Formula columns are a powerful feature of Microsoft Dataverse for Teams. With this data type, you can quickly add a calculated column to your table. This is made possible by the Power Fx, a language that enables you to write formulas and expressions that can be used in Dataverse for Teams.
If you still using it, but you have problem with Data columns, go directly here.
Supported data type:
Text
Decimal Number
Yes/No (boolean)
Date
Supported operators:
+, -, *, /, %, ^, in, exactin, &
Create it
Let’s start! Go to edito your Dataverse table, and create create new column:
Select “Formula” Column. In my Example I want to calculate how old employees are. So:
Formula:
DateDiff('BirthYear ', UTCNow(),TimeUnit.Years)
Result:
Problem with Data column
If you get some error, when using Datacolumn , for Example errors about “Time zone conversion”. You should try to edit your Data column and set “Time Zone Adjustment” property to : “Time zone Indipendent“
Available functions
There are about 54 function available at time I’m writing this article, for Example:
Keep mind this attention point from MS: “The Text and Value functions only work with whole numbers, where no decimal separator is involved. The decimal separator varies across locales. Since formula columns are evaluated without locale knowledge, there’s no way to properly interpret or generate the decimal separator.”
Considerations
I hope these information can help you! Here link to official documentations.
Power Apps have now a great feature that allows you to preview your app on different devices and layouts. This is an incredibly useful tool to allows us to test our apps on multiple platforms and make sure that the user experience is consistent across all of them. With this feature, developers can make sure that their apps look great no matter what device or layout they are viewed on.
Press Preview App (F5)
When you click on option, you can choose Device:
Available Options:
Tablet Device
Mobile Device
Web View
Orientation Switcher
If you don’t find devices you need, you can put custom Width and Height properties.
Enabled Preview
To enable preview, you must enable set authoring version to last one available 3.23053.23 (save and refresh app):
Considerations
I hope these information can help you! If you need more information, you can go here.
Dataverse is a secure platform used for managing and storing data used by business applications. If you’re using Dataverse (or Dataverse for Teams 🙂 ) and your’re trying to creare (or update) row with lookup field, you may can find useful this article.
Initial situation
We have two tables:
Customers
CustomerContacts
In our table “CustomerContacts” we have two field: Name and Customer, wich is Lookup Column who refers to Customer table.
I created three record for customer:
Table CustomerContracts is empty:
Create new customer contact
Let’s assume we need to create through Power Automate (eg for an import from Excel File) our Customer Contacts. How should we do that?
Our Excel File:
Let’s see our Flow.
NB: We use “Microsoft Dataverse” actions for both Dataverse and Dataverse for Teams.
This flow don’t need to much explications. We get our Excel File and for each row, we use “Add new row” action to create row. But it doesn’t work. We got this error:
URL was not parsed due to an ODataUnrecognizedPathException. Resource not found for the segment provided in the URL.
We can’t create row using text field (from Excel) in Lookup field.
How can we set Lookup field value?
We need logical name of table and RowId of record we want to refer:
Now we can update our flow to use this costruct using Row ID:
cr3e4_customers([ROW_ID])
Or @odata.id directly:
@odata.id
To get row id, we need get correct items to refer. To do that, we should get logical name of field, before:
So our flow become:
In Customer field i wrote:
first(body('List_rows')?['value'])?['@odata.id']
To get first row form “List row actions” (filtered by customer name) and use @data.id value.
If you don’t like standard canvas app control, you can enable this new (experimental) feature to enable a new set of controls , called “Modern Controls”.
NB: This is Experimental Feature, as an experimental feature, do not use it in production apps.
Modern Controls has about 13 new controls wich you can use for your applications:
Modern Controls
Enabled Modern Controls
Firs of all, you must enable set authoring version to last one available 3.23034.5 (save and refresh app):
Enable Named formulas featur
Then, you should find , in experimental features, “Try out the modern controls”:
Save, refresh and you should see new group of controls called “Modern Controls“.
Considerations
I hope these information can help you! I didn’t find much documentation about it at the moment I’m writing this article, I’ll add some information as soon as I find out 🙂
At the time of writing this article, when you add Library Component of Creator Kit, you may find some errors. If you don’t know what Creator Kit is, you can read my article here.
