Power App canvas apps are easily personalized, but at the moment, not as easily styled as websites. Web developers can share and reuse their stylesheets across projects. Canvas apps, not so much. Even so, there are some similarities with styling scopes. There are three approaches to personalizing and branding canvas apps... Approach #1: Inline Every … Continue reading Power Apps: Canvas App Styles | Inline vs Internal vs External
Author: Charles
Power Automate: Lookup Table Arrays
As Power Automate cloud flows grow in complexity, makers often need to nest loops within loops. Nesting loops isn't bad, but nesting the same loop more than once is inefficient. An alternative approach, loop the content once without nesting it and build an array of objects, which creates a lookup table that can be referenced … Continue reading Power Automate: Lookup Table Arrays
Power Automate: Understanding | ticks()
For those new to working with Date and time values in computing, just note that they are measured and calculated using "the number of ticks that have elapsed since the beginning of the twenty-first century." Essentially dates and times are just large, whole numbers. And Power Automate has several available expressions to work with these … Continue reading Power Automate: Understanding | ticks()
Power Automate: Loops + Concurrency (/Parallelism)
Power Automate is versatile. As the automation engine of the Power Platform, it can connect with dozens of data sources to build repeatable work processes. And to enumerate datasets of these data sources, the Apply to each control is used to loop through the data records. But as datasets grow, expect the flows to take … Continue reading Power Automate: Loops + Concurrency (/Parallelism)
Metadata: What + Why
Metadata isn't a new thing. As with plenty of other concepts, people are already using it in some capacity, but likely without realizing it. Most notably though, metadata is heavily used by libraries, eCommerce sites, social media, and streaming platforms. Depending on the scenario, people may use metadata interchangeably with words like attribute, property, tag, … Continue reading Metadata: What + Why
Power Apps: Security + Access Layers
Power Apps aren't natively built for iOS or Android. Rather, these business apps are created and deployed a bit differently. And being deployed differently, organizations have more decisions to make with regards to app security. Power Apps security can be managed and granted at three layers: environment, app, and data. Power Platform Environment An environment … Continue reading Power Apps: Security + Access Layers
MS Lists: Customize w/ JSON
Cost-conscious businesses typically have narrow profit margins. And because of that, they're likely hesitant to purchase too many third-party app licenses for their employees. Luckily though, if their employees are already licensed for Microsoft 365, then a handful of tech-savvy business users could build many of these apps in-house using Microsoft Lists. As the name … Continue reading MS Lists: Customize w/ JSON
Power Apps: Deconstructing… LinkedIn
Power App canvas apps are "low-code" business apps. And because they're low-code, app makers don't need iOS or Android app development experience. Even so, creating any app from scratch can feel daunting. Why? Because makers often look to other published apps for inspiration. Inherently, this isn't bad, but keep in mind that these apps are … Continue reading Power Apps: Deconstructing… LinkedIn
Graph API: SPO List Items + Batch Delete
As previously explored, batching is the preferred and more efficient approach to processing a large volume of API requests. For every request, there is a call to the Microsoft Graph API and the accompanying response. With that in mind, things add up quickly as dozens, if not hundreds, of API requests are made. Batching bundles … Continue reading Graph API: SPO List Items + Batch Delete
Power App: Consistent Screens (w/ Components)
Power App canvas apps aren't built like native mobile apps. Even so, these business apps can still be built to follow some common software engineering best practices. Likely one of the more popular development practices is reusability. Where possible, build with modularization in mind. Applying this approach to canvas apps, app makers can create consistent … Continue reading Power App: Consistent Screens (w/ Components)
Merry New Year 2023!
Another year of blogging, several training sessions, and a speaking engagement. Thank you to everyone that found my content helpful. Fortunately, 2022 was a good year of continued learning: Power Platform, Power Fx, Dynamics, Dataverse, Codex, Graph API Blazor, Xamarin, PowerShell, DevOps, Azure, etc. May 2023 bring more growth. May 2023 bring more learning. May … Continue reading Merry New Year 2023!
Power Automate: Date Difference
There is a lot of power in automation. And as Microsoft works to empower citizen developers, they've introduced another Date and time function, dateDifference(). This expression accepts two date parameters and outputs a string value: Figure 1 - Power Automate Date and time expression. The expression's string result is a calculation measuring the number of … Continue reading Power Automate: Date Difference
Power Automate: Error Handling | Scope Controls [try/catch/finally]
Reiterating, "high-code" error handling isn't supported in Power Automate. However, flow creators can use Scope controls and mimic a try-catch-finally execution: Figure 1 - Power Automate list of controls. To recreate the "try-catch-finally"-esque experience, add three Scope blocks to the flow and rename each: Try, Catch, Finally. Next, add the necessary actions to each Scope, … Continue reading Power Automate: Error Handling | Scope Controls [try/catch/finally]
Power Apps: Design | Nested Galleries
Power App canvas apps are extremely customizable. As makers build their business apps, they can connect to data from dozens of sources and output data records dynamically. An easy way to list these records, bind the data source to a gallery control: "A control that contains other controls and shows a set of data… A … Continue reading Power Apps: Design | Nested Galleries
Power Automate: Outlook Emails w/ Item Lists
There are hundreds of connectors available in Power Automate. Each connector represents a different service, and services can be daisy-chained together to create automations called "flows". Often though, flows need to send emails with listed items, reporting on the executed actions. The easiest way to accomplish this, store the items in an array variable, then … Continue reading Power Automate: Outlook Emails w/ Item Lists
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