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

Discover in this article how you can improve gallery item searches by leveraging the DelayOutput text property.

What is DelayOutput property:

• When set to true, user input is registered after half a second delay.
• Useful for delaying expensive operations until user completes inputting text (i.e. for filtering when input is used in other formulas).

Let’s explore the benefits of the DelayOutput property with an example. I’ve created a simple app featuring a gallery and a textbox with a search function utilizing the Search function.

Below is the formula for the Search function that I have in the Items property of my Gallery.

Search(
    Employees,
    txtSearchEmployees.Text,
    Name,
    City,
    Company
)

If you observed the search behavior above closely, you’ll notice that the search was triggered with every keypress in the textbox.

While this is acceptable, what if you prefer to delay the search until the user stops typing, rather than triggering it with every keypress?

Here comes the DelayOutput property of Text Input control.

By default, the DelayOutput value is false, causing the search to occur with each key press.

Let’s set the DelayOutput value to true and test the search functionality. You’ll notice that the search occurs after you stop typing.

I hope this explanation helps you understand how to use the DelayOutput property.

🙂