Will Modern Pages ever allow "Web Part Connections" (to link related lists)? How about "Filters"?

[Chad_V_Kealey]

One of the most powerful and, frankly, underused features in SharePoint (2010 and 2013) was the concept or practice of "connecting" related web parts. We used it ALL the time for things like:

• A list of Vendors connected to lists of Quotes or Invoices
• A list of Requests connected to a list of related Log Entries (each step in the request process generates a Log entry)

Also, it was helpful for creating "template" pages. For example, we would have a Query String Filter that connected to a bunch of lists on the page, each of which had a common column (e.g.: "Term"). So, when creating a course catalog, we didn't have to build a new page for each term, just use that template page with the right query string in the URL. 

As slick as the Modern Page experience looks and feels, it seems like they're driving toward the model of creating tons of separate pages rather than a few reusable ones. While creating these pages is easier in the Modern Experience, enforcing consistency between them is pretty much impossible (that's where the idea of a template page really shone).

So, since I can't find any chatter about these features/functions whatsoever, I figured I'd ask here to see if anyone else had seen or heard anything. Heck, maybe even someone from the mothership (calling @Mark Kashman or @Jeff Teper) could chime in and let me know if I should just give up hope on ever using Connections or Filter web parts on Modern Pages.

[#2]

Has anyone achieved anything of use in regards to connecting a list web part to another list web part so you can show a parent / child related list easily? In the classic experience, you had a list view and you could edit the display page and add a second related list to show related records.  Since related lists are key to how I would imagine EVERYONE uses sharepoint, I am very surprised and somewhat shocked that this isnt yet possible.

Thanks everyone, happy Friday.

[#3]

Only connecting a list to the same list unfortunately... I've been following this thread in hopes someone has a breakthrough on this or MS finally releases this functionality.

Does anyone know if, on sharepoint online, should the classic sharepoint webpages still have all the filter webparts? We're missing ALL the filter webparts on our sharepoint.

[#4]

@epiqbrian thanks for the reply, thats what I feared, its clear MS have been severely short sighted implementing these new modern web parts.

I was hoping the "list properties" web part where you have select Display = Selected Item would yield an for Display = Related Record but to no avail, or even that you could vary the "connect to source" setting and have this display the child list.

Certainly very very annoying to find this is still missing.

[#5]

Have you guys ever considered making use of PowerApps? It's literally a thousand times more powerful than connecting lists in classic. You can easily have a webpart for it, if it has to live on a page, and you can connect many lists with much more powerful logic behind the app in the web part section for it.

[#6]

Yes I have considered this but it doesn't really achieve what we need. I need to have two full lists on a page and have list 2 update based on my selection from list.  I prefer to use standard functionality (versus custom built PowerApps) whenever possible.  It caught us off guard since it seems to be an elementary component that already existed in classic. 

Plus PowerApps requires a license level above what is needed just for SharePoint so end user availability could be an issue. @Chris Webb 

[#7]

@Chris Webb I've started to look at powerapps but I'm not sure where to start with there... I currently have a need where I want to filter multiple lists on a page through one user selected filter (dropdown ideally).

Would you know if this is something that I can accomplish (without coding) using powerapps?

Thanks for the suggestion...

[#8]

Pretty sure if you use SharePoint Powerapp integration on a list it's included with pretty much all the SharePoint licenses. You could have a list page that has the list data and a filter just like a connected webpart on the screen. It's not too difficult to setup. Anyway, was a thought that would be able to give you a modern way of accomplishing similar if it's feasible since I've gone to using powerapps for anything I need drill down etc. with. I know they are heading down adding more options to connected but it really isn't a real option right now in modern.

[#9]

Everything you need to learn powerapps is on Shane's channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_OGRP8BYvtGB8eZdPG6Ng

He does a good job explaining different topics. I'd check into the SharePoint integration ones and things like cascading drop down which will show you how you can filter data etc. But you pretty much setup your drop down control that reads from one list. Then a gallery below that with your list data, and you just add a filter to the gallery based off the selected value of the drop down. Pretty straight forward.