Add control to your App
Add one of Library control to your app. If you didn’t have installed Creator Kit in your environment, you can read this article to do it.
Add Panel Component
Add Control To App
Let’s see how to use this control.
Errors
As you can see, now you have 10 errors on your app. All errors are relative to our Panel Control:
Our control should look like this:
Panel
How to fix it
To fix, you should follow these step:
Create a local copy of your control
Fix errors
Use copied control
Let’s start to create local copy. Click on Edit and then Create Copy:
Edit component
Create copy
Now you have local copy and you can fix errors:
Control to fix
In this case (But the errors will change depending on the control you have), I fixed:
Today , we’re introducing one of the “Surface” controls group of Creator Kit: “Panel Control“. Let’s see What is it and how it works. If you don’t know what Creator Kit is, you can read my article here.
Add control to your App
Before use it, you should add it to your app. If you didn’t have installed Creator Kit in your environment, you can read this article to do it.
Add Control to your App
Add Panel Component
Let’s see how to use this control.
Panel Control
This control is usefull to create complex creation, edit, or management experiences of items or settings. Let’s understand how can we use it. When you add it on your app, you should see something this:
Position– (Default Right”) You can write “Left” if you want left panel
Visible– True or False, to show or hide panel. I usually use a local variable to show or Hide it
Buttons– Table to define buttons of your panel
OnButtonSelect– Event to manage select event of your button
Theme : Property to set Json theme on controls, as you can see also in others controls of creator Kit. I usually set it when my application starts, and set it on all controls of Creator Kit who support it. You can create your theme here.
Today , I want to explain a really cool feature, in order to improve performance of your app and make it “code” more tidier.
NB: This is Experimental Feature, as an experimental feature, do not use named formulas in production apps.
We can use App.OnStart to inizializiate variables, load data and do some operations. These actions my be cause slow starting of your application. Sometimes we use , for example hidden button to write “reusable” code.
Now , we can write formulas and reuse it in any part of our application.
Enabled Named Formulas
Firs of all, you must enable experimental feature. Click on “Settings” and enable it:
Enable Named formulas featur
Use it
Now, you should see new property of your app, called “Formulas”. Here you can add your formula!
Formulas
Here you can add your formulas. For example:
ParamID = Param("ID");
UserEmail = User().Email;
But, of course, you can add more complex formula.
Advantages
Why we should use named formulas? let’s see some advantages:
The formula’s value is always available. There is no timing dependency, no event likes App.OnStart should be executed.
Formulas can be calculated in parallel.
The formula’s value is always up to date.
The formula’s definition is immutable. As opposed to variables, the definition in App.Formulas is the only “source of truth” and the value can’t be changed somewhere else in the app.
Calculated when needed. Value are calculated when app need it so this can improve app load time.
Considerations
I hope these information can help you! Here link with additional informations.
Today , I want to explain how to fix Error 0x80040217. If you created custom connector and put it inside solution with for example your flow or your App, may you find in this error, when you try import solution on new Environment:
Some note to remember:
You have created custom connector
You have created app or flow who using your custom connector
You have put together in same solution
You have exported it from your environment
You are trying to import in new environment, but you got and error
How to fix It
Really, really simple!
Create a new solution ed import your custom connector. Then , remove it from previus solutions. Basically, you must import your custom connector before, then import your flows or app that using it.
You can’t recover your flow if it was deleted more than 20 days ago
You can recover your flow if it was not part of solution (but if did, you can try to open a ticket support)
Default state of recovered flow is disabled
You can recover flow also with powershell commands
You need use Admin user of environment
You can write me for comment to improve quality of my contents 🙂
Create flow to recover deleted flow
Let’s build a new “Instant cloud flow” with manually trigger.
Create new instant cloud flow
Create new instant cloud flow
Now we can add some step to recovery our flow, search “Power Automate Management” and looking for step “List Flows as Admin”, then choose correct Environment and set “Include Soft-Deleted Flows” to Yes.
List Flows as Admin
Now have action to list our flows, included deleted flows. Add “Apply to Each” step (I renamed it “ForEachFlow”) in order to iterate our results and then add “condition” action to filter only “deleted” flow by status property:
Filter only deleted flow
Now last step, add action called “Restore Deleted Flow as Admin” set correct Environment (same as step “List flows as Admin”):
Restore flow Step
and finally run it.
