How to use Microsoft Power Apps - Beginner Tutorial

hi everyone kevin here today i want to show you how you can get started using microsoft power apps with power apps you can build your own apps and you don't even have to know how to code now i'm not a developer but yet i was able to pull together my own app you could pull together things like a vacation tracker a help desk app you can do all of that with power apps first we're gonna build our very own app and then second we're gonna look at how we can distribute that throughout our organization all right well why don't we jump on the pc and let's build our own app to get started with powerapps head to the website powerapps.com i've also included a link in the description once you land on the site click on the button that says start free to be able to use powerapps you need either a work or school microsoft 365 account alternatively you can also log into office.com and once you land on office.com in the bottom left-hand corner there's a button here for all apps when you click on that here too you can also launch into power apps now that we've clicked into power apps we are just about ready to start building our very first app right here we can start from data we can choose the data source for our app we can use a sharepoint list or an excel spreadsheet chances are if you have data stored somewhere you'll be able to use it with power apps there's a wide variety of different data sources available down below i can also start from blank for simplicity i'm going to create my app using a very simple sharepoint list if you'd like to follow along it's extremely easy to create a sharepoint list here i am on a sharepoint website and right over here there's a new menu when i click on this i can create a new list you can do this just to test out how powerapps works here for example i just clicked into an existing list that i have i just have a few columns with a little bit of data populated so nothing fancy you can feel free to create something from scratch or you can even just copy my list here if you want to see exactly what i see as we're walking through this back now on the powerapps homepage i'm going to select sharepoint as my data source now that i've selected sharepoint i can paste in a sharepoint site right up here but i see the site that i want to use right here on the recent sites list so i'll select this option after i click on the option i can choose the list that i want to use and i want to use this marketing ideas list so i'll click on this once i click on the list i'll go down and click on connect this drops us into power apps studio and here our app is already taking shape here powerapps has pulled together a very simple app using our data source and in a moment we're going to walk through what all you can do in here but first let's take a look at what power apps pull together up here in the top right hand corner we can click on this play icon to preview the app alternatively and here you'll see the shortcut key you can also press the f5 key let's try that out when i click on play this shows me what the app looks like here i see the title i have a few different controls i could search and i see a list of all of my different items here for example i can search for things so if i search for newspaper here it'll filter the list just down to that item here too i could also sort my list in ascending or descending order if i want to add new items to my marketing ideas i can click on this plus icon and here i can enter in a new record if i go back to the main screen i can also click into these different items to see additional details so so far it's a really basic app but it gives us something to build off of once we're all done let's go over in the top right hand corner and click on the x icon back on the main screen if i want to jump through the app similar to how i was able to navigate through the app in the preview i can press the alt key on my keyboard and then i could click on different items on the app here for example if i want to go back to the forum where i can add a new record i'll press the alt key and then click on the plus icon and that jumps me or helps me navigate to the form here again i'll press alt on the x and that'll bring me back to the main screen otherwise if i just clicked on it it would select the item so the alt key will be your friend as you navigate through the app in the edit experience now that we've looked at the basic functions of the app and we know how to navigate throughout the app experience let's shift our focus over to the left hand side where we see the tree view and this shows us all of the different screens and components that make up our app now as you remember as we played the app there were three different screens right up here we have the browse screen and that's the main view that we landed on when we played the app down below we can also jump into the detail screen and then we also have the edit screen right up here currently the browse screen is expanded and we can see all of the different components that make up the brow screen so here for example if i click on the browse gallery you'll see this component on the screen highlight right over here too i could click through the different elements so this is a rectangle this is the search icon up here this is a search text box so all of these different items tied to one of these components that's shown on the screen here too i can simply click on an item and here too you'll also see it over in the tree view so if i want to click on the plus icon here i see the plus icon highlighted over in the tree view i now want to start making some edits to my app and when i look up above right now the title says marketing ideas and i would like to apply some proper casing to this i can double click on this and i can edit the text directly in line when i have this item selected over on the right hand side i see all of the properties associated with this item here for example i could go into the text and here i could update the eye of ideas along with this i could see the font the font