PowerApps Bug: SharePoint Date Field Not Populated

I discovered a bug in PowerApps yesterday that I wanted to share so I could spare everyone else from the headache that it caused me.

Scenario:

I created a Blank PowerApp and added a data connection to a SharePoint list.  This list had a few fields, one of them being a date field.  I added a New Form which was bound to my SharePoint list. Next, I added a button that would submit the form then navigate to another screen where I would display a success message to the user.

Here’s the formula I used for that:

SubmitForm(Form1);Navigate(Screen2,ScreenTransition.Fade)

Figure 1 – Submit Form followed by Navigate caused Date Field to fail to populate

Everything worked fine when I was testing in Preview mode, however, I discovered that after I published the form and tried to run the published version it would add all of the information to my SharePoint list EXCEPT for the one date field.

I put my debugging cap on and tried everything I could think of to fix the issue.  I even tried setting up the PowerApp in another tenant to see if there was just something wrong with my tenant but I experienced the exact same issue.  I eventually realized that if I removed my Navigate function that the date field would populate correctly.

Figure 2 – I remove the Navigate Function and the date was populated correctly

Figure 3 – You can see how the ExpDate wasn’t being filled out if we had the Navigate Function after Submit

I was curious why using the Navigate function after SubmitForm was causing a date field to not populate so I opened a ticket with Microsoft.  I found out that this is a known issue and has to do with some of the PowerApps back-end coding.  I was told per the Engineering Team that the official supported way to Navigate to another screen after a form is submitted is to put your Navigation function in the “OnSuccess” Property of the Form you are submitting.

I’ve included a screenshot of where this is located and how it works:

Figure 4 – Supported way to navigate to another screen via “On Success” Form Property

I was told that Microsoft will be updating their documentation and communicating out that this is the best practice way of accomplishing navigating to another screen after form submission.  Hope this helps others who run into the same issue.