Recover flow
Now , your flow should be appear in list of flow and should be in disabled state:
Restored flow
Considerations
I hope these information can help you to recover your deleted Power Automate Flow…Here you can find official documentation from Microsoft.
Today , we’re introducing one of the menu & nav controls group of Creator Kit: “Nav Control“. Let’s see What is it and how it works. If you don’t know what Creator Kit is, you can read my article here.
Add control to your App
Before use it, you should add it to your app. If you didn’t have installed Creator Kit in your environment, you can read this article to do it.
Add Control to your App
Add Fluent Nav Control
Let’s see how to use this control.
Nav Control
You can use this control to create a navigation menu in your app. Let’s understand how can we use it. When you add it on your app, you should see something this:
Nav Control
We should set some properties:
Items
Create Table with these attributes:
ItemDisplayName – The Display Name of the menu item
ItemKey – The key of item (must be unique)
ItemEnabled – (Default true) Set to false to disabled
You can use OnSelect to get selected item and do some actions like change page. As usual, Just to understand , I show selected item display name in a label:
NavMenu.Selected.ItemDisplayName
Results:
Nav Menu
Others useful properties are:
Theme : Property to set Json theme on controls, as you can see also in others controls of creator Kit. I usually set it when my application starts, and set it on all controls of Creator Kit who support it. You can create your theme here.
CollapseByDefault: You can set to True or False. Nav remain collapsed or expanded respectively. Individual Item level expand property is respected.
Let’s see what news are introduced with november update of creator kit. If you don’t know what Creator Kit is, you can read my article here.
New Features
Have been introduced 2 new (in preview) components, SubwayNav and SpinButton:
SubwayNav Control
SpinButton Control
Let’s see a basic introduction to use these controls.
SubwayNav
You can use this control to show a wizard steps in our application. Let’s understand how can we use it. When you add it on your app, you should see something this:
SubwayNav control
We should set some properties:
Items
Set a Table , with these attributes:
ItemKey: Key of item
ItemLabel: A Display Name of item
ItemState: Icon of the step, it could be one of: “Current”, “Completed”, “Unsaved”, “ViewedNotCompleted”, “Error” , “WizardComplete”
Accourding to source code, try to put this on Items propertie:
If you don’t want specify ItemState , you can set empty string (ItemState: “”) , and you’ll see an empty white dot.
OnSelect
You can use OnSelect to get selected item and change page to show next step of your wizard. Just to understand , in this case I saved selected step on variable (Is just an example, you can use Controlname.Selected insted):
UpdateContext({SeletectStep: Self.Selected})
And on label:
SeletectStep.ItemLabel
Results:
Other useful properties are:
Theme : Property to set Json theme on controls, as you can see also in others controls of creator Kit. I usually set it when my application starts, and set it on all controls of Creator Kit who support it.
Subway Nav State: Property to set state on entire controls. You can choose from: “None”, “Errors”, “WizardComplete”
Example of set Subway Nave state property to “WizardComplete”
SpinButton
A spin button is control to allow to add number in small steps. When you add control you should see this:
Today, we’re going to speak about Creator Kit. With this fantastic tool, we have possibility to create Canvas App, with professional look & feel with “Microsoft 365” Style.
What is “Cretor Kit” ?
According to Microsoft , Creator Kit consist in a series of controls , utility and templates , created to increase developer productivity.
Today, we’re going to speak about Environment. Where people starting to create App or Flow, usually, use Default Environment. But in order to have correct governance or our Power Platform solutions, a good idea (but is not only the one) is create more then one Environment. For Example Dev, Quality and Prod.
What is an “Environment” ?
According to Microsoft , and Environment is a a space to store and share data, app , flows. You can image it as a “Container”.
Each environment can have a single Dataverse DB (but you can create environment withoud it)
Default environment is Shared by all users, in my opinion you shouldn’t use it to develop critical app.
Environment types
Basically we can create 4 kinds of environment.
Sandbox: used for non-production environment but for developing and test. It can be reset or copy.
Production: used for permanent work. You need Power Apps license to create and manage it. It will provided with 1 GB database capacity.
