Master Detail or Data Viewer?

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What are differences between Master Detail and DataViewer components and which one should I use in which situation?

Welcome to this series of quick videos for customers. Learn about new released tools, get tips when using our apps and be inspired…

With BPA Apps, you can view documents or items in a Data Viewer (DV) or Master Detail (MD) component.

What are differences between these 2 components and which one should I use in which situation?

Data Viewer works like an Excel spreadsheet, each line displays an item or a document. Each column is an attribute.

Master Detail works like your Outlook inbox and displays all items or documents in the left panel and the details of the selected item in the right panel.

Data Viewer is the best choice for easy searching items by column. There is no limitation in the number of columns you can display in a page.

DV is best used as a start page for displaying all items in a list or library.

Master Detail consolidates all data about an item, not only the item attributes but also important relations from other lists or modules.

The search option in MD is limited to 2 selected columns, for example you can search for organizations by name or city.

MD can be used alone with no DV for simple lists.

With documents, MD can be used to preview documents rapidly. This is convenient for users looking for specific visual content.

As a conclusion, the DV component is best used as a start page to display items or documents to end users. The MD component is best used as a detail page to display an item or document details with main relations.

As a power user, you can create modern pages and add DV or MD webparts on it.

View our tutorial videos on the BPA community site for a quick start in configuring DV and MD.