Preface

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for choosing this book, and to welcome you to a learning journey within Power Apps and the Power Platform. WithLearn Microsoft Power Apps, you will learn how to build solutions in the Power Platform by utilizing canvas apps and model-driven apps, both key parts of the Power Apps service. Throughout the book, you will not only learn the theory behind the components and what they do, but also put them into practice by incrementally building an app through several labs.

The book introduces new topics in each chapter, gradually introducing more and more functionality from Power Apps to help you understand how you can continually improve your apps to build something just as powerful as a custom developed application.

Updates to Power Apps

Power Apps receives frequent updates from Microsoft. As a result of this, there may be times when the illustrations or explanations within this book appear out of date. This is purely a consequence of working within an evergreen platform, so please don’t let this stop you from following through and building the examples. While the interfaces may change, the techniques and thought processes that we introduce in the book are likely to remain the same regardless of what else comes along in the world of Power Apps.

We hope that you enjoy the book and find it useful, and wish you the very best in creating some rich, powerful, and enjoyable Power Apps.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for business analysts, IT professionals, and both developers and non-developers alike. If you want to meet business needs by creating purpose-built apps, this book is for you. To get the most out of this book, it is recommended that you have a basic understanding of Microsoft 365 as you will interact with various elements of it while developing apps.

What this book covers

Chapter 1,Introducing Power Apps, gives a high-level overview of Power Apps, what it is, how it is licensed, and how to get started.

Chapter 2,Creating Your First Canvas Power App, is where we take our first steps into creating a canvas app. We will explore the types of canvas app that we can create, look at various use cases, and explore the options that we have available to us.

Chapter 3,Creating Apps from SharePoint, explores the relationship between Microsoft SharePoint and Power Apps, exploring how we can create apps from SharePoint data or even change the list forms using a canvas app.

Chapter 4,Publishing and Leveraging Power Apps, looks at how we can leverage our apps across multiple platforms. We will explore how we can use our apps on mobile devices, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams.

Chapter 5,Exploring Controls, focuses on understanding the building blocks of our apps and how they can be used to create an engaging user interface. We will look at some of the use cases for the different controls as well as highlighting key properties to be aware of.

Chapter 6,Exploring Formulas, introduces how we start to build logic within our apps by using formulas to create functions and their properties.

Chapter 7,Exploring Reusable Controls, introduces a way of being able to reduce the development time of your apps by creating reusable combinations of controls from both a local app level and also across an entire environment.

Chapter 8,Working with Data, investigates how we can store and interact with data wi