
MicrosoftSet values for Managed Metadata (aka Taxonomy) columns in PowerApps and Flow! (First Release)
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.
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.
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi Deleted, no, we will not have that capability yet. It is on our list for 2018, but we don't have a better estimate yet.
Hi Kerem Yuceturk - thanks for the prompt reply, it's greatly appreciated. That's such a shame about the meta data fields in PowerApps. Do you know if there's any workaround for the current limitation? I have a gallery which is querying a pages library and needs to filter only those pages with a specific managed meta data tag. Would it be possible to map the MMD field to another field in the library using a calculated field?
Kerem Yuceturk This is great. I find one thing a bit weird. If I create a customized form for a SharePoint list using PowerApps all my choice/metadata fields are added to the forms in the app. If I however create a standalone PowerApp using the list as data, it skips all choice/metadata fields on the app it creates.
Is this a limitation/bug, or something which will be fixed? I tried it two different environments and experienced the exact same thing.
I want to create a form app, but need to move it between environments, so a stand-alone app should be the way to go, except I don't get all my needed fields. I'd hate to create a data-wrapper middleman service for this.
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi Mikael Svenson, I just tried this on some of my test lists by creating a new app from SharePoint UX, and got the taxonomy columns generated without issue.
Maybe there is some complexity with your columns that we are not catching in our tests? Could you send me the schema of your list in a private message to understand what types of columns you are dealing with?
Also, do the columns show up when you open the "Data" panel for your edit/detail forms like in the picture below? If they do, but they are not checked, is the problem fixed if you check the checkboxes?
Kerem Yuceturk Thank you for testing and getting back so quick, and I will get back to you tomorrow on this when at work. Good to know the behaviour should be equal. The list has two content types and exceeds the number of lookup columns (12) if you do REST against it, which could be an issue
I’ll report back once I have more info.
Hi, thanks for this update, it's very useful. But I couldn't figure out how to add new values to managed metadata? I have a sharepoint list with managed metadata columns, and using sharepoint default forms, user can add new term if it doesn't exist. When we created powerapps form, user is limited to select from available terms. Is this by design or are we missing something?
- Kerem YuceturkHi 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 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.
I also have the same issue, is any solution available?
No, I couldn't find a solution yet :(
- Kerem Yuceturk
This change is now live for all customers!
We've encountered an issue where the list of Terms is cut off prematurely:
We have a full list of countries which stops at Bhutan, the user can search for other countries and they appear just fine. This is a multi-select field.
Any advice?
- I'm having the same issue - have you found a workaround or way to increase the number of items displayed?
- Kerem Yuceturk
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
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
Seems not possible to set Default Values for the Managed Metadata DatacardValue?
Any suggestions to set a default value to a Managed Metadata Column in a PowerApps FormMode.New?
Kerem Yuceturk Ok, I'll bite: "HOW"??
