Strange behaviour with views

Normally when I write a blog post, it’s about sharing some cool features, new functionality, etc. However this post is going to be a little different, because I don’t actually have an answer (yet!) to what is going on here.

Let me explain the situation.

I’m needing to show some very specific data for reference purposes. For the purposes of this, let’s say that I’m looking at Contacts, and needing to report on Phone Calls. The reason is to identify Contacts who are frequent callers. My criteria are as follows:

• At least one phone call (that has the Contact as the Regarding value) need to have a specific field set
• At least one phone call (that has the Contact as the Regarding value) needs to have its Activity Status as Open

These two conditions are separate. So the contact essentially needs to have at least 2 phone calls against them, with each one meeting one of the conditions. There can be more than 1 phone call record with the same condition – that’s not an issue here.

Back in the (good old) day, I’d have written some cool SQL to return this data. Two Left Outer Joins, and we’d be done. However I can’t do that now (I’ve recently started dipping into FetchXML, which is an entirely other story to cover at some point). So I’m having to use the Advanced Find to check that I’m getting the right data.

This isn’t the easiest of things to do. I’m needing to start from Contact, go to Phone Call, go back up to Contact, & go back down to Phone Call. But hey, this is what it looks like:

So with this set up, I run the query, and get some results (in this specific scenario/time, there are 3 results). I go through the data to check that the results are actually satisfying my requirements, which they are:

Wonderful – let’s move forward then!

My next step is to look to set this up as a system view. To do this, I go to the Power Apps Maker (http://make.powerapps.com/), open my solution & find the Contact entity. Opening it, I switch to the Views tab:

I create a new view, add the columns I need, and then open up the Filter Criteria to start setting this up. I’m using the Advanced Find as a reference guide for the conditions I’m needing to use. Going through it, I replicate the values across:

That looks about the same as the Advanced Find, right? It’s laid out slightly differently, but that’s just the designer. OK – let’s go ahead to save/publish it, and see it it in the app:

Hold on. There’s only 1 record showing up there. Admittedly it’s in the list that came from Advanced Find, but what’s happened to the other 2 records?

So I go to check the data. I had already done this before, but I thought that perhaps I overlooked something, so I checked again. Nope – all of the data is fine/correct. There should indeed be 3 records showing up in the system view, but 2 are missing…

Note: As an aside, I do know that this isn’t permissions related. I’m doing all of this as a systems administrator with full privileges to everything. So it’s not that

OK – next steps:

• Clear browser cache, reload and see if they’re showing up (useful tip – Control+F5 does this!). Nope, they’re not showing
• Use Incognito mode, log in and see if they’re showing there. No, they’re still hiding away
• Use a different browser, with a different system administrator login. Unbelievably they’re still being very shy, and refusing to appear!

Even more confusing about all of this is something truly perplexing. I can open up Advanced Find, select the system view (without doing ANYTHING else) & click ‘Results’. When doing this, all of the records appear! So in the entity view they’re not, but when I use that same system view through Advanced Find, they are!

I’m scratching my head at this. It just doesn’t make sense. I have no idea why this is happening. Reaching out to others, they also don’t seem to have any idea either.

My next step (I’m feeling SO proud of this, and so dev!) was to check the FetchXML. Perhaps there was something underlying in it that’s causing this? Using the FetchXML Builder in XrmToolBox, I loaded both views up, and compared them. It’s crazy – they seem to be exactly the same! (well, some cosmetic differences with where aliases appeared on the line, but this wouldn’t affect it):

At this point, I’m thinking that there are some magic elves under the hood, squirrelling away the data. It has to be the only logical reason for this, right?

The only thing I could find in the FetchXML that might make a difference is that there’s a ‘Distinct’ clause at the top of it in the one that’s working:

Why this would cause the issue, I have NO idea. Views return distinct results in them anyhow, so I’m not sure what this is actually doing here.

Regardless, using FetchXML Builder I updated the code, and WOW – it worked! I’m now returning 3 records in my system view! Absolutely strange, but hey – if it’s working now, who am I to question it…

I’m going to try to raise this through official Microsoft Channels, and see what I might be able to find out from them. However if you’ve come across this (or similar), or have some ideas about how to work around it, I’d LOVE to hear from you!