Microsoft has been rolling out the co-presence feature in Power Apps over the past couple of months and most canvas app builders who have worked recently in Power Apps will have encountered this feature.

What is co-presence? The Power Apps editor allows only a single app maker to edit an app. If another app maker attempts to edit the app at the same time, the app will open in read-only mode. Co-presence lets app builders see who else has the app open in the editor. The toolbar section of the editor shows the profile photos of other users with the app open. In the screen navigation pane, a profile photo icon also indicates the active screen that each user has open in the editor.

By default, read-only users cannot see in real time the changes that the app editor makes. The good news is that we can enable this behaviour by changing a value in the settings of an app.

To highlight how this feature works, let's assume that I (Tim Leung) open the app in edit mode.

When another app builder opens the app, the following message (shown below) appears in the editor -

"This app is read-only because Tim Leung is editing it. No need to refresh - you'll see their changes as they happen"

If I now add controls or change any part of the app, the changes are instantaneously visible to other app makers. There's no need for me to save the app or for the other app makers to refresh the editor.