size and i have all sorts of different controls to modify and change the look and feel of this component now any single component that i select on the screen will also have its own set of associated properties as another example let's say that i want to change what type of information is shown within this gallery view here i can go over to the left hand side and i'll click on the browse gallery this is now selected and we can see that with this blue box once again over on the right hand side i can see all of the properties associated with it right down here i can choose the layout so here if i click on this maybe instead of showing the dates and the confidence level i'd rather just simplify this a little bit i could also change it just to show the titles so here now you see a more simplified view of all of the different marketing ideas here too i could click into edit and i could decide what fields i want to show so maybe instead of showing the title maybe i just want to show the confidence level i have all of that control here and i can set that using the properties now that we've made a few basic modifications and we've also looked at properties i want to start adding some additional navigation to this app over on the left hand side you'll see a plus icon and we can insert additional components right here at the top you'll see some of the more popular options along with inserting over here on the left hand side we can also go up to the top ribbon and click on insert and here too we can insert a number of different items now i mentioned i want to add some additional navigation and i want to use an icon for that so i'll click on icons and let me scroll most of the way down and i'm going to insert an emoji with a frown in a moment you'll see what i'm doing here let's insert this emoji this inserted my emoji directly on my app and i can simply click on this and i'll drag it to where i want to position it and i want it to be one of the main controls right here at the top so i'll position it next to these other three now right now it's in black and i want it to match these other ones so just like we've been doing before we'll use properties to modify what this looks like and down below i see this section for color if i click on this i can change the color to white and so now it'll match the other ones i'll reduce the size just a little bit so it's closer to these other ones and maybe i'll space it out just a little bit more now that i have my new navigation button i need it to navigate somewhere and i need to add a new screen so right over under the insert menu here there is a section for a new screen here i'll click on this and there are many different types of screens that i can insert i want to simply go with a blank screen so i'll select this now that i've added my new screen first off i want to go back to the tree view over on the left hand side here now you see that i have four screens as part of my app and currently this one is called screen one now that's not that descriptive so i'm gonna click on the ellipsis here and i can rename it and i'm gonna call this one be happy now that i've given it a new name i'm going to go back over to the insert menu and i'm going to start inserting different items onto my screen first i think i'm going to insert a text label it is one of the most popular items so that seems like a good one to insert i'll simply click on that and here i can go in and paste in some text now i'm going to say turn that frown upside down eat a cookie now when i select all of this i'll go to the home menu and let's center the text so i'll just do some quick styling also i want to insert an image on this screen so i'll go up to the insert menu this time and over under media i can insert an image there are many other types of media that i can insert as well for now let's click on image this inserts an image into my app and over here under properties i can now select the image that i want to add i've added an image from my desktop and it's a picture of the cookie monster this will put anyone who's in a bad mood in a good mood so i think this is a nice touch now here if i want to modify items here i'll drag it so it's a little bit larger and i'll position it right here on my screen next i want to insert a button so when someone lands on this screen they can return back to the main view right up here once again under the insert ribbon i'm going to click on button and here i'll pull the button so it's centered right near the bottom i can click on the button and just like i've been doing all along i can type in text and i'll say go back just like with the button i can click on the different items and i'll simply reposition these so they all appear right in the center of my screen i don't just have to manually move items around i can also go up to the home menu and here i can reorder items so i can adjust the layers so i can move it to the front or to the back here too i can also use power apps to align my different items and if i have multiple items selected i could also group those items together now this new page of my app might be cute but it doesn't actually do anything yet here if i click on this button it doesn't actually go anywhere here now when i have the button selected i can add an action to this button up on the top ribbon there's a tab for action let's click on that and let's add a navigation action over on the left hand side i can click on this navigate drop down menu here i could decide what page i want this button to navigate to right at the top if i click on this i can browse through all of the different screens in my app now i wanted to go back to the main browse screen so i'll select browse screen 1 and then select that option one thing you'll notice is right over here we have formulas or functions this basically says what the action is when someone clicks on this button and right now it inserted a function for navigate and there are two different values one of them is the screen that it navigates back to and also the associated animation so now that i have that in place i can once again