How to Use Power Apps | Get Started with THIS Tutorial & Create your 1st app

today let's talk about power apps what it is who it's for and what you can do with it we'll also create a simple app together just so you can get started and see the potential of this power tool [Music] power apps are custom apps that you create for your work and for your organization but they aren't apps that you sell on the app store why would you need these because they make it easier for you to do some tasks they're apps they're meant for your phone for your tablet or for the web and because your phone already has a lot of inbuilt functionality like camera and microphone you can combine this with power apps so let's set up a very simple app together now you can create apps from different places you can do it by going to office.com you can also go directly to the powerapps website you can also create your own powerapp directly from teams in this case i'm going to go to office.com log in with my microsoft account and scroll down to find powerapps now if you don't see it on this list just click on all apps here and you're going to see powerapps you can also search for it up here select it and it's going to take you to the powerapps workspace now this is structured in a very similar way as power automate the easiest way to get started creating your app is to already have some data somewhere else you can have it in sharepoint lists you can have it in excel online sql common data service and so on now since we're a big fan of excel here i'm going to create the first app using data from excel now before i do this i just want to show you my excel file that file has a table so that's a requirement this table in my case is called tasks and it only has four columns priority of the task the task itself the person and a deadline i want to transform this sheet into an app so i'm going to close that off and select excel online here now this is a good way to get started with powerapps but if you're creating apps for your organization i don't recommend that you use excel as a data source now the reason for this is that you can only use excel that's on your onedrive for business so not on sharepoint it's also limited in the number of rows that it can show on the app and if anyone has that file open in the background they're going to lock it so that your app doesn't work so as an alternative it's always best to start with a sharepoint list instead in this case i'm going to use an excel file that's in my onedrive for business that file is in this folder called project tasks now powerapps is going to take a look at all the tables in that file there is only one table called tasks and i'm going to connect to that now this is where all the magic happens powerapps is going to create a fully functioning app based on those two lines of data that i had and that final app is going to look like this i'm going to zoom in so that you can see it better these are my two rows of data it already added a bunch of functionality like the ability to search for items the ability to add a new row of data to sort and to refresh now to be able to interact with this as if it's an app and to test the app you can use the shortcut key f5 or click on this button here we can try it out if i click on this it's going to take me to the details i see the deadline person priority and task i have the ability to edit this item or to go back i can add a new item here so i'm going to click on the plus for the date i immediately get this calendar picker which is great because powerapps has recognized that i have a date field and it's automatically given me the ability to pick the date from a calendar i can add a new person responsible for this whether this is a priority or not and the name of the task to submit this and add this line to our excel table i'm going to click on submit item okay so this is how the app currently functions if you would use this on the phone now just so that i can show you this item was actually added let me open up the excel file and that's the line that we just added notice that powerapps automatically added a new column as well now here's something you have to take care of if you're using an excel file as your source that file can't be open while someone is editing or adding data in the app that's why it's not recommended to use excel as a source especially not if you're sharing your app with a lot of people to exit the app for you just click on the x here and we go back to the powerapp work area now let's take a look at the different options we have here there are a lot of formatting options that we can do so notice when i click on the different objects they get highlighted on the side here and i have the ability to change the formatting of this so for the fill color for example for our search items let's change that to a light gray let's also change the color of the banner here now sometimes it's difficult to select the object that you want that's when you can select it from the side pane here down here we have the rectangular quick action bar that's the correct object i want to select i'm going to change the fill color to a reddish color so as you can see any object that we have here we can select it on the side pane now how does the side pane look the moment we connect it to our data source it created three different screens one is the browse screen that's the first screen that we see in the app then we have the details screen that's the screen that comes up when we make a selection from our browse screen and last is the edit screen this is the screen you get if you edit something from the detail so when you select this you go to here or if you select the plus from the browse screen you also come to this screen here that's empty in that case and gives you the ability to add new items on the right hand side you get the properties of each object you can adjust the position size color border you can make objects invisible for example and these properties can be different depending on the type of object that you select under advanced you have more options these are generally your control options for example what do you want to happen when the user updates a field and as you can see the formulas here are actually quite similar to excel formulas so for us excel users it's quite easy to get the hang of this let's actually do that let's update the person text field here and instead of having a text field i want to have a drop down list to be able to do that i can edit these controls and edit the cards so i'm going to click on the edit form object here go to properties and edit the fields here i can also see how the fields are organized and i can change the order so for example i want to bring the task up i'm just going to click and drag it up next i want to make the person a drop down so let's expand this field under control type i have edit text just click on it and change it to allowed values instead now we need to give it the type of values that are allowed so i'm going to click this object that is now a drop down list go to advanced and add the items i want in there but notice it's locked before i can do that i need to unlock this so i can customize it the way i need now under items i'm going to change that add square brackets and put the names in quotation marks i want lily comma tim comma sarah and close the square bracket let's also change something else instead of priority yes or no i want to add a checkbox instead so i'm going to select the box here notice it's called data card value six that's the name of the object i'm gonna delete that just by clicking on the delete button but delete is not removing this because the object is locked first i need to unlock it now you can unlock it from this panel here but you also have the ability to unlock by clicking on more options and unlocking the item now i can delete this let's expand this again and we're going to take care of these x's here in a second but first let's insert a check box to do that go to insert under input i have all these choices in my case i need a checkbox i'm going to rename it to priority now i don't need the label here so i'm going to select that and from the properties window i'm just going to make it invisible okay so so far so good now we need to take care of a few things one is that we need to make sure that when there