Next Level PowerApps
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This is my slide deck from my Next Level Forms with PowerApps Talk at Tulsa Tech Fest 2018. I show some of the recent updates and tips and tricks to take your PowerApps to the next level
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Next Level PowerApps
- 2. Hello!I am April Dunnam Owner & Lead Developer at ThriveFast You can find me at : @aprildunnam | Blog: www.sharepointsiren.com
- 3. × Intro × Types of PowerApps × New Features × Tips & Tricks × Learning Resources
- 5. “PowerApps is a service for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile - without the time and expense of custom software development.”
- 6. + =
- 8. 1.1 Million +Active Users 213 k +Organizations using PowerApps and Flow
- 9. Data Sources Galore • Import Data from Dynamics 365, Office 365, SharePoint, Azure • 160+ Connectors (Box, Google Drive, etc) • Ability to create and add custom connectors
- 10. Enterprise ready apps • App analytics • Central management • Data loss prevention policy on data and connectors • Compliance with 13+ standards (Hippa, soc, etc)
- 13. InfoPath vs PowerApps InfoPath PowerApps Drag & Drop Interface X X Repeating Tables X X Attachments X X Conditional Logic X X Multiple Data Sources X X Offline Capability X X External User Access X Printing Capability X
- 14. Infopath vs powerapps building blocks InfoPath Data Sources Views Controls Rules PowerApps Data Sources Screens Controls Rules/Formula’s
- 17. Canvas vs model driven apps Canvas Model Driven User Experience (UX) + - Data Validation = = Data Sources + - Ease of Configuration ? ? Extensibility = =
- 20. SharePoint & PowerApps – Dynamic Duo +
- 21. Creating powerapps using sharepoint data Just like in InfoPath you can either customize the default SharePoint List Form (SharePoint customized app) OR you can create a separate app and add SharePoint as a data source (Stand-alone app)
- 23. Sharepoint customized app vs standalone app Customized × Can only open from SharePoint list, not in PowerApp Gallery × Can’t move between sites/environments × Can’t use if list contains un- supported field types: Rating, External Data, Task Outcome Standalone × Appears in PowerApp Gallery and Mobile × Can embed in SharePoint Page × Use anywhere
- 24. Switching back to default form × General Settings -> Form Settings
- 25. New features
- 26. Attachment support × You can now upload documents to SharePoint as list attachments × Still can’t upload directly to a document library × Use Flow to move those attachments to a document library × Flow Template: https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en- us/galleries/public/templates/1f4a2b1b99e64e8dbb81b7c47cc 5bb11/upload-a-file-to-sharepoint-from-powerapps/
- 27. Sharepoint web part × Microsoft just released a web part to enable you to embed PowerApps in your Modern SharePoint sites × Only available on Modern sites
- 29. Improved error handling × Added in June ’18 × Helps debug errors and warnings
- 30. Concurrent function × Improves Start Up Times × Useful when pre-loading data on start × https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/powerapps/maker/canvas- apps/functions/function-concurrent
- 31. Custom connectors × You can create custom API connectors for use in PowerApps and Flow × Supports Azure Active Directory, OAuth 2.0, API Key and Basic Auth × Describe custom API using OpenAPI File (Swagger) or a Postman Collection
- 32. Cognitive services connectors – power up with ai × Computer Vision API × Describe/Analyze Image × OCR Image × Face API × Face Detection (Male, Age, etc) × Emotion Identification × Text Analytics API × Sentiment Analysis × Keyword detection × Language detection × QNA Maker × Chatbot capability https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/
- 34. Importan t noteOnly backwards compatible up to 6 months. Microsoft recommends updating and re-publishing your apps every 6 months. https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/save-publish-app
- 36. Tip #1 – Start with Data Structure First × Create all the fields you’ll need in your data sources first (SharePoint, SQL, CDS, etc)
- 37. Tip #2 – Comment your Code × Yes your formula’s count as code! × Formula’s can get long and complex × Help others who need to maintain your app by adding helpful comments explaining what your formula’s are doing. Use // to add a comment × https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/comment-your- powerapps-code/
- 38. Tip #3 – Re-name data cards your using in formulas × Data cards get assigned generic names (DataCard1, DataCard2, etc) × Imagine trying to write a formula to show Field X if Field A has a certain value but you have to search through DataCard1 – 100 to find out which property you need
- 39. Tip #4 – Refresh, Refresh, Refresh × The PowerApps app is infamous for caching and not getting app updates. The solution? Refresh up to 3 times
- 40. Tip # 5 – Pin your apps to the home screen × PowerApps have to run through the PowerApps app × Make your apps seem more like a traditional phone/tablet app!
