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Code - Template Apps - How to unhide/re-enable the data panel

By using the code designer, it's possible to hack the behaviour of how an app appears in Power Apps Studio. In this post, we'll examine the manifest file of a canvas app and look at how to modify the contents to unhide the data panel of an app.

This post explores a key file in a canvas app project - the manifest file. We'll explore the purpose of this file, and find out how to modify this file to unhide the data tab in a template app.

What is the manifest file?

The name of the manifest file is CanvasManifest.json and it belongs in the root directory of a project. The purpose of this file is to describe the contents of an app. As the file name suggests, it's analogous to the manifest of a cargo ship (eg, a list of the goods that are on-board)

The screenshot beneath illustrates this file. The top part includes details such as the schema and version numbers of the app. There are three child sections  - Properties, PublishInfo, and ScreenOrder.

  • Properties - This section contains all the properties that find in the settings area of an app. This includes the app name, description, app type (e.g. phone or tablet), screen width/height/orientation/aspect ratio settings, and experimental/preview settings.

  • PublishInfo - This section contains attributes that are associated with a published app. This includes attributes that relate to the apperance of an app in the app list, such as the app name, logo, and colours.

  • ScreenOrder - This section contains an array of screen names in an app, and the order in which they appear in the designer.

Overview of problem - Missing "Data" button in designer

To illustrate a problem that we can overcome by modifying the manifest file, let's take the example of an app that we've created through a standard template. The screenshot beneath shows the service desk app. As with all template apps that we create today, the data panel is missing, as highlighted in the screenshot beneath. This makes it impossible to refresh the data source if we want to move the Excel file to different location, or to add additional data sources to the app.

Inspecting the manifest file

To examine the manifest file for this app, we first unpack the app. We can refer to this earlier post here for details:

There are some features of this file that are notable. The first part is the AppCreationSource setting. This describes how the user created the app and in this example, the value of this is "AppFromTemplate". Other values include "AppFromScratch" and "AppFromData".

Beneath this is a section called AppPreviewFlagsKey. This contains an array of preview/experimental features that are enabled in an app.


Editing the manifest file

For this example, we'll edit the AppPreviewFlagsKey section, and replace it with a full list of settings from an app that we've created from scratch. The logic is that when we load the app from the designer, this will give the impression that the app was not created through a template.


Final result - opening the app from Power Apps Studio

At this point, we can repack our app and open it in the designer. When we do this, we see that the data section is once again visible, and we can see all of the Excel tables in the app. We can also access the elipses icon to refresh the data source.


Conclusion

The manifest file contains attributes from the settings area of a canvas app, details that relate to the publishing process (eg, the icon and name), and the order of the screens that appear in the designer. It also includes details of experimental flags. By replacing this section, we can unhide the data section of an app.
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