Data capturing system

[JurieEx]

Hi all,

I hope I'm posting this in the right place.

TL;DR:

Long story short, I need to capture data from user input in a form/questionnaire style and store it in a preformatted xlsx document, but I don't know what the easiest way would be to do this without incurring extra cost.

Requirements:

I've been asked to come up with a way to capture data from users by way of a form or questionnaire while displaying an illustration as a reference. (There are around 40+ different kinds of items with illustrations that will be captured).

The information should then be captured into a register (the xlsx document).

All this should be accessible/hosted on SharePoint. 

Possible solutions I've thought of:

1. Forms connected to a flow - This idea in essence is fairly simple, but the sheer amount of different items and illustrations will make this extremely cumbersome to manage and the input validations within forms are very simplistic.

2. A model-driven PowerApp - I would like more opinions on this, as my knowledge about building a PowerApp is very limited and as far as I can tell, I will need to use Dataverse (CDS) in some form to get everything running smoothly.

3. A custom solution connected to a flow - A custom site or applet to record the data and using a flow to simply add the information to the document. This is also a great idea but would require Dataverse (CDS) to be able to use the HTTP connector.

4. A custom solution adding to the document via Onedrive - This is the only option I see at the moment, as I could simply add to the document whenever the information is submitted.

If at all possible, I'd like to avoid having to use Dataverse, because of the cost implication.

I know this all seems a bit contrived, but I've been told to get this done at as low a cost as possible.

If any of this is a bad idea, please let me know I'd gladly add it to my report.

Thanks in advance.

[#2]

Hi @JurieEx, if I had been tasked with this the first thing I would look to do is to have the data that the user completes in a SharePoint list with the images stored in a document library in SharePoint.

Unless you have people external to your organisation completing the form, Microsoft Forms would probably be too simplistic for this scenario. Instead I would create a canvas Power App (note, not a model-driven one) which you can create free and have the data sources as your SharePoint list and the document library of images. You would need to have a column in your list for each question you are asking. The default mode of the canvas app would be "new" so that a user would open the app and be presented with a blank form to complete. For each question in the form you could display the related image.

When they have completed the form the user would click a button which would save their responses to the SharePoint list. If you needed to you could then export the list data to Excel.

This sort of setup is what we do at my company regularly as we are not allowed premium connectors like dataverse (for cost reasons only I think). Mostly we start with Forms but for more complex apps we use Power Apps.

I'm not sure I've explained that very well but a SharePoint/canvas Power Apps solution is the solution that I would certainly try to use and it would be no additional cost. 

Come back with any questions.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Intranet, website and Power Platform Manager (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

[#3]

Hi @RobElliott, thanks for your suggestion.

I have messed around in the canvas app quite a bit, but now I'm running into an issue where I cannot use column headings as inputs for the questions. I did some research and found that this is not possible at this time. (Reference: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/Is-it-possible-to-get-all-column-names-from-... )

In case this causes any confusion as to what I want to do, let me clarify:
I have created a SharePoint list with default the required information to use as a source.

This includes:

Part Name:

Part Number

Columns containing the expected values

An attached image.

What I have been able to do so far:
I can list the items with an accompanying image correctly.

The Item screen title contains the Part Number.

What I can't do is:

Create labels corresponding to the column headings

Any Ideas?