PowerApps Studio Screen Tutorial
This article explains PowerApps Studio’s screen sections and offers some visual aids and tips on using them, so you can start making your PowerApps apps.
(Duration: 5:18)
Knowing PowerApps Studio Screen is the 1st step!
Hi, this is Mike Negami, Lean Sigma Black Belt.
In this article, we’ll review the PowerApps Studio screen together. I’ll show you each section of the screen and its tips. This is great for people who are going to learn PowerApps.
In the last article about this topic, I wrote about tips for preparing source data and procedures up to generating the sample app. ⇒ “PowerApps: 4 great tips in preparing the source data in Excel”
The amazing part of this software is that it makes a sample app from source data automatically. The image below is the sample app made from my source data.
It’s much quicker than making an app from scratch. This operating environment is called ‘PowerApps Studio’.
The left lane shows the list of names of screens and each parts.
See the left lane of the screen. Here are the names of all parts currently in your app.
The square icons represent screens. By clicking the left triangle, you can show or hide the all parts such as labels and icons on the screen.
Click ‘…’ (the line of dots), then from the next menu, you can move the screen up and down or delete the screen. By selecting another screen icon, you can easily move to that screen.
Next, let’s look at the parts inside the screen. By clicking a name, you can directly select that part and edit it. By controlling these parts, you can design each screen and add necessary functions.
Later you’ll refer to these parts from various places. If you keep those default names, it may not be easy to identify which parts they refer to and this may cause errors because of mis-referring.
Therefore, it’s better to rename each icon to a brief name you can easily understand. You can do that easily by double clicking on them.
Since we cannot use the exact same names, for example, if it’s in Screen 1, I put ‘1’ at the end of all part names on the screen.
‘Gallery’ is among the types of parts. You can show a list of specific data with it very easily.
The right lane shows properties where you can change settings of the selected part.
Next, look at the right side of the screen. It shows the properties of the part currently selected. Here, you can change many settings for each part. The types of properties change according to the type of the selected part.
Like Excel, there is a formula bar in PowerApps too. By selecting a property from the drop list on the left, you can also change the settings.
By setting properties and formulating PowerApps functions, you can create mobile apps without writing difficult code. In the future, I’ll make more videos about PowerApps functions too.
PowerApps Studio’s Menu Bar on Top
Let’s take a look at the menu bar above. In ‘Home’, there are commands that you use frequently, and you use them to change the shape, color and size of the selected part. This usage is the same as in Excel and PowerPoint which you may already be familiar with.
You can add new parts with ‘Insert’. Click the ‘Controls’. Look at these controls.
In addition to the usual ‘Button’ and ‘Drop Down’, this software has ‘Date Picker’ so users can pick dates from the calendar, and ‘Slider’ so users can input numerical values by slide. You can easily add these functions to your app.
I’ll explain the other menus, ‘View’ and ‘Action’, another time. Move to the right and there are several buttons.
The first button is ‘App Checker’. Clicking the button opens a new section. If there are errors in your app, this section will show you the error explanation and offer solution hints.
The next buttons are common ‘Undo’ and ‘Redo’. With the next triangle button, you can preview your app anytime.
It’s not necessary to memorize all of today’s contents. You should just grasp the overall picture of the operation. After all it’s important to begin using them.
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