Select Current User by Default in People Picker

In case you are building a canvas app in Power Apps and you need to have the current user selected in a people picker combobo box by default, this is a quick and easy way to achieve this.

Create a people picker combobox

First insert a combo box control in your app and set its’ Items property to:

Choices(DataSource.PersonTypeColumn)

In the above formula DataSource referes to data source such as a Dataverse table or SharePoint list and PersonTypeColumn refers to a column inside that data source which is of type Person/Group.

The next step is to make sure the combo box is displaying the information by selecting Edit next to Fields in the properties pane on the left side of Power Apps studio, selecting the Person option under Layout and making sure the relevant columns are selected for Image, Primary text and Secondary text.

Selecting the current user by default

The same Choices() function can be used to select the current user by default in the DefaultSelectedItems property of the people picker combo box:

First(Choices(DataSource.PersonTypeColumn, User().Email))

By using the User() function in the second argument of the Choices() function, the possible values are filtered, returning only those that match the email address of the current user. To then convert the returned table into a single record, the First() function is used.

As a result, whenever the people picker combo box is reset, the current user is selected:

Added benefit

In some cases the DisplayName column will contain a different value than what User().FullName returns. An added benefit of this method over other methods is that a consistant value for the displayname of the current user is displayed.