Blog - Recent Posts

Apr 17, 2021

Teams - The easiest way to add a message to a Microsoft Teams channel

If we want to add messages to a Microsoft Temas channel, this post describes a very simple way to carry out this task.

Teams
Apr 16, 2021

Controls - How to enter and display Office/Microsoft 365 email addresses with a combo box

When building data entry screens, a common requirement is to simplify the entry of email addresses by providing a combo box that displays all the email addresses that are available throughout the Microsoft/Office 365 tenant. This post describes the formula to build and configure this type of combo box.

Controls Email Combobox
Apr 15, 2021

Gallery control - How to set no selected item in a gallery

There are cases where we want to clear all selected items in a gallery control, or to configure a gallery control so that no items are selected on load.This post describes how to configure a gallery control to behave in this manner.

Controls Gallery
Apr 14, 2021

Dates - 4 tips to make sure that dates display correctly in UK "dd mm yyyy" format

A common requirement for UK app builders is to configure canvas apps to aways accept and display dates in "dd/mm/yyyy" format.This post describes 4 tips to help ensure that date picker and label controls display dates as expected.

Formulas
Apr 13, 2021

Forms - How to select-all / unselect-all checkbox or toggle controls on a form

When building data entry screens, we can simplify data entry by adding a feature to select all, or to unselect all true/false values on a form. This post walks through how to build this feature.

Forms
Apr 12, 2021

Excel vs SharePoint vs Dataverse vs SQL Server - updated 2021

When building canvas apps, an important question is - what data source should use? This post covers the pros and cons of the 4 most popular data sources with Power Apps - Excel, SharePoint, Dataverse, and SQL Server.

Apr 10, 2021

Troubleshooting - How to use the 'app checker' to fix a broken 'service desk' template app

When an app stops working, we can use the 'app checker'  to review the errors. To demonstrate how this works, this post describes the errors that can occur when template apps become outdated, and walks through the process of troubleshooting how to fix an app with this tool.

Troubleshooting
Apr 10, 2021

Connectors - How to use the Microsoft Teams connector to add messages/meeting invites to Teams

From Power Apps, we can use the Microsoft Teams connector to perform tasks in Teams. The syntax to call some of these methods can be complicated and therefore, this post describes how to carry out common tasks, including how to send messages and how to send meeting invites.

Connectors
Apr 09, 2021

Dates - Examples of how to calculate dates relative to today

There's often the need to perform date calculations that are relative to the today's date. For example, what's the start date of the current week? What's the last day of the current quarter, or the last day of the current month? This post highlights several useful formulas that can help in this situation.

Apr 08, 2021

Performance - Why is LookUp better than First/Filter?

Two popular ways to retrieve a single record are to call LookUp, or First(Filter. From a performance perspective, it's better practice to call the LookUp function to return a single record. This to post describes the reason why it's better to call LookUp, compared to First/Filter.

Performance Formula Data
Apr 07, 2021

Troubleshooting - How to recover corrupted screens

On rare occasions, screens can come corrupt. On these occasions, we can sometimes recover our work by using the duplicate screen option, and this post describes this technique in more detail.

Screen Design Troubleshooting
Apr 06, 2021

Forms - How to set the data source of a form to a collection

It can be difficult to build edit forms that are based on collections, because the designer disables the button to add fields to the form. This post describes this behaviour, and explains how we can configure an edit form to save and update rows in a collection.

Forms
Apr 05, 2021

Forms - The best practice for setting the data item on a form

When building apps, a 'best practice' is to minimise dependencies between screens. Therefore, it's best not to set the item property of a form to a value that's defined on a gallery (or some other control) outside of the screen. This post describes this topic in greater detail.

Forms
Apr 04, 2021

Data - How to make a copy of a record

A common requirement is to make a copy of a record, based on an existing record. This post describes some examples of how to carry out this task, including how to copy an existing record from a form, a gallery control, and how to write formula that copies the last created record.

Sharepoint Patch
Apr 03, 2021

SharePoint - How to export and import lists and maintain lookup relationships

A common requirement is to export and import sets of SharePoint lists, and to maintain the lookup data. This post describes how to carry out this task.

Sharepoint