Blog - Recent Posts

Media - How to save and work with microphone recordings

A great feature with canvas apps is that we can offer users the ability to make audio recordings using the microphone control. It may not be obvious how to save and retrieve recordings so in this post, we'll walk through how to carry out this task against a Dataverse database

Designer - 3 Features you may have missed in the screen designer

If you've been working with Power Apps for some time, you may not have noticed the small improvements and enhancements that have been applied over time. Here are 3 features that you may have missing.

Controls - How to set default control and form values

A common requirement is to set default values on data entry screens. In this post, we'll cover three common requirements. How to adapt a form to apply default values when a user creates a new record, how to set a default value based on other values on a screen, and how to set default values through the click of a button.

Controls - How to reset or clear data entry controls, and form values

When building data entry screens, a common requirement is to add a button that clears, or resets data entry controls back to their default value. This post describes the technqiues that we can use to carry out this task.

What features will soon be available to better protect access to data?

It can be difficult for organisations to protect data and resources in the way that they want, particularly in cases where they need to fulfil legal and regulatory requirements. This post summarises enhancements that will help in these situations.

Portal - How to define section layouts with four, five, or six columns?

The portal app designer enables us to define one, two, or three column sections to a page. But what if we want to add more? This post describes how to carry out this task with custom HTML/CSS .

Formulas - The Power Apps canvas app language now has a name!

Up till now, the language we use to build canvas apps didn't have a name. In an exciting development, Microsoft have now extracted the canvas formulas and syntax into an independent language called Power Fx. This post describes why this is good news for app builders.

What does it take to become a Microsoft Partner that specialises in the Power Platform?

This post an introduction to the Microsoft Partner program. What is this, how does it apply to the Power Platform, and what does it take to join this program?

COVID-19 - How schools can use the "Return to School" app to resume operations

If you work at a school and you need an app to support to return of students, including the management of limiting student numbers and managing outbreaks, the "Return to School" app can help. The post provides a summary of the features and capabilities of this app.

Model driven apps - 3 use case scenarios of how to set default record values

A routine requirement is to set default field values. We use business rules to set default values, but the specific settings that we need to apply may not be exactly clear. To provide some practical examples, this post covers 3 typical scenarios - including how to set default field values for new records, default values that depend on other fields, and default values that depend on the app.

Why is Microsoft 365 licensing so confusing?

Power Apps licensing can be difficult to understand, particularly for users with Microsoft 365 plans who want to access Dataverse or other premium features. In this post, I describe why I think Microsoft 365/Power Apps licensing is so confusing.

SQL - How to show distinct values in the most efficient way

A very common requirement is to show distinct values from a SQL Server table. The most efficient way to accomplish this is to build a view. This post walks through how to carry out this task.

Formula - How to create comma separated (CSV) list of items

A common requirement is to build a comma separated list based on items from a data source or collection. This post demonstrates this technique by building a CSV string of selected items from a combo box.

Formulas - How to hack complex date calculations

In cases where we need to carry out complex date calculations, it can be much easier to avoid the use of formula and to use static data instead. This post describes an example of how to use this technqiue to calculate week numbers.

Dataverse - how to access tables from another environment

From a canvas app, we can connect to Dataverse databases that are hosted in different environments. This post describes how to accomplish this.