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Advanced lookup experience in model-driven Power Apps

Headshot of article author Srihari Srinivasa

Lookups are a core component of model-driven apps, as they help bring underlying data relationships in Microsoft Dataverse to life. Today, we are announcing advanced lookup – a set of usability enhancements to help you explore and find that data easily, so you are more productive with data entry tasks.

The key to looking up a record quickly is context. This context is expressed by Power Apps Makers configuring a lookup field with filters to refine the data and views to display necessary columns. With advanced lookup, you can apply all of the available filters easily to search for, explore and select records to populate a lookup field.

Let’s take a closer look at the advanced lookup usability enhancements.

View more columns when looking up a record

Advanced lookup offers an immersive lookup experience, so you can view all columns of a view to identify the right record to select. The columns can also be sorted on, to view records in the order you prefer.

See results quickly with typeahead search

You can view results as you type with advanced lookup. Switch to another view or a completely different table and view results without having to retype your query.

Explore data from within advanced lookup without losing context

Browse a record’s details or add a new record from within advanced lookup without having to navigate away with unsaved changes.

Apply filters on the data easily

Advanced lookup supports filters made available by the Power Apps maker, along with Client APIs that are supported by the lookup control.

Looking up multiple records takes significantly fewer clicks

Special lookups like party lists support looking up multiple records across multiple tables. With advanced lookup, you can add select more records or unselect records and populate it with fewer clicks and cleaner layout.

Turn on advanced lookup experience at Power Platform Admin Center

Administrators can enable the advanced lookup experience through a feature setting in Power Platform Admin Center. Advanced lookup will be enabled by default for all environments with 2021 release wave 2.

Review the documentation for more details. Please share your feedback on Power Apps community forum.