Brian Knight walks through building a Power Platform solution and Power Apps application for a charity, Potter’s House in Guatemala, aiming to manage and expand their child education and nutrition services. The process includes setting up the Power Apps environment and Dataverse database, importing prerequisite solutions, designing data tables, and creating both model-driven and canvas applications. The solution targets real-world charity needs while teaching Power Apps fundamentals and best practices for environment setup, solution management, data modeling, forms, views, security, and user interface design.
The tutorial highlights practical steps such as creating solutions and publishers to organize app components, using Dataverse for secure, scalable data storage, building an incident tracking table, and rapidly developing a model-driven app. The session also demonstrates canvas app construction, focusing on a health evaluation app with responsive UI, data connections, galleries, forms, filtering, and user input validation.
Throughout the tutorial, key development concepts, troubleshooting tips, and publishing steps are addressed. The session also emphasizes environment and solution lifecycle management and points users to further Microsoft training resources while supporting Potter’s House through a charitable promotion.
Key Points
- Power Platform Environment Setup and Solutions
- Environment creation: Multiple environments (Dev, QA, Prod) help manage the solution lifecycle. A free developer environment offers premium features for learning.
- Solutions: Solutions organize app components, such as tables and flows, to facilitate portability and maintenance. Each solution is identified by a unique publisher.
- Importing solutions: Pre-built solutions can be imported to speed up development, with dependencies managed during import.
- Dataverse Table Design and Data Modeling
- Incident table: A custom table is created to track student-related events, and lookup columns are used for relationships with other records.
- Column setup: Various column types (auto number, multiple lines of text, choice, and lookup) are used to define the data structure.
- Attachments and activities: Support for attachments like photos and videos and activities like calls or meetings is enabled.
- Model-Driven App Development
- App creation: Model-driven apps are built quickly by adding Dataverse tables as pages. Custom icons and names are used for better context.
- Navigation and grouping: Tables are grouped into navigation panels for easier access to app functions.
- Views and forms: Customizing views and forms helps display relevant data like incident severity or student names.
- Subgrids and timeline: Subgrids display related records, and the timeline provides an integrated view of interactions and attachments.
- Canvas App Development for Health Evaluations
- App architecture: Canvas apps are created within the same environment for consistency. A phone format is used for mobile usability.
- UI design: Containers and galleries are used to structure the UI, with customizable templates for responsive layouts.
- Data connections: Dataverse tables are connected using premium connectors for seamless data integration.
- User experience: Features like save, cancel, and submit actions improve the app’s interactivity and user engagement.
- Learning Resources and Charitable Impact
- Microsoft courses: Recommended courses for beginners and advanced learners include Power Apps fundamentals and Dataverse basics.
- Hackathon model: The tutorial showcases how hackathon teams can create solutions for charitable causes.
- Charity support: Viewers are encouraged to support Potter’s House through donations and use a promotional discount code that benefits the charity.
Conclusion
This tutorial is an excellent example of how to use Power Apps and Power Platform to create practical, scalable applications for real-world problems. The session emphasizes not only the technical aspects of app development but also the importance of using technology for social good. By contributing to Potter’s House, viewers can make a meaningful impact while learning valuable skills that will aid them in their future development projects.
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