Filtering vs Searching in PowerApps

I am going to walk through the difference with a very simple app.

The Design Requirement:

Display items from the data table in the gallery.

• Able Select,Filter & get the information at the Job Level
• Able Select,Filter & get the information at Technician Level.

Source Datatable :

I’d interpret, John could basically do Installation and Support

To start with, I created two Gallery and two Dropdown boxes.

Able to Filter & get the information at the Job Level

Filter(Table*, Formula1 [, Formula2, … ] )

Filter command is usually to return records from a table that matches a certain condition.

The Job Dropdown can be populated or can be read from a dynamic. Let me not get into that.

Gallery1 — I going populate the Items formulate with Filter command

Filter(TestList,Job=JobDropDown.Selected.Title)

The code translates to filter the Table(testList in my case) — where the job field is equal to the JobDropDown selected value(I had stored in the title column Hence Title).

Now when I change the Drop Down Value

Able to Select,Filter & get the information at Technician Level.

This is a tricky step. Because the technician drop down has individual names and Names field has multiple people separated through ‘;’

The filter command might not be useful. There isn’t definitive formula that can be used to filter.

That’s when Search Command comes handy.

Search(Table*, SearchString, Column1 [, Column2, … ] )

The Technician Dropdown can be populated or can be read from a dynamic.

Search(TestList,TechDropDown.Selected.Title,”Names”)

The code translates to Search the Testlist in the column Names for the value that has been selected in the TechDropDown.