Trial: used for short term testing. It will be cleaned automatically after 30 days. I usually use it to try new features. It can be create also as subscription based, and it can be conferted as production environment.
Hello, I’m very happy to annunce my first contribute to PNP community. I created and share source of my “Tic Tac Toe game” app , created with Power Apps.
Hello, here really simple post to explain how to create a SharePoint site without Microsoft 365 group associated.
Create Site
Follow there instructions:
Clicck on App Launcher and then on “Admin”. Then click on “Expand all” , SharePoint and “Active sites”
Then we can create site:
Click on Create and “Other options”:
Now we can create our site:
Considerations
Why we should create site with no M365 group? If we don’t need Outlook, planner or Teams associated but just need a SharePoint Team Site. Just to remind…to do that, we should be are SharePoint Administrator.
Some people asking me, “How can I find witch section I’m modifing? I’m not expert” , an Idea is : Add background color red to style to indentify section:
BeforeAfter
Not beautiful to see, but simple to identify 🙂
Body customization
To customize Body, you should simply define Sections and fields, in my case:
Hello, Today I want to explain how to improve performance of yours Canvas App. Any comments, integrations or suggestions are welcome 🙂
Cache local data
Does your data chanche during session of your app? If you reply “No”, you should store your data into local variable and get record from it, instead always ask to database.
SQL Server Delefation formulaSql Server Delegation Formula
Use Indexes Column
Simple, but people sometimes forgot to set indexes on column. For SQL Server and SharePoint, check wich columns you’re using to filter, and set Index on these columns.
When you want to create new record in your table you , tipically you use Default() function. When you use it, there is a call to your datasource …
Defaults(Projects_1)
And Idea is store result of this function on variable, and use it instead call Default() every time:
Set(
newProject,
Defaults(Projects_1)
);
Debug – Monitoring Time
If you want to understand what happens “behind the scenes”, you should start a debugging session. From Power Apps portal, select your app and click Monitor:
Monitoring…
Now you can understand durations and respons size of your function to prevent performance issue.
Considerations
Check this official link for other tips .I hope this post was usefull for you.Leave me comment if you has appreciate it.
Hello, Today not very “tech” article, But maybe usefull 🙂 Yesterday I changed password of my account…and after few hours, I noticed Outlook didn’t receiving any emails… (I updated password anywhere but…). But Previusly it still working…
How to solve it
If your problem , is actually password…A simple way is:
Go to Outlook
Click of File/Office account
Click on “Sigh out”
Then re-sign
Others
Clear Cache
If problem persist, you can try clean cache.
Windows key+R.
In run dialog write: %localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook
Open RoamCache folder
Backup your files 🙂
Delete all files
Start outlook again
Considerations
In my personal case the problem was password Update, but the real problem was that I updated correclty password after change, and Outlook worked correctly. It stopped after2 hours…
Hello, This is one of a series of post where I want to help you to improve your experience with SharePoint Online. This article,I’ll explane how you can ask to SPO to inform you whene anyone makes change to your documents.
Document Library
We have SharePoint site, and a document library called “Docs” where we collaborate with our collegues (PS: Do you know Co authoring? See this link)
Simple SharePoint Document Library
Basically We don’t want go every day on our document library to check if our collegues has make change on documents…So how can SharePoint help us?
Alerting
Simple ,As I usually try to explain…:-) One way is configure an Alert on Document Library (Or Lists). Go to your DL, and looking for “Alert Me” on Ribbon:
Document Library – Alert Me
Next Page page ask us a series of parameters to configure Alert. In Order:
Title: Title of the Alert (also included in subject mail).
Send Alert To: People to receives alert.
Delivery method: Choose if you want receive mail or SMS.ù
Change type: Very important. The changes typology that trigger the alert. For Example Item modified, or Deleted.
Send Alerts for These Changes: Useful to restrict alert, for example you can get alert only for document created by you.
When to Send Alerts: How frequently you want to be alerted? My suggestion , generally, is Daily recap to limits numers of mails.
Configure Alert Options
Considerations
This is really simple way. Another option is create a Power Automate flow with appropriate trigger. I hope this is usefull for you.
Hello, new Post Today. We’re going to understand how to use Patch function with SharePoint list. For this Example I used a “Task List” who contains text , choose , lookup and numeric columns.
