A friend put forth an interesting, and probably common, scenario. He created a simple app in Power Apps. The app was mostly a basic form with text input fields and one drop down field. The drop down was populated by a SharePoint list with team member names in the list. The app worked and everything looked good but my friend explained that the SharePoint list required manual updates. When a new teRead More…
When I made my first app with Microsoft Power Apps, I was so excited and impressed by the relative ease to quickly create a useful and functioning app. It was great getting an app in the hands of co-workers and other users, fast. As I create more and more apps, I have learned that it is not always best to get an app out super-fast. Sometimes, I sacrifice some speed for thoughtfulness by considRead More…
In a previous post Embed a Power App on a SharePoint page, I shared how I like to deploy apps by embedding the apps in SharePoint. I find it to be one of the easiest ways to distribute an app to a wide audience for access on primary devices with very little need for end-user training. A few comments from that post requested more information about the app itself. In this post, I’ll provide some deRead More…
I love Excel and sometimes I wish I could use all of the same Excel functions in Power Apps but I can’t so I nest (enclose one function within another function) a lot of functions instead. In my example Technology Loaner Request app, users are able to request laptops and phones. There are several loaner devices available at any given time and I need to be able to tell users how many devices, iRead More…
One of the greatest things about Power Apps is that app development is more accessible to process owners and process workers. Whoever may be closest to a problem or inefficiency has an opportunity to make something better. There is a learning curve and sometimes documentation is not available and straight forward features are not a part of Power Platform tools and a vision of how to put an idea iRead More…
It is worth taking the time to add some functional features to SharePoint pages. SharePoint is already a wealth of information and an obvious search starting point but by embedding Power Apps onto SharePoint pages, SharePoint becomes the starting point for workflow as well. There is less need to know where to go for various services when everything appears in SharePoint. On the right, the GrouRead More…
Power Apps is equipped with a lot of great functions. Unfortunately, Not In is not an available function but there are ways to get the same result. In the example below, there are a list of users in a gallery. The list is displayed by the following code entered in the Items box for the gallery:Office365Users.SearchUser({searchTerm:txtSearch.Text})where txtSearch is the name of my search field.Read More…
I like single page apps. One with a little gallery and a little form, a button, a title and voila, it’s good to go. Unfortunately, Microsoft has added some not so useful text in the form. You’ve probably been exasperated by it before. The dreaded No Item to Display -or worse- Getting Your Data seems to pop up at the worst time. Now, these words aren’t so bad by themselves but on a form in the Read More…
Teams can literally be a one-stop shop for work in a modern business. Adding Power BI and Power Apps tabs make it even more powerful and convenient. Add a Power BI Reports tab in Teams In Microsoft Teams, click the desired team.Click the + on the header bar.On the Add a tab window, click Power BI.On the next tab window, enter a name for the new Teams tab.Select the Power BI workspace and reRead More…
I like to make each PowerApps app look like an app. A colleague of mine noticed this about apps I develop and told me that’s what I did. It had not really dawned on me. It is not enough for me to simply make the app function, I must design the app. I must think about how the user will interact with it and how they will want to interact with it. What will the user want to see and how will they wanRead More…
One of the easiest ways to deal with errors in a PowerApps form is to prevent them and stopping end-users from submitting incomplete forms is the quickest way to getting good data. Required Fields Disable Form Submit Buttons in One Step The Error property of PowerApps forms contain a built-in not-so-friendly message that is invoked when form errors exist. This property is able to be explRead More…
I am not the biggest fan of Success screens but I have started adding them to a few apps I developed. Why? In the right app, a Success screen can add value. For example, if I am developing an app where the end user will not receive any other confirmation of their interaction with the app? If so, a Success screen is great for letting the user know that a completed form was submitted and there iRead More…
As I develop apps, I am constantly looking for ways to enhance the data that’s there. I enjoy using images as a way to draw attention to specific records and provide more detail, at-a-glance, In this sample app, I use a simple image (the red exclamation mark) to signify a high priority incident record. Gallery with circled image signifying a priority record Gather and Upload the Image
Read More…
I prefer to remove the standard refresh buttons from my PowerApps screens. Instead, I build automatic refresh into action states like OnVisible for screens. When a screen becomes visible, data is refreshed and my app’s users see the latest data. Here are my two favorite methods for automatically refreshing data: Automatic Refresh when a PowerApps Screen Becomes Visible Adding a Refresh()Read More…
If you have recently generated a PowerApps app from data, you probably ended up with a 3 screen app. The first page of that app probably has a gallery. Basic default gallery By default, anyone using the app sees all records. This gallery can be customized to only show the records of the user that is currently signed into Office 365. Add a filter to restrict the gallery records In the Read More…
Use functions in a gallery In a previous post, a gallery was customized by adding a new label. The label displays the data from a field in the data source. Emphasis was added to the label by changing some of the label’s color properties. Unfortunately, there isn’t always data in the field for the label, as shown below. The label appears as empty rectangle. Use a function, to resolve Read More…
Give your PowerApps app a sleek and polished look by changing the background colors. Basic app with minimal customizations In the example below, the background colors have been changed to black giving the app a ‘dark mode’ feel. Basic app with black background The key to this look is the high contrast between the background and the white text and accents. Though other colors may beRead More…
Get More Bang for the Gallery PowerApps has the ability to place app development in the hands of workers that are closest to the problems at hand. This is an exciting opportunity for any organization. Unfortunately, this opportunity does have a few limitations. Citizen apps tend to lack functionality and polish or as some clients put it, “…[their citizen apps] just aren’t ready for prime Read More…
You must be logged in to post a comment.