Getting model-driven app record id in the embedded canvas app

While prototyping my image upload canvas application for the contact form the other day, I ran into something that is probably just a quirk of the preview implementation, but you may want to be aware of this behavior when doing something similar in the meantime.

Imagine that you had your canvas app working with some other data source, such as SharePoint list. You might need to identify an item in that list depending on the ID of the record in the model-driven app, and, then, you might want to put your canvas app form in the new/edit mode depending on whether the item exists. Technically, you should be able to do something like this to identify the record id (MOdelDrivenFormIntegration is a special hardcoded name for the model-driven data source):

First(ModelDrivenFormIntegration.Data).ContactId

And, then, you should be able to use LookUp/Filter functions on the SharePoint datasource (assuming you store record ID-s in a separate column there, for instance).

It seems, though, that First(ModelDrivenFormIntegration.Data).ContactId will always be empty if you try accessing that value in the Screen->OnStart/OnVisible

The workaround I found was to add a Timer with 1 second delay. In the OnTimerEnd event everything is working just fine:

Maybe there is a better option? Let me know.