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

Using the formula bar

The formula bar is where you will build your formulas by combining one or several functions together to create functionality. When typing into this area, you will see an amount of predictive text appearing (or IntelliSense, if you're used to development environments), as in Figure 6.2: Example of a formula triggering IntelliSense. Formulas can be used in any property to help to set values, whether that is by calling a function, calling data from a data source, or interacting with another control on the screen:

Figure 6.2: Example of a formula triggering IntelliSense

Formulas with PowerApps feel very much like writing formulas within Excel since it shares many of the same pitfalls. When writing formulas, keep in mind the following things:

  • All functions and objects are case-sensitive.
  • Consider some of the language nuances that apply; for example, French separates characters with commas. In these situations, consider changing commas in your formulas into semi...