Fun with PowerApps part 4: Creating a custom PowerApp

This is the final part in my fun with PowerApps series, in this post i’ll go through the steps involved in creating a new PowerApp from scratch and highlight some of the difference with using a template or generating a PowerApp from a SharePoint list.

You can read all the other parts in this series below:

Part 1: setting up the default gateway
Part 2: creating a data connection
Part 3: my first powerapp

Creating a PowerApp from scratch

So far we have generated our very first powerapp from a SharePoint list or library, but now we want to take it a step further and create a brand new PowerApp from the beginning to enable us to create a desktop experience.

To create the bespoke PowerApp we will need to begin in the PowerApps studio, the steps below walk through creating the bespoke PowerApp:

Navigate to https://web.powerapps.com/
In the Home screen, select Start from blank – make sure the desktop view is selected – Press Make this app

The PowerApps studio will give you some useful tips on how to create forms or galleries which are definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already!

On the canvas, press Connect to data
In the Data window, select the data connection we created earlier

Enter the URL of the SharePoint site you want to access
Once entered, you will see all the available lists and libraries you can use as the primary data source, select the one you wish to use

Conclusion

And there you are your custom PowerApp is all set up and ready to go! Of course this is just the very beginning and you now have the fun bits to come like adding all of the elements that will make up your PowerApp but from my experience I think there are a few approaches to achieve this.

My idea was to create and open up the template helpdesk PowerApp side-by-side with my custom one to get a better understanding of how to re-produce things like the totals across the top and some of the finer details that make up the PowerApp. I think doing it this way is much easier than trying to pick apart the templates as you are starting with your own data source rather than the static ones provided within the templates.

As well as the desktop and mobile experiences you now have the ability to create list forms using PowerApps too, so now there is even more fun to be had with PowerApps!

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/customize-list-form

Thanks for reading 🙂