How to show a combined gallery of notes and attachments

Notes & Attachments in Dataverse

Notes and Attachments in Dataverse are kind of related to each other. Attachments are used to store files linked to any record e.g. an account or a contact and Notes are used to store notes linked to any record e.g. an account or a contact. Some out-of-the-box tables come with attachments enabled, which in turn enables notes and files. For custom tables, there is an option to enable attachments, which in turns enables notes and files. As you can see from this post, for every attachment, there is a related note. The biggest finding is that the "Id" of the attachment record is the same as the GUID (Note column) of the associated Notes record.

Attachment control

Attachment control is very useful to display attachments and also to allow users to attach/remove files. The attachment control isn't available through the Insert tab in the Power Apps studio. To add the attachment control to the app, follow the steps outlined in this post.

Combining Notes & Attachments in one gallery

Follow these steps to shows them in one gallery:

1. 1. Add a Vertical gallery
   2. Change the layout of the gallery to Title or whatever else that is appropriate for your use case
   3. Set its Items property to

      galAccounts.Selected.Notes

   4. Set the Text property of the label to

      ThisItem.Title

   5. Add another label below the 1st label
      1. Set its Text property to

         ThisItem.Description

      2. Set its Visible property to

         ThisItem.'Is Document' = 'Is Document (Notes)'.No

   6. Copy the attachment control inside the gallery
      1. Change its Display mode to View
      2. Height to 65 (so that there isn't any scroll bar)
      3. Set Max attachments to 1
      4. Set its Visible property to

         ThisItem.'Is Document' = 'Is Document (Notes)'.Yes

         so that the attachment control is visible only for notes that are attachments

      5. Set its Items property to

         ForAll(
             Filter(
             galAccounts.Selected.Attachments, 
             GUID(Id) = ThisItem.Note
         ),
             {
                 Id: PlainText(ThisRecord.Value),
                 Value: ThisRecord.Value,
                 AbsoluteUri: ThisRecord.AbsoluteUri,
                 DisplayName: ThisRecord.DisplayName
             }
         )

Here is a quick demo of such a gallery:

As you can see, it takes a few steps but it is possible to create a gallery of notes and attachments together.

Recent articles

1. How to work with Dataverse Attachments in canvas apps
2. Working with Dataverse Attachments in model-driven apps
3. How to work with Dataverse Notes in canvas apps