- 41. Tip #6 – You Can connect to document libraries! × Document libraries aren’t fully supported in PowerApps…yet × Work-Around: Type in Doc Library Name × To Open File: Launch('{Link}')
- 43. Tip # 7 – Document Your Apps × Any piece of software, app or form needs to have documentation on how to use it × Add screens in your app that hold instructions × Use ? Icon to navigate to help documentation × Check out sample apps to see how they document their apps
- 44. Tip # 8 – Don’t bother with the rules section × The rules pane is *supposed* to make conditional logic easier but it’s just not there yet × Better off using a formula × Example: Show text box if radio button is yes. Set Visible property to: If(PerDiemEarnedYN.Value = true,true,false)
- 45. Tip # 9 – connect to on-prem data with gateway × On-Premises Data Gateway allows you to connect to on-prem SharePoint & SQL
- 46. Tip # 10 – launch powerapps from teams × Microsoft Teams is a platform that combines chat, meetings, notes, files, etc × You can add PowerApps as a tab in Teams so you never have to leave the Teams app
- 47. × Power Users Community https://powerusers.microsoft.com/ × Guided Learning: https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/powerapps/guided-learning/ × My Blog: www.sharepointsiren.com
- 48. THAN KS!Any questions? You can find me at @aprildunnam & april.dunnam@thrivefast.com
Editor's Notes
- I like to describe PowerApps as if Excel and PowerPoint had a baby that would be PowerApps. The way that you add functionality or “code” in PowerApps is with functions that are very similar to Excel functions. The interface reminds you a lot of PowerPoint with screens, shapes, controls, etc
- PowerApps is part of the Microsoft Power Platform. This Platform consist of the Power User Tools PowerApps for forms/app development, Power BI for Reporting and Analytics and Flow for Workflow and Business Process.
- POWERAPPS is Microsoft’s replacement for InfoPath. InfoPath is going away eventually… no more new releases. They have been gaining ground on InfoPath Feature Parody. The only things missing are external user access and printing capability. External user access is currently in the “Planned” status on the PowerApps Ideas forum. One thing I’ll say about PowerApps is if you find a feature missing I encourage you to go to the PowerApps Ideas Forum and vote for the feature you want added. Microsoft has been very good at monitoring this list and providing updates.
- As you can see, although the technologies used are vastly different (goodbye XML)…the building blocks of PowerApps and InfoPath are pretty similar. You add your data sources to use in each tool. InfoPath has Views which are called Screens in PowerApps. Each tool has a set of controls that you add to be able to input data. And each tools have ways to create Rules to show/hide information and perform actions.
- There are two types of PowerApps that you can build Canvas and Model Driven. For this session I’m going to focus on Canvas Apps Model Driven Apps are still fairly new and are based on the Dynamics 365 UX which I’ve always found to be a little clunky. Model Driven Apps are expensive to make. They require a Dynamics Plan or PowerApps Plan 2 which is $40 per user.
- The Model Driven UX is the Dynamics UX. I find people either love or hate the Dynamics 365 UX…I’m on the hate side so for me Canvas apps get the win from a UX perspective The data validation capabilities are the same between both types of apps. As you can see Canvas Apps are the big winner in the Data Sources Category. You can connect to over 200 different data sources in Canvas Apps but Model Driven Apps can only use Data from the Common Data Service There’s a lot of debate on which model is easier to configure. I find that people who come from a Dynamics background think that Model Driven is much easier to configure but people who don’t find that Canvas apps are easier. They are both comparable in extensibility.
- For a long time there was no way to get files into SharePoint from PowerApps. At the North American Collaboration Summit this year, Cathy Dew announced the release of the ability to add documents to SharePoint as List Attachments. While that’s a positive step forward, most people want to be able to add documents to a library, not as a list attachment. Luckily, you can do that via Flow.
- Microsoft has been doing a lot of work in the AI Field. They have created several connectors which you can use in PowerApps and Flow to the Azure Cognitive Services. This enables you to easily use AI features in your apps. Computer Vision API allows you to do several things with images including describing an image, it’s great at identifying celebrities. You can train it to identify certain images such as people in your company or your company logo. OCR is another huge thing. It can extract text from and image and write that out. Think about being able to upload a receipt in your PowerApp and have it automatically get the store and amount for you so you don’t even have to enter that? Currently that particular feature doesn’t work in PowerApps but you can tie in a Flow to extract that information and return it. Face API lets you do all kinds of cool facial recognition such as identifying someone’s face, guessing their age, gender, and even what emotion they are feeling. Text Analytics API let you evaluate text to tell what language it is in, identify keywords and judge if the text is positive or negative. This sentiment analysis would be great for a company getting with a feedback form and you can gauge how much positive or negative feedback you get. QNA Maker lets you create a question and answer database that you can train. This is use to create a chat bot. So you can ask “what are our company holidays?” or “When do we get paid” and return the answer.
- https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/republish-your-apps-to-get-performance-improvements-and-additional-features/ This is something that most people don’t realize but when they do it freaks them out. Microsoft is constantly updating and adding functionality to PowerApps. Because of the high rate of updates they can only guarantee a 6 month backwards compatilbily window. I’ve never run into any issue with my app going down but it is recommended to re-publish your apps every 6 months to take advantage of performance improvements and new features. Microsoft is currently working on an auto-republishing feature but no ETA on when that will be released
- This one is pretty self explanatory. It’s always easier if you get your back-end data structure built out first, whether that is SharePoint, SQL or CDS.
- Another thing Microsoft recently released is the ability to comment your code (formula’s). So if you have any development background this will look very familiar to you. You can use two backslashes (//) to add a comment. This will come in handy when you have a lot of complex formula’s. Those who have to maintain your PowerApp after you will thank you for commenting.