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Quick Power Apps References

Scroll Down To View The Power Apps Cheat Sheet Canvas applications use the PowerFX language to operate. These formulas modify formatting, design, actions, and calculations performed in the application. Familiarize yourself with these formula guide lines, because the majority of all canvas applications will utilize these formulas during development.

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Start Here:
Power Apps Beginner Tutorial Video The best interactive video to start when learning Power Apps. Learn how to create an app from scratch that uses a database.
Free Community License Of Power Apps Get your "not-for-production" license to create as many apps as you want. You will just not be able to share those apps with others. Once there, click Create Individual Environment and use your work credentials.
App In A Day Free Recordings Click Free Trial for a forever free App in a Day class amongst other courses.
Brian Knight's Power Apps Playlist Brian's YouTube playlist for beginners to experts trying to learn Power Apps.
Microsoft Power Apps Official Documentation Official documentation of nearly every function in Power FX and Power Apps.
PowerApps Canvas App Coding Standards and Guidelines These guidelines are targeted at the enterprise application maker who is responsible for designing, building, testing, deploying, and maintaining PowerApps apps.
App In A Day Slides Get the slides we use in the App in a Day presentation.
Center Of Excellence Toolkit Make your admin's life easier with the COE Toolkit, a free management set of best practices and tools from Microsoft.
Power Apps Naming Convention Start building Power Apps with some type of naming convention. This one is a great starting point for most.
Using Beautiful Colors In Your App Are you color challenged? This site will give you some nice color hues to try.
Find Out The Colors Of Any Logo Building a color scheme based on a logo? Image Color Picker allows you to upload your logo and get the RGB colors from that.
Power Apps Licensing See the present pricing for Power Apps
Power Apps Licensing Explained Video The video that humanizes the confusing world of licensing Power Apps.

Power FX Common Expressions To Know First

Problem Expression
Show the current logged in user The User Function Examples

User().Email - Shows email address
User().FullName - Shows user's name
User().Image - Shows user's photo
Filter the rows to a certain criteria The Filter expression can filter the rows based on an expression of your choosing. 

Filter(DataSource, Expresssion)
Filter( DataSourceName, Column > 0 )
Filter( DataSourceName, Column > 0, Column2 = "Value" )
 
Lookup a value in another table or source The lookup function can see the value from a different source based on an expression.


Lookup(Source, Condition, ValueToShow)
Lookup(DataSourceName, CustomerID = 5, CustomerName)

 
 
Create a Global Variable Global variables can be seen on any screen. They can be created when you start an app by selecting the App OnStart event or on any actionable event. 
 
Set(VariableName, value)
 
Navigate to a new screen Navigation can be done two ways: either go back to the previous screen you came from or navigate to a specific screen.. 
 
Navigate(ScreenName)
 
Optionally, you can specify an effect during the transition: 

Navigate(ScreenName, ScreenTransition.Fade)
 
Send data from a form to the source.

A few ways to send data from a form are SubmitForm or the Patch commands. The SubmitForm is easiest with he smallest amount of flexibility.

SubmitForm(FormName)
     
Searching multiple columns for a row The Search command does a contains search across multiple columns and is usually used in galleries or data tables.
 
Search(DataSource, SearchString, Column1 [, Column2, ... ] )
Search(DataSource, txtInput.Text, "FirstName", "LastName") 
 
Updating or inserting data without a form The Patch function is one way to update or insert data without using a form. For example, you can tie it to an OnChange even of a drop down box.
 
For inserting a record:
Patch(DataSource, Defaults(DataSource), {ColumnName:"Value1", ColumnName2:Number2})
 
Similarly, you can update data when you select an item in a gallery:
Patch(DataSource, ThisItem, {ColumnName:”Value1″, ColumnName2:Number2})
SharePoint Variations with a person picker

Lookups and the Person Picker in Sharepoint require some variations to your code in Power Apps since it’s a packed field, meaning that the one field has a bunch of items inside of it with references. This gives you the ability to navigate the hierarchy easier in Power Apps.

For filtering based on a Person Picker based on the person who’s signed in:

//Put this code in the App OnStart
Set(varUserEmail, User().Email)

//Gallery code or wherever you want to filter
Filter('Assembly Work Orders', Owner.Email=varUserEmail)

 

Patching is especially challenging into a Person Picker and a choice column. Both are shown below showing you how to unpack the column before inserting into your list. The below is showing inserting with Patch into a SharePoint list with a choice column called Status and a Person Picker column called Owner. A title column is required also for SharePoint.

Patch(‘SharePoint List Name’, Defaults(‘SharePoint List Name’), {Title:”Your record title here”, Status: {‘@odata.type’:”#Microsoft.Azure.Connectors.SharePoint.SPListExpandedReference”, Value:”Complete”}, Owner:{ ‘@odata.type’: “#Microsoft.Azure.Connectors.SharePoint.SPListExpandedUser”, Department: “”, Claims: “i:0#.f|membership|” & User().Email, DisplayName: User().FullName, Email: User().Email, JobTitle: “”, Picture: “” } })


Filtering on a choice column requires that you specify the value of the choice as shown below with a drop-down filter.

Filter('SharePoint List Name', ChoiceColumn.Value=Dropdown1.SelectedText.Value)


Defaulting a drop-down box in a form to your name in a person picker column
Set the DefaultSelectedItems property to the following if your form is called Form1 and your Person Picker column is called CreatedBy. Note the code is going to check to see if the form is in New mode and do this or if it’s in edit mode, it will keep its existing value from the list.

If(Form1.Mode = New,{
  '@odata.type':"#Microsoft.Azure.Connectors.SharePoint.SPListExpandedUser",
   Claims:Concatenate("i:0#.f|membership|",User().Email),
   DisplayName:User().FullName,
   Email:User().Email
    }, 
ThisItem.CreatedBy)
Get the first Day of the month Some systems will require you insert the first day of the month vs today’s date.
 
Date(Year(Today()), Month(Today()), 1)

Would return 3/1/2021 if it were 3/16/2021. Replace Today() with your own date picker if you want the customer to pick the date instead of always getting today’s date as shown below.

Date(Year(DatePicker1.SelectedDate), Month(DatePicker1.SelectedDate), 1)

For the last day of the month, you can use the With statement to construct your logic. The below code finds the first day of the next month then subtracts one day from that, giving you the last day of the previous month. With the With statement, you essentially, create a variable that’s only in scope of this one command. In my case that scope is only in the scope of a text label. 

With({DateSelected:Date(Year(DatePicker1.SelectedDate), Month(DatePicker1.SelectedDate), 1)}, DateAdd(DateAdd(DateSelected, 1, Months), -1, Days))
 
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