is a check mark here we type a yes on the excel side and if there is no check mark we type a no and we also have to take care of these what these are are basically the formulas that are behind this object datacardvalue6.txt basically wrote the text to our excel file we need to change this to our function and guess what function this is it's an if function if this checkbox the name of it is checkbox one so if check box one dot value equals true and since we know from excel that the default check is for true we don't actually have to type this out if it's true then we want yes in the excel file else we want no close bracket and ctrl enter and we're going to test this in a second our first error is gone let's take care of the second error this one is related to the error message here and it has to do with the size of our previous control so all we need to do here is just change this name to check box one instead and also on this side here okay so so far so good now we're going to test this in a second but before we do that let's also make another adjustment to this so remember all of this was in the edit screen side let's go back to browse screen and see how our app looks the moment we open it up we see the name of the person then we see whether it's a priority and the task what if i don't want all this information on the app well you can easily adjust that in the properties just select the area here this is your browse gallery you can update the layout instead of showing everything here just to show the title instead now here it took the name of the person as the title i don't want that so i'm going to edit this and instead of person i want to see the task okay so now that looks better now take a look at the formula bar it has an automatic sorting sort by columns and it's sorting currently by person i can change that and sort this by another column like deadline okay so that's a simple app here take a look at all the other options you have under insert you can insert media camera barcode scanner video you can record audio with your phone add a picture and so on you also have the ability to add a lot of icons here that you can use on your app once you add an icon or control you need to add an action to it that action can be for example to navigate to another screen it can run an action on select and you can also add your flows here so that you can click a button and a whole power ultimate flow is going to get executed now before i switch to app view to see our new changes i want to show you something else you can also interact directly with your app by holding down the alt key and clicking on a button here so for example let's say i want to refresh this if i hold down alt the refresh button becomes clickable if i let go of alt and click on this i just see the formula that's behind this okay so this way if i hold down alt i can click on this go to the next page hold down alt click on back to go back okay so before we publish this let's quickly test this i'm going to create a new item let's select the date to be the 14th the task itself the person responsible and yes this is a priority i'm going to submit this i can also sort this in ascending or descending order so remember the sort order is the deadline in this case okay so so far so good let's bring up excel to see our changes and that's how things look on the excel side priority became a yes we have our task we have the person's name and the deadline as a last step let's go ahead and save this so i'm going to go to file and save you can save it to the cloud or to the computer i'm going to give this app a name and save it after you save the app you want to share it with others to do that click on share here you have the option to add individual email addresses or if you want to make it available to everyone in your organization just type in everyone you can give them the ability to become a co-owner if you want or just the ability to use the app but here's something you have to keep in mind because the underlying file is an excel file they have to be given permission to the excel file separately as well okay otherwise they wouldn't be able to use this i'm going to click on share all permissions were saved successfully and close this here you also get the web link to the app so that you can use it over the web you also have the ability to use it on your phone by downloading power apps or by adding your app to teams this way you can directly use it inside teams a better alternative to using excel as data source is to use sharepoint lists so here i have a simple list and i'm going to create a quick app based on that list so this is very similar to what we had in excel i'm going to go to powerapps as data source i'm going to go with sharepoint now i can connect to a sharepoint site and choose a list from that site powerapps is going to go ahead and create the app but this time there is a big advantage to using lists and that's the data type that automatically comes with it because in lists you can also have choices and dropdown selections that's automatically picked up by powerapps now we can check this if i go to app view here and i go to edit an item notice i have a drop down for priority so in this case i can pick whether something is priority one or priority two i also can look for the username of a person just type in a part of the name and you get your selection here okay so in addition to the other benefits that we get that our data isn't locked if someone has the excel file open that we're not limited to the number of rows sharepoint lists save us a lot of time when it comes to setting up the app before we wrap up i want to show you how you can add your app to teams this is the first app that we created which is connected to an excel file i'm going to click on more commands add to teams here i can review and download the app as a zip file and then upload it as a custom app to teams so let's click on download app to get the zip file that's it downloading here now let's switch to teams go to apps scroll all the way down and upload a custom app if you don't see this option that's because you don't have the right to upload a custom app in that case you can submit your app to the app catalog and once it takes a look at it and approves it it's going to be available for apps built for your organization in this case i have the right so i'm going to upload the app that's the zip file click on open now i can add the app directly to teams or click on this drop down add it to a specific team or to a chat i'm going to add it to a team here i can type a team or a channel name i'm going to add it to the general channel in finance and select set up a tab we then get to this dialog box where we can see a description if we added a good one about the project test app that we're adding we can post to the channel about the tab and then click on save this is going to add our app right here and make it available for anyone who is in this channel but remember the underlying data for this one is excel so for this to work properly for everyone we have to make sure that they all have access to the excel file if you're using a sharepoint list they should all have access to that sharepoint list to use the app on the phone just open it up i can easily add a new task let's pick the date type the task select the person and then add this and this is automatically going to create a new line in my excel table now i'm curious what you think about powerapps is this something that you think can be useful at your work can you see it being used for certain tasks let me know in the comments i hope you enjoyed this video if you did don't forget to give that thumbs up and if you're new here and you haven't subscribed to this channel consider subscribing before you leave thank you for watching and i'll see you in the next video you

Channel: Leila Gharani

Views: 163,194

Rating: 4.9595618 out of 5

Keywords: XelplusVis, Leila Gharani, XelPlus, microsoft 365, office 365, excel power apps, powerapps, power apps ideas, power apps ui design, powerapps tutorial, power apps demo, microsoft powerapps, microsoft, learn powerapps, power platform, power apps sharepoint lists, power apps excel data source, excel online, sharepoint lists, create an app, power apps teams

Id: RAeYV84esqg

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021