Book Image

Learn Microsoft PowerApps

By : Matthew Weston
Book Image

Learn Microsoft PowerApps

By: Matthew Weston

Overview of this book

Microsoft PowerApps provides a modern approach to building business applications for mobile, tablet, and browser. Learn Microsoft PowerApps will guide you in creating powerful and productive apps that will add value to your organization by helping you transform old and inefficient processes and workflows. Starting with an introduction to PowerApps, this book will help you set up and configure your first application. You’ll explore a variety of built-in templates and understand the key difference between types of applications such as canvas and model-driven apps, which are used to create apps for specific business scenarios. In addition to this, you’ll learn how to generate and integrate apps directly with SharePoint, and gain an understanding of PowerApps key components such as connectors and formulas. As you advance, you’ll be able to use various controls and data sources, including technologies such as GPS, and combine them to create an iterative app. Finally, the book will help you understand how PowerApps can use several Microsoft Power Automate and Azure functionalities to improve your applications. By the end of this PowerApps book, you’ll be ready to confidently develop lightweight business applications with minimal code.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Getting Started with PowerApps
6
Section 2: Developing Your PowerApp
11
Section 3: Extending the Capabilities of Your PowerApp
18
Section 4: Working with Model-Driven Apps
21
Section 5: Governing PowerApps

Detecting a connection state

One of the key things for making your PowerApp available offline is the ability to detect whether a network is present or not. First of all, PowerApps can detect the presence of a connection signal using a function that can then be used within the logic of your app:

Connection.Connected

This function will return a Boolean value: true meaning it is connected and false meaning it is disconnected.

PowerApps also can determine whether the connection is based on the cellular connection of the device or whether it is using Wi-Fi. If the device is using a mobile network, then it is classed as a Metered connection:

Connection.Metered

Again, this returns a Boolean value: true for a metered network or false for an alternative connection.

Both of these connection states should be considered while developing your app, as you can change the behavior of the app depending on whether the app is online or offline, and you can change the behavior of the app depending on the...