Rajeev Pentyala – Technical Blog on Power Platform, Azure and AI

In one of the previous articles, I’ve explained how to perform a simple record level clone using Power Fx formulas.

In this article, let’s delve deeper and explore the process of cloning a record along with its child records.

Scenario:

I’ve a Model Driven App with 3 Dataverse tables.

• Customer – Holds Customer demographics, such as name, address, and contact information.
• Cars – Child record of Customer. Each customer can have multiple cars associated with them.
• Accessories – Child record of Car table. Each car can have multiple accessories linked to it.

• I need a Clone option on Customer form which should clone and create a new Customer along with child records.

Now that you got the scenario, lets proceed with cloning.

Clone the Customer:

• Please refer this article for the steps to get started with customizing command bar.
• After adding a new command, please ensure that you include all the necessary tables in the ‘Data’ tab of the ‘Command Library’ window.

• Next step is to write the formula, which,
  • Creates a new Customer record using the selected (i.e., Source) Customer.
  • Fetch the associated ‘Cars’ of the selected customer and create new copies.
  • Finally fetch the associated ‘Accessories’ of each ‘Car’ and create new copies.
• When writing Power Fx formulas in the command bar, Challenge is that we can’t leverage the Set or UpdateContext or Collect functions. We have to manage using the With function.
• Following is the formula which fulfills our requirement.

Notify("Cloning process started. Please wait");
With(
    {
        // Create the new Customer record using the selected (i.e.,Self) record
        clonedCustomer: Patch(
            Customers,
            Defaults(Customers),
            {
                Name: Self.Selected.Item.Name & " (Copy)",
                City: Self.Selected.Item.City
            }
        )
    },
    // Fetch the associated 'Cars' of Source(i.e.,Selected) 'Customer'
    With(
        {
            sourceCustomerCars: Filter(
                Cars,
                Customer.Customer = Self.Selected.Item.Customer
            )
        },
        Notify("Cars Count " & CountRows(sourceCustomerCars));
        // Create the new Cars using the fetched sourceCustomerCars
ForAll(
            sourceCustomerCars,
            With(
                {
                    // Fetch the source car Accessories and keep it in 'sourceCustomerAccessories' collection
                    sourceCustomerAccessories: Filter(
                        [@'Accessories'],
                        Car.Car = ThisRecord.Car.Car
                    ),
                    //Create the new Car and keep it in 'clonedCar'
                    clonedCar: Patch(
                        Cars,
                        Defaults(Cars),
                        {
                            Name: ThisRecord.Name,
                            // Set with newly cloned Customer
                            Customer: clonedCustomer,
                            Manufacturer: ThisRecord.Manufacturer
                        }
                    )
                },
                // Create new Accessories and map to the newly created Car
                ForAll(
                    sourceCustomerAccessories,
                    Patch(
                        [@'Accessories'],
                        Defaults([@'Accessories']),
                        {
                            Name: ThisRecord.Name,
                            Price: ThisRecord.Price,
                            Car: clonedCar
                        }
                    )
                )
            )
        )
    );
    Notify("'Customer' record has been cloned successfully");
    
// Navigate to the cloned record    
Navigate(clonedCustomer);
    
)

• Save and Publish the command library.
• Test the clone feature by selecting a Customer of your choice. If the clone process is successful, a new Customer record will be created, and the record will be suffixed with the text ‘(copy)’

🙂