But from there, it could get more complicated based on what they are to do once they get the filter. You can have them click the ltem then go to a new page that has the list form, where they can fill it out and submit using built in forms. But you can get even more advanced with the fields with validation etc. if you wanted to ever.

Anyway, hopefully this gives you a starting point.

[#10]

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@Chris Webb wrote:
Pretty sure if you use SharePoint Powerapp integration on a list it's included with pretty much all the SharePoint licenses. You could have a list page that has the list data and a filter just like a connected webpart on the screen. It's not too difficult to setup. Anyway, was a thought that would be able to give you a modern way of accomplishing similar if it's feasible since I've gone to using powerapps for anything I need drill down etc. with. I know they are heading down adding more options to connected but it really isn't a real option right now in modern.

---

@Chris Webb , the problem (for now...this will likely change in time) with using PowerApps for this is delegation. In the days of SP 2010 or 2013, you created relationships between lists by using Lookup Columns. It was great...you could do a ton of cool stuff based on those relationships. The problem with using those in PowerApps is that Lookups are a complex column type, the filtering of which (again, at this point in time, Summer 2019) cannot be delegated. So, once your lists grow beyond 500 (or 2,000, if you up the limit and take the performance hit) items, those filters aren't reliable. You need to resort to black magic, like copying the lookup value to a text column (which supports more delegable operators than lookups, but still isn't 100%) and then having to maintain that (when the value in the lookup column is changed, 'cause you know it will be). 

The bottom line is that yes, PowerApps is the answer for SOME of this, but not all of it. MS really made our lives difficult by rolling out the "Modern" experience well before there was any kind of feature parity to the "Classic" experience. Heck, until earlier this year, even the List and Library Web Parts were in "Preview". 

Don't get me wrong...Modern pages look great and can do a lot of things Classic pages couldn't, but making folks roll their own web parts just to have access to connections between them (something we've had "out of the box" for nearly 10 years) is a real sucker punch. 

[#11]

Very solid points. It’s def. a scenario situation. It would be nice to have those connections. Wondering if anyone has made any web parts now that’s the spfx supports the web part connections.

[#12]

I fully agree with those asking for this functionality and I am getting extremely frustrated by the lack thereof. Microsoft, please re-introduce this quickly to the general audience!

At the same time, this looks promising:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/connect-web-parts-in-sharepoint-online-b457668c-d843-4b1b-8...

The File Viewer and Embed web parts have the connect functionality in my work organization. Not lists though. Yet ...

[#13]

Correction: List Properties have connections. But this is not achieving what I need. I need connected lists, i.e. one list displaying items, depending on the choice in a separate list. Not just the details of a list, based on the selection in the same list. :(

[#14]

@RoundaboutSkid I agree with you and am still waiting on the ability to connect lists and filter one based on the selection from the other.  This is disappointing :(

[#15]

How is this still not rolled out???  I have end users asking about this. We have to still go back to classic mode to accomplish this?  PowerApps creates too much administrative overhead for something like this, and is quite frankly harder to explain and support.  This thread has almost 10,000 views!

[#16]

It really is inexcusable almost that we don't have this fairly basic functionality on modern pages.

[#17]

@epiqbrian - This thread needs to be pinned to the top of the discussion board. Seriously.

[#18]

@DFRJC , actually, within the last month or so, the ability to connect list/library web parts has rolled out. This works as well as the same function in "classic" pages. However, I still (often) miss the "Filter" web parts for things like creating template pages that can dynamically update from a URL query string, date or user filter. We have a number of departments that have lots of content (documents, links, pages) related to a set of projects or keywords, so those template pages made it really convenient. Without a URL query string filter, we basically need to create a page for each project or keyword and set up highlighted content web parts or list views on each. One by one. It's quite tedious.

[#19]

@Chad_V_Kealey - we still can not connect 2 custom lists in a parent / child relationship. 

[#20]

@DFRJC I'm not seeing it either... started to get a little excited, but I'm not seeing anything new here...

[#21]

We are working on a project right now utilizing the highlighted content web part to pull content from different sites across the site collection.

While I agree that these are cool, they're not the connected webparts that I'd like to see from the old classic sharepoint days.