That’s all! If we want to update an existing record? You must get it and pass to patch function instead Defaults(). In this case, I used Lookup function to retrieve record to update:
If you’ve ever developed a custom Web Part for SharePoint, and “Failed to load components” message occures for guest users, here you can find possibile solution to fix it.
SPFx Failed to load component guest users
I develop a SPO Webpart…it run correctly but when my customer share site with guest user, it give us and error:
Something like this:
[SPLoaderError.loadComponentError]:***Failed to load component "12345-c123-a1be27-223a-xxxx0"(MyWebpart Name).
Possible fix path
A possible problem is guest users can’t acess to ClientSideAssets library on AppCatalog site, so one way is:
Enable external sharing on AppCatalog site
Break permissions on ClientSideAssets library and give reading permission for guest users
If don’t work, you can try also to restore inherits permission and put guest users inside readers group of app catalog site. In this case, guest can Access to all site resources as reader, but if it work you can continue investigate on problem.
Today, let’s understand how to filter SharePoint Items, by lookup column, from Power Automate flow.
FILTER BY LOOKUP COLUMN
In this Example, I created two lists: Projects and Tasks. Every tasks has lookup to project.
And Tasks:
As we can see , we have “Project” column. This is our lookup column.
Create a flow
To to this example I create a Simple flow wiht manually trigger (keep mind…this is just an example…). My flow has one Actions (“Get Items”). Let’s see how to filter task by Project. One way is filter by title column of lookup (In this case I used Title). Another options is filter by Lookup ID.
Code to copy, filter by Value
InternalFieldName/Title eq ‘Lookup Value’
Or, filter by
internalFieldName/Id eq ‘Lookup Id’
Let’s see our flow:
Result: It get me one task, associated with “Project 1” .
Have a nice day!
If you want to understand , in general, how to filter Items in Power Automate, click this link.
Let’s learn how can we passing parameter to our Canvas Apps.
QUERY STRING PARAMETER
In this Example, I built a simple app to write a ticket in SharePoint List. In this case , I need to pass (from “external”) a parameter to our App, to set Ticket Type. My choose are:
Infrastructure
Software
Services
To achievement this, we should use “Query String” and Param Function. Query String is part of url , used to passing data to application.
Step 1 – Get query string from App
To get query string, I used param function in OnVisible event of my Screen to get date and store it on local variable. I can’t use “On Start” event of app because UpdateContext is only available while you are currently on a screen. When the OnStart code is executed no screen has loaded yet.
In my Example, I used a Form with SharePooint list as Datasource . My field “Ticket Type” is Choose field. To set value as default, I set Default property of datacard, only if the form is in “insert mode”. Why? because if we are in view or in edit, we need to see data of item, not our parameter. So:
New usefull feature! One of Power Apps limitation was we unable to build app more than people a time. Now, we can work togheter!
Enable Co-Authoring
So how can we do that? Really simple, as I usually write into my blog… “One” minute 🙂 I suppose you’re know what is source control and you know github or Azure DevOps. In this case, I’ll you Git repo on my Azure DevOps account. If you don’t know where terms, please read here.
Let’s start!
Create news project on Azure DevOps or git repo. Create or open you existing App , and go to settings, Upcoming Features and go to Experimental tab:
Then, enable “Show the Git version control setting”. Then you can see a new Section “Git version control” , click on Connect.
And configure settings:
Then, it ask you your credentials. Keep mind, if you’re using DevOps, in password sections, you don’t put password, but you must put your personal access token. Now it create folder for you on your git repo and push your source:
Now you can build app with your collegue! It’s experimental but cool!
Microsoft introduce new way to pay for Power Apps and related services: Pay as you go. From 2/11/21 , you can use your Azure Subcription to cover Power Apps and Dataverse cost, based on usage. In my opionion is very good feature, to allow you to try services with low risk.
Let’s talk about Microsoft List. You can see “List” and others Mmicrosoft 365 App’s. You can use this awesome tool to create list to track informations (Assets, invetory, customers, issues ecc) and collaborate with your team members. If you know SharePoint List’s, this is appear very familiar.
Create new list
Click on the top-left corner:
App “Lists” and others Mmicrosoft 365 Apps…
Now you can View and Open your recent Lists or create New List. Click on button “+ New List”.
