Code Apps - Office Hours March 2026 Highlights

March 11, 2026

3 min read

Code Apps

The first Code Apps Office Hours meeting for March covered some very interesting news. Thanks very much to Austin Laugesen for hosting this. Here's a summary of the key content that was covered.

Latest News

The most exciting news is that the team are developing a Code Apps plugin for coding agents. This feature will simplify the code building process. The plugin is technically live but undocumented and tuned for internal use, so developers were cautioned not to treat it as production‑ready until official guidance and examples arrive.

Last month, there was a bug where 'pac code push' was broken following an update. This was quickly fixed and details of this are here:- https://github.com/microsoft/PowerAppsCodeApps/discussions/220

There is new documentation on embedding Code Apps via iframes. This is perfect for use-case where we want to embed Code Apps in Model Driven Apps. The link is here, which also provides details on configuring CSP to allow framing.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/developer/code-apps/how-to/embed-iframe

Finally there will be Microsoft MVP only session in 2 weeks time where some exciting announcements will be made. The content of this will be shared publicly afterwards, so this is something to look forward to.

Technical Questions and Answers

There were some interesting questions from attendees. Here's a summary of the questions answered.

Do you plan to build / deliver pac code|update-data-source or pac code refresh-data-source (similar to Refresh connection in Canvas Apps)?

The team plan to support refresh via the new Node-based CLI; all new investments, including refresh data source, will go there. Today re‑adding a data source is meant to refresh it, but this sometimes duplicates entries, so they will investigate and plan a dedicated refresh capability in the CLI.

Do you have any suggestions for working with VS Code Internet Browser and Code Apps? I’m unable to select elements on the page.

This question relates to the design time behaviour of building apps in VS Code. When running the app through the Power Apps host, page elements cannot be selected because they are hosted inside an iframe. The suggested workaround is to run the app on localhost directly in a browser and to use the standard browser dev tools for debugging.

What's the ETA for Running code apps from Power Apps Mobile?

Mobile support is unlikely to arrive before July 2026, and there is no committed date yet.

When in March 2026 is FetchXML coming?

Previous timelines suggested that FetchXML support would come in March 2026. This March/April target is no longer valid based on current cost and technical work. The team are exploring phased options to unblock key scenarios sooner.

Is it possible to ask for enhancements or updates to the process of connecting the SharePoint list? I frequently encounter problems with IDs.

This question relates to difficulties connecting to SharePoint lists with spaces or special characters. It's difficult to get the URL encoding correct which makes this process error prone. The upcoming CLI improvements for discovering data sources and connections will hopefully make this task easier, and the team welcome suggestions on ways to improve documentation and tooling.

When requesting the AI to extract the npm package, why is access to $expand restricted?

The current models and services do not yet reliably support $expand and Power Apps team only want to expose capabilities they know work correctly. Adding $expand support is on their radar and planned for the future.

Any updates on the CSP bug and has it been fixed?

There is a bug where policies are too restrictive, over‑blocking rather than over‑exposing. A fix should be rolling out very soon.

When will "GCC High availability" become available?

GCC High availability should become available by the end of March or the first week of April.

Is there a chance to allow us to use client.retrieveDataAsync in a supported way for late‑bound scenarios like a metadata browser?

The use case scenario is to connect to tables where the table names are dynamic (eg, could change by environment, client, or other variables) and unknown at design time. This is currently unsupported and the team will take this away for further discussion.