Blog

10 Great Ideas to Improve Power Apps

In this post, I review the Power Apps ideas forum and I highlight 10 great ideas that I think would make a big improvement to the product.

The ideas forum is a great place (https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/idb-p/PowerAppsIdeas). It

offers a place where users can suggest feature ideas and to report bugs.

For the start of 2021, I reviewed some of the top-rated posts and here are some of my favourites.

1 Functions

In Canvas apps, there is no simple way to reuse formulas within, and between apps. To help improve reusability, the addition of functions or macros would be a great idea. There are several posts on this idea, and this is a feature that I hope to see soon in 2021.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Create-custom-functions-macros/idi-p/6187?search-action-id=80185731123&search-result-uid=6187

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Reusable-formulas/idi-p/549066

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Add-Stand-Alone-Function-to-PowerApps/idi-p/110460

2 Improved searching

Improved searching, and the addition of a ‘find and replace’ feature in the editor would greatly assist app builders when maintaining and building apps.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Code-Editor-Search-Find-and-Replace/idi-p/148444

3 Dynamic Data Sources

The idea of being able to set a data source dynamically at runtime, or to set a variable that points to a data source would be a great improvement. This would help greatly when we want to move apps between tenants and environments, or if we want to configure different users to connect to different data sources with the same schema.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Dynamic-Data-Source/idi-p/178095

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Change-datasource-to-reuse-app-export-import/idi-p/6028

 4 Excel/CSV Export

A native ability to export and download results in Excel or CSV format is a feature that many end users expect.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Export-Collection-to-local-drive-as-CSV-or-Excel/idi-p/68559

5 Printing capabilities

Similar to the data export idea, improved printing and reporting capabilities would be another great addition.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Printing/idi-p/846

6 Moving custom SharePoint forms

When we customise a SharePoint list by creating a custom form, there is no simple way to move the form to a different list. This is an important feature that I would like to see.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Move-or-Copy-a-SharePoint-list-PowerApps-Custom-Form/idi-p/102744

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Reuse-PowerApp-Forms/idi-p/79038

7 Supporting SQL tables with triggers

It is not possible to add or modify records in SQL Server tables with triggers. This is a difficult problem to work around, and it would help SQL users if this support were added.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Enable-use-of-triggers-in-Azure-SQL-Tables/idi-p/12746

8 Parsing JSON

A common requirement is to process input data (often from web services) in JSON format. It would be great if there were a function that could convert JSON to a collection in Power Apps.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Parse-JSON-in-PowerApps/idi-p/359563

9 Input masking

A common question I see is how to mask input values, particularly when entering numbers or phone numbers. An input mask feature would be of great help.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Allow-for-Input-Masking/idi-p/27889

10 Generate Tablet App from Data

A very quick way to build an app that can show, add, and edit records is to choose the ‘start from data’ option. This builds a phone factor app, and it would be great if it could also build a tablet factor app. This would be very useful, especially for users that are just starting out with Power Apps.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Ideas/Generate-app-using-the-tablet-layout/idi-p/28312

Final comments..

There are plenty of other great ideas that I've missed out. General improvements to delegable query support is also something that I also rate highly.

The Power Apps team have done a great job of continually improving the product, and I'm confident that we'll see many great new features in 2021!