Now you have 4 choises:
“Blank list” to create new list from scratch (we do this for this tutorial…)
“Form Excel” to create new list , starting from excel file. It’s good starting point if you have some excel files and want to use List instead of them.
“From existing list” to create list , starting from another list (also from list create inside SharePoint site).
“Templates” if you click on one on template, you can create list starting from it.
Click on “Blank list“, add list Name, description, color, icon, choose where do you want to save your list (In “My List” or one of your SharePoint sites) and click create.
Customize your list
Now we have our Customer list and we can start to use it. First of all, we need to create some columns. Click on “+ Add Column”
Now you must choose type of date you want to store in this column. Don’t worry if you don’t know what it is it…Ask yourself: “what I want to store in this column? Name of customer? Descriptions? Logo? if the customer is active or now?” This is the key, understand what you need to save. Let’s see common type of column:
Single line of text: Simply “text”: Use it for Customer Name or short description.
Multiple line of text.:Use it when you want to store more the one text rows…for example descriptions, notes etc.
Location: When you neet to track “where”.
Number: No description need 🙂
Yes/no: Use it if you want to track simply yes or no (Boolean) value. Fors example “is valid customer?” or “Is active customer?”
Person:To save People or group in your Microsoft 365 Tenant.
Date and Time: To store date, for example “Expiration date”
Choice: To choice value inside a list of value. For example “New customer, Old customer, Inactive”. Or to save status: “Draft, Approved, Rejected”
Hyperlink: To save a link.
Currency: To store currency value…
Image: To store an image such as logo
Keep mind, you have by default “Title” field , in your list. You can rename it.
Now I rename “Title” with “Customer”, and create “Headquarters” and “Acquisitiond date”:
Use your list
Now your list should appear like this:
Now you can click on “New” to add one record a time, or click on “Edit in grid view” to edit it like’s Excel file:
Keep mind, remember to click on “Exit grid view” to save.
I hope it help you..let me know with comment if you want another article on this argumeent. For example how to collaborate with colleague on this list, or how to create rules to send an email when people do something to this list or something else.
Microsoft will realease news feature for MS Teams: “Reply to specific message”. Actually, this feature is available for teams mobile app, but soon also available for desktop version.
With this article I want to explain how we can get items with Power Automate (From SharePoint Online) and Filter them.
We have:
SharePoint list’s called “Offices” ,with some data:
Excel file where we save filtered items. I create and Excel file with same column of list, and store it in OneDrive. Keep mind, you must format sheet as a Table if you want to use it in Power Automate to add rows.
Power Automate flow who get data and put it into Excel File. I used “Get Items” connector to retrieve data from SharePoint list.
Get Items
No Query
We can get data with no query. In this case, you mus put only “Site Adress” and “List Name Parameters”…keep mind “Top Count” parameter and it returs “All” items. I do not suggest this approach (And also Power Automate, who show you a Warning 🙂 )
Filter Query
Best approach, is write a Filter Query to retrieve only items you need. Basically you should write a formula like this: fieldnameoperationvalue.
As fieldName you must use iternal field name of SharePoint (Write me a comment if you need a post on this argoument).
Operation available are:
eq (Equal to)
lt (Less Than)
gt (Greater Than)
ge (Greater than or Equal to)
le (Less than or Equal to)
ne (No Equal to)
Value: value to find, date and string must be inside ‘
We can use also logical operator like “and” and “or”
Let’s see some example (I show query and result on Excel sheet):
Don’t worry, in the most of case you can recover it. Let’s see how, with simple powershell command. As I usually write, if you know what you do , the script is:
Hi, Today I want to explain how to implement “try-catch” (and “Finally” also if you need). It’s very simple…basically you should add “scope” , put actions inside, add another “scope” to manage error…let me show:
1) Add “Main” scope with your actions inside:
2) Add another scope. I called it “Catch” …it contains some actions to execute if error in “Main” scope should occur:
Now, we must configure “Run after” on this scope to execute it in case of error:
If you want , you can add also “Finally” scope to execute some actions in any case…your flow should be appears like this:
That’s all! Personally I use these scope to write log in case of error and success also.
