Canvas apps are Microsoft's low-code business apps of the Power Platform, capable of interacting with data from a variety of data sources. Keeping that in mind, app makers should design their apps with data refreshes in mind because after the initial app start, users are working with copies of the loaded data, not live data. … Continue reading Power Apps: Canvas Apps | Data Refresh – Manual v Timed
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Power Platform: Data Sources | SQL Tables or SPO Lists
The Power Platform is Microsoft's collection of low-code, citizen developer solutions. Being low-code, makers don't need coding experience to build their apps, bots, automations, and/ or dashboards. Even so, makers still need to decide where their data should ultimately live. For most people, SQL is typically the go-to data storage consideration. And honestly, SQL isn't … Continue reading Power Platform: Data Sources | SQL Tables or SPO Lists
Power Apps: Build a Game… !NeRdlE!
!JeOpArDy was my last canvas app game, so it's been a while. Working on another canvas app, I wanted to give "Nerdle" a try. Important to note though, I'm only replicating maybe 80% of the game. With this in mind, puzzles are hardcoded and not loaded from an external source. Also, keeping this post from … Continue reading Power Apps: Build a Game… !NeRdlE!
Power Fx: Understanding | With()
Power Fx is the Excel-like programming language of the Power Platform, more specifically canvas apps. As with any of their programming offerings, Microsoft has bundled plenty of pre-built functions into Power Fx. Among these bundled functions, With() is easily a standout. If you haven't worked the With() function into your canvas apps yet, then you're … Continue reading Power Fx: Understanding | With()
Power Platform: Understanding | Solutions + Environments
Application lifecycle management is the governance, deployment, and maintenance of applications. Even though the Power Platform is "low-code", makers should still adopt the practice. More specifically, when deploying their projects as solutions across environments. So, what are solutions and what are environments? Solutions are bundled project assets. In the Power Platform ecosystem, these project assets … Continue reading Power Platform: Understanding | Solutions + Environments
Power Automate: Cloud Flow | Best Practices + Tips
Power Automate is the process automation service of the Power Platform. Makers leveraging the solution can build both desktop and cloud flows, but each comes with their own considerations. Though, more people are likely building cloud flows than desktop flows. And for those cloud flow makers, there are some best practices, tips, and factors to … Continue reading Power Automate: Cloud Flow | Best Practices + Tips
Power Apps: Canvas App | SubmitForm() + SPOItem [Attachments w/ Permissions]
SharePoint Online lists are flexible as Power Apps canvas app data sources. Not quite as popular as SQL, but app makers can use SPO lists like database tables. One major perk of leveraging SPO lists, they're created ready to handle item attachments without makers needing to configure Azure BLOB storage. Still, there is a permission … Continue reading Power Apps: Canvas App | SubmitForm() + SPOItem [Attachments w/ Permissions]
Power Apps: Canvas App | Best Practices + Tips
Power Apps come in two flavors. To begin, there are model-driven apps, which are built on the Microsoft Dataverse and are more data-focused. These model-driven apps are not meant to be pretty. However, canvas apps are customizable and can be pretty, so they're more UI/UX-focused. Contrasting the two approaches, makers should build canvas apps if … Continue reading Power Apps: Canvas App | Best Practices + Tips
Power Apps: Generate Custom GUID(s)
Acknowledging it early, yes, there is a Microsoft provided GUID() function already available in Power Fx. The function is handy and gets the job done. However, there are scenarios where makers may want to create their own GUID values. How? Well, nesting a small handful of Power Fx functions: Set() Concat() With() Sequence() Switch() ForAll() … Continue reading Power Apps: Generate Custom GUID(s)
Power Apps: Canvas App Styles | Inline vs Internal vs External
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
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)
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
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