go back and use the alt key click on this button and look at that it brings me back to the main browse screen now currently there's no way to get to that screen and i want to turn my frown into a navigation path there so we'll do the exact same thing i'll select this button and once again let's go over to action click on the navigate menu and here instead of going to the detail screen or the edit screen we want to go to the be happy screen so i'll select that screen once again you'll see that the function automatically updates and now the value is be happy so now we have that all set to go so let's press the alt key and now when someone clicks on this frown look at that that's gonna put anyone into a good mood we just added our very first simple action and you might start to wonder well hey how does the plus icon work or how does sorting work or how does refreshing work all you have to do is click on that icon and you can see the associated formula right up here now if you're curious it's actually very similar to microsoft excel if i click on this formula icon this will show me the broad set of formulas that are available to me in fact i can click on this drop down and i can see all of the different categories for all of the different formulas now you might be wondering well great there are lots of different formulas but what do they actually do how would i use them it all feels a little bit overwhelming well luckily down at the bottom there's the option to learn more let's click on this this drops us into a formula reference guide for power apps and here we can see all of the different formulas that are available to us now we just inserted a navigate function so let's go ahead and type it in up here to see what type of information is available here i can read all about navigation i could also see example transitions for navigate and if i go all the way down i can see how to use the syntax and even step-by-step examples next i want to show some of the additional views that we have available to us over on the left hand side there's the data view and here again we can confirm the data source that we're currently using for our app underneath that i can also see all associated media and here again we see cookie monster right underneath that there are some advanced tools that we can take advantage of now that we've looked at the basic interface and we have a nice simple app in place let's go ahead and save it up in the top left hand corner and let's click on the file menu and then go down to the option that says save you can either save it in the cloud or you can save it to your pc i'm going to save it to the cloud and up here i'll type in a name i typed in the name marketing ideas and then down in the bottom right hand corner i can click on save now that i've saved the app i can start sharing it with others and right here i have a pretty prominent share button let's click on this this opens up a share pane over on the right hand side and now i can type in names of people who i want to share this with i'll type in a few names i've now entered a few different names and over on the right hand side i can set the permissions so if i want these people to work on the app with me i can make them co-owners now i think i've done enough for this app and i really want to hand the torch to adele nestor and patty and let them take the app to the next level down below i also need to ensure that they have access to the underlying data the last thing i'd want to do is share this fantastic app with them only to disappoint them because they can't access any of the data once i'm all ready to share i'll go down and click on share back on the powerapps homepage if i want to distribute my app over on the left hand side let's click on apps and here again i see my marketing ideas app i can click here if i want to launch the app and see what it looks like but i want to distribute it now over here i have an ellipsis and when i click on this there are many different options for distribution i could share with additional people i could export the package i could even add it to microsoft teams down below if i click on details here too i see a web link to the app one thing that's really neat is on the office.com homepage when you give someone access to the app down in the bottom left-hand corner when you click on all apps if we scroll down just a little bit or you can click on the business apps category you'll see all of the apps that you've created in powerapps whoever has permission to the app will also see it on their office.com homepage and lastly you can also access your new app in the powerapp app when you include app in the product name you end up saying app a lot here's my new marketing ideas let's click on this and look at that it launches our new app on the phone and unfortunately we're getting close to the end of the video and i'm kind of sad about that so why don't we once again click on this frown oh and look at that no reason to be sad turn that frown upside down eat a cookie all right well that's how you can get started in power apps if this video helped you please give it a thumbs up to see more videos like this in the future make sure to hit that subscribe button if you want to see me cover any other topics on this channel leave a note down below alright well that's all i have for you today i hope you enjoyed and as always i hope to see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Kevin Stratvert

Views: 250,392

Rating: 4.9432411 out of 5

Keywords: kevin stratvert, power apps, powerapps, app, power, microsoft, microsoft power apps, data, sharepoint, share point, edit, build app, develop, build, develop app, business app, low code, no code, code, coding, ms power apps, power app, apps, ms power app, data verse, sharepoint list, list, excel, sql, database, data base, distribute, powerapps.com, microsoft 365, office, development, program, application, app builder, connectors, office 365, 365, azure, dynamics, stratvert, tutorial, how to, help, guide

Id: 2RzCbd5XgJg

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021