1. What Is a People Picker in Power Apps?
A People Picker is a user selection control that allows users to search and select people from your Microsoft 365 organization directly within a Power Apps application. Instead of manually typing names or email addresses, users can quickly find colleagues using the Office 365 Users connector, making the process faster, more accurate, and user-friendly.
People Pickers are commonly used in business applications where users need to assign tasks, approve requests, select project members, or manage employee information. Since the control retrieves user details directly from Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory), it ensures that the information displayed is always current.
The most flexible way to build a People Picker is by using Office365Users.SearchUserV2, which provides a powerful search experience, supports single or multiple user selection, and allows you to customize exactly how user information is displayed.
2. Build a Custom People Picker with Office 365 Users
The recommended approach for creating a People Picker is to use a Combo Box connected to the Office 365 Users connector. By setting the Combo Box’s Items property to Office365Users.SearchUserV2, users can search your organization’s directory in real time as they type.
Unlike the older SearchUser function, SearchUserV2 provides more flexibility by allowing you to define search parameters, control the maximum number of returned results, and even display suggestions when the search box is empty. It also returns user profile information that can be easily customized within your app.
To create a user-friendly experience, enable searching in the Combo Box and configure the layout to display both the user’s Display Name and Email Address. If your application requires selecting multiple people—such as assigning several team members to a project—you can simply enable the multi-select option. You can also customize the placeholder text with a message like “Search for users” to make the control more intuitive for end users.
Using Office365Users.SearchUserV2 gives you complete control over how users are searched, displayed, and selected, making it the preferred solution for modern Power Apps applications.
3. Improve Search Results and User Experience
A well-designed People Picker should return only relevant users while providing a fast and intuitive search experience. Power Apps allows you to customize search results by applying filters and configuring how user information is displayed.
For example, you can filter out external guest accounts by excluding users whose User Principal Name contains #EXT#, ensuring that only internal employees appear in the search results. Similarly, filtering for active accounts only prevents disabled users from being selected, improving both accuracy and user experience.
To make searching easier, configure the Combo Box to search across multiple profile fields such as Display Name and Email Address. You can also enhance the display by combining additional information like department or job title with the user’s name. When certain profile information is missing, functions like Coalesce can display a default value such as “N/A”, keeping the interface clean and consistent.
If your organization has many employees, you can further narrow the results by filtering users based on a department or business unit. This reduces unnecessary search results and helps users find the right people much faster.
