Branch Contact Groups

Live-membership replacement for ~50 Outlook contact groups in the zero mailbox — send to groups with always-current membership, no more manual weekly rebuilds. v2.0 adds a dedicated People screen, Thursday send-splitting into two independent batches, automatic BCC-locking for external addresses, per-group history, and paste-to-replace bulk roster updates.

Older release notes have been retired from this page to keep it current and skimmable — every fix through v2.45 is already baked into the screen YAML below, so a fresh paste always reflects the latest state without needing the history. Full commit history remains in the GitHub repo.

Before You Start

1. Create the four SharePoint lists below (all columns, exact names) on <your SharePoint site URL>.
2. Add the two maintainer rows to BM Maintainers and your real group/member data (see the Migration Plan card below).
3. Open Power Apps Studio → New blank canvas app (tablet layout).
4. Add all data sources listed below (Data panel → Add data).
5. Set App → OnStart using the code block below.
6. Create four blank screens (name them exactly as shown), then paste each YAML in order: scrQuickContacts, scrSendEmail, scrManageGroups, scrManagePeople.
7. These screens use manual X/Y positioning throughout. Anything too tall to fit on one screen (Manage Groups' member panel, Manage People's Add Person/Remove Leaver panels) is a centered lightbox instead of a scrolling section.

Data Connections

Add these in the Data panel before pasting any YAML:

SharePoint Lists

List: BM Groups

The old Active column has been removed entirely — it's not used anywhere in v2.0. If you built v1.0 already, delete that column.

"Last modified" note: the app shows SharePoint's built-in Modified date, and every formula that changes membership (add/remove/replace) also does a harmless self-Patch on the group's own Title so Modified reflects membership changes too, not just edits to the group record itself.

Versioning: List Settings → Versioning Settings → "Create a version each time you edit an item" = Yes.

Permissions: List Settings → Permissions for this list → Stop Inheriting Permissions → grant Edit to the two maintainers, Read to everyone else on the site.

List: BM Memberships

One row per person-per-group (deliberately denormalised — a person in 3 groups is 3 rows). This mirrors how Outlook contact groups actually work and keeps every query in the app a plain, delegable Filter. The new Manage People screen is a view over this same table grouped by email — no separate "people" list needed. JMC and County/Contingent genuinely belong to the membership row (not the person), since the same person could have different regional metadata in different groups — Manage People's per-person card picks whichever membership row happens to be found first as a reasonable approximation.

Versioning: enabled, same as BM Groups — gives you a native audit trail as a backstop; the app-level BM History list below is the human-readable one you'll actually use day to day.

Permissions: same unique-permission pattern as BM Groups — Edit for the two maintainers, Read for everyone else.

Pasting the standard import sheet (v2.34)

The Replace all (paste) tab inside Manage Members now recognises two formats automatically, based on how many tab-separated columns each pasted row has:

Example: Maj / Victor / HUGHES → Name = "Maj Victor HUGHES". A header row is fine to include in the paste — it fails the email-format check and gets silently skipped, the same way blank/invalid rows always have. The old two-column Name/Email paste still works exactly as before for groups that don't have this structured data — the parser just checks the column count per pasted block and picks the matching format.

List: BM Maintainers

This list exists specifically so adding a future maintainer is a one-row add to a SharePoint list, not an app edit — no formula change, no republish. Add the two starting rows yourself:

Permissions: anyone who should use the in-app Manage Maintainers button needs Edit access to this list, because Power Apps cannot bypass SharePoint list permissions. Everyone else only needs Read access so the app can check User().Email. The app blocks removing yourself and blocks removing the final maintainer, but SharePoint permissions are still the hard gate.

List: BM History (new in v2.0)

One row per membership/group event. The app writes to this list every time someone is added, removed, a group is created/edited, or a roster is bulk-replaced. The 🕘 history icon on each group reads this list filtered by GroupName, newest first — this is what answers "who was added or removed, and when" over time. No custom timestamp column needed; the built-in Created date is used directly.

Versioning: not needed — this list is itself the audit trail; individual rows are never edited after creation.

Permissions: same as BM Groups/BM Memberships — Edit for maintainers (the app writes here on their behalf), Read for everyone (the history icon is visible on the Send Email screen too, not just Manage Groups).

App.OnStart

Paste into App → OnStart in Power Apps Studio. This is never part of any screen's YAML. Check varModDomain matches your real domain — it's set to mod.gov.uk below.

Set(varModDomain, "mod.gov.uk");
Set(varMyEmail, Lower(User().Email));
ClearCollect(colMaintainers, 'BM Maintainers');
Set(varIsMaintainer, CountRows(Filter(colMaintainers, Lower(Email) = varMyEmail)) > 0);
ClearCollect(colGroups, AddColumns(Sort('BM Groups', SortOrder, SortOrder.Ascending), Ticked, false));
ClearCollect(colMemberships, Filter('BM Memberships', false)); ForAll(colGroups As grp, Collect(colMemberships, Filter('BM Memberships', GroupName = grp.Title)));
ClearCollect(colThursdayBatchOptions, ["None", "Batch 1", "Batch 2"]);
Set(varRecipientField, "bcc");
Set(varBccForcedByBatch, false);
Set(varBccForced, false);
Set(varPreviewGroupID, 0);
Set(varShowLightbox, false);
Set(varLightboxMode, "");
Set(varLightboxGroupID, 0);
Set(varLastMembershipRefresh, Now())

Screens

Paste each screen in order. Create a new blank screen first, name it exactly as shown, then paste.

Further Reading

Issues

Found a problem? Report it here.