Hi! let’s see a simple way to show name of day of week. There isn’t “built in function” get name, but we can use Weekday(Date) function to get numer of day and use it to show name:
“Are SharePoint Lists better then Excel Files?” or “Why shloud I use a SharePoint list intead Excel Files?”
These are 2 of the most asked question of my customers/students.
First of all, in my opinion there isn’t “best technology” or best “solutions” for all problems. There is more appropriate solution for your problem (or budget 🙂 ), so the “key” is: know different options to choose the most appropriate.
With these premises, let’s me explain some reasons why, personally, generally I prefer SPO List, intead Excel files.
List item versioning. SharePoint can store N versions on your list item, so you can see differents beetwneen versiones and restore previus version of item. Isn’t this cool?
Set item level permissions. You can decide , for each list item, who can see or edit it.
Different views. You can create different views of list. Users can create personal view with filters ,group or sort by columns.
Save author, last modified user, created date , last edit date. Automatically, for each rows.
Better integration with Power Automate & Power Apps, so your simple list becomes part of business process.
As a first step, we need a new list to store costs rows, so I add new list to my SPO site.
Create new listAdd list’s name
Then, we should add column to store amount of cost and column to create relationship with travel rows (PS: I use Title column for title of cost row)
Add new column / CurrencyAdd column details
Ok now we must create column to create relationship beetwen cost row and travel. To do this, need a LookUp column or for Italian People (“Ricerca”). Please keep mind this kind of column doesnt’t listed on list of common type column (see previous screenshot). One way to create it: click on “Add column” , “More” .
Here we can create lookup column.
Put column name (my case “Travel”) and choose type “Lookup”… (Wait for page reload).
Now you should set “Get information from” field : In this field you must choose another list where get row (or multiple rows) to create relationship.
Set “In this column” field. Here you can set column of other list, used to choose row.
In my case I also checked “Require that this column contains information“, because , in my opinion, when we add cost rows, travel is mandatory 🙂
There are others option, but for this tutorial we can click ok, and come back to our list.
2. Show relationship in SPO Page
First, create some travel rows and cost rows. Now , when we add some cost rows, we must choose “travel” row to associate it 🙂
Adding cost row
Now it simple 🙂 To show relationship beetwen two list, we must edit a SharePoint page, add two “list” webpart:
Select Parent list first:
And then we do same process for expense rows.
Finally we have 2 lists in page:
All lists data in page
Finally, add Dynamic filtering on “Expense row” webpart:
There are two ways to build an app with Power Apps. “Canvas App” (My favourite) and “Model-driven app”. In this article , let’s see how we can build an app in less then ten minutes with Canvas App, starting from data.
The fastest way
1. Start from data
We should start from data using one of connectors available, such as Excel, SQL Server, Dataverse or SharePoint.
For this article, I created a SharePoint list , starting from template “Travel requests”. The Idea is create a mobile app to allow users create travel requests.
2. Build App
Let’s build 🙂 Go to https://make.powerapps.com/ , login with our account, on “Start on data”, click on “SharePoint”:
Then, choose “Connect Directly” (In my case , I use a list on SharePoint Online):
Click on “Create” button, and put url of SPO Site who host our list:
Click “Go” , then choose the list, click “connect” and wait….
Now? we have our app , ready to use or customize!
Our App, is ready to use with Add, edit, delete and search functions.
I spent more time to write this article then create app 🙂
In my opinion, this is the fastest way to create a Power Apps, If you don’t like it, you can use it as starting point to learn how to build and app, or to create a poc for your users or customer.
Customer’s often ask me: “What is Power Apps? What can I do with it?“
“Official” reply is : “Power Apps is a suite of apps, services, connectors and data platform that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for your business needs. Using Power Apps, you can quickly build custom business apps that connect to your business data….” (Here official link)
In order to make it easier to understand, my reply is:
“With Power Apps, you can build applications without being developers, integrated with different services, usable through browsers, tablets and Android or iOS Smartphones.”
Does It appear cool? Yes it do 🙂
There are many other things you can do… for example the features of Mixed Reality, or AI Builder that allows you to take advantage of artificial intelligence to extract text from an image, perform sentiment analysis, process receipts etc…
I’ll write a series of tutorials that will bring you closer to this world with very little effort.
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