5 things every Power Apps beginner needs to know

[@b8akaratn]

U don't wanna know how many times i shouted out Uh oh watching this...

[@ShanesCows]

I think that is a good thing. 😎

[@coxxycabee]

@@ShanesCows I have no understanding of Power apps and am watching your video to begin learning. I also 'Uh ohed'. I am appalled that Greg is only getting $7.55 and hour. Give that guy a raise for crying out loud.

[@kevinjoseph9023]

Great pitch mate… I’ve been watching this channel for over a year now. I like your delivery, content is on point. Keep winning!

[@ShanesCows]

Much appreciated!

[@PowerAppsBuilderGroup]

ending is the best lesson; practice is the only way to get better at anything and programming is no difference. so you should say it's actually 7 tips. great video Shane!

[@ShanesCows]

Yeah, 5 sounded better in the title but I agree there is a lot. 😎

[@JasonHeath1]

Shane, not trying to blow your head up, but I wanted to say I relate to your teaching style, humor, and general demeanor more than any teacher I have ever had. Thank you for putting these out!

[@ShanesCows]

Thanks Jason, I appreciate it. I try really hard to be helpful. 😎

[@buithe1987]

Your videos have been an absolute lifesaver for me as I've been diving into the world of PowerApps. Your explanations are clear, your tutorials are well-structured, and you make learning this complex tool seem so much easier. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into creating these tutorials. They've not only helped me in my professional work but have also sparked my interest in exploring more about PowerApps. Keep up the fantastic work, and please know that your efforts are making a real difference for learners like me. Looking forward to more amazing content from your channel! 👏🙌😊

[@ShanesCows]

Thank you for taking the time to write this. It means a lot to me. 😎

[@spen2431]

"Power apps what what it wants"..... totally agree. Best way to learn is by following the red blobs and red underline (errors) and understanding why. Nice work as always 💥💥💥💥💥

[@ShanesCows]

Boom! Thanks!

[@vidalrick75]

Shane I can't tell how much I have learned from you, and you keep feeding us with good stuff! Thank you! And thank you for the tip about renaming controls. Everyone keep saying to rename everything and you just set me free of the guilt of not doing it, thanks!!! One thing I'd like to see in one more detailed video from you would be how to export data to Word or Excel documents. This is the one thing that I can't understand why Microsoft doesn't have well done. I also work with the no-code platform Appenate, and it is so freaking easy to build a form that will take the information from app and export directly to a Word or Excel document, just add a simple place holder with the name of the field... but not with Power Apps which is a Microsoft Platform... I can't understand.

[@ShanesCows]

Nice video idea, noted. This is the closest I have today exporting to a CSV kzbin.info/www/bejne/n57Lqaxph6qajsU

[@davrosmandrake5633]

Yes to renaming labels, but only when I want to use them, such as hiding them if I don't need it to display for whatever. I also have a set of prefixes (lbl for Label, txt for Text) and Include a screen identifier, so icoOPCancel, would be the Cancel Icon on the Order Processing Screen. Also, if I am labelling anything that I want to hide then I include a _hide in the name at the end so its easier to find...Great video!

[@ShanesCows]

Love this! Thanks for sharing.

[@TheKermit2110]

Essential, Brilliant, Simple and a great way to relax my brain after the amazing JSON vid i just watched!!!!!!!

[@ShanesCows]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@jeanpierreragequit1726]

4:36 . Thx u so much Shane. Our community manager ( a confirmed dev) invited us to use flows instead of code in app. As a citizen dev, i was desagree with him spending a lot of time to code my solution with an app able to perform the same result as any flow when was possible with PowerFX. I told me since the beginning : " why make a flow when i can do it with my app in a row ? " . U confirm i did the right choice. ( apologize my bad english language, english language is not my native one )

[@ShanesCows]

🤩 Love this! And your English is just fine. 🤩

[@timwalter6989]

Shane, I totally get the "PowerApps wants what it wants". I needed the ability to vary the height of a text input, so I put together a quick formula to calculate the length of the input string and vary the height of the input box to grow as the length of the input increases. All it wanted was a number. I could make a career from what I have learned from your videos.

[@ShanesCows]

Awesome Tim 😎

[@davidcarrico3385]

Would love to see a video showing how to query Salesforce using SOQL from PowerApps, and what gotchas you need to look out for.

[@ShanesCows]

I don't have access to Salesforce. :(

[@davidcarrico3385]

@@ShanesCows I think you can get a free Salesforce dev environment just like you can get a free Microsoft dev tenant.

[@piotrrybka318]

In my opinion, keeping ALL controls properly named in a standard way will make it easier for you and other developers to develop further your app. Otherwise, you will keep finding things like Button2_5, Label1_100 in the formula input all the time. And it's a mess, it may take longer to find what you need. Another thing is the overall impression. If you do an app only for yourself, then it's completely fine, but as with any other piece of software, if you're going to keep things untidy, you will show everyone else that you don't care about what you do. It doesn't matter if it's low-code/no-code app or all-code/much-code JavaScript/HTML/C++-powered and SQL-wired piece of software. There is something like clean code. And again, it doesn't matter we have here low-code/no-code, because the controls are our code, those UI things we move around the canvas are our code. It's just they are not written (although right now we can use YAML to define them), but rendered. Additionally, and this is my third argument, good naming of whatever you put in to your app, is - as in any other technology - the most basic documentation. You don't have to write anywhere else that your label is a label on Edit Customer Screen containing the ID of the selected item. If you have a proper naming convention (and there are some good examples out there), you can name it "lbl_EditCustomer_CustomerId" and that's it. Everyone who knows the naming convention will immediately know that this is a label on Edit Customer screen and it contains customer ID.

[@ShanesCows]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 😎 They are worthy considerations for someone doing more and more of this type of coding.

[@canningcoyle0]

love the mentaility, very helpful thank you

[@ShanesCows]

Happy to help. Have a great day. 🐶

[@MarieCastine]

The naming of controls is the bane of my existence! LOL! I have learned to just focus on renaming cards, data elements and labels. I never rename the other elements inside a form card. I do rename labels because I use logic on those, etc. I loosely follow the white paper Power Apps guidance on naming and it is quick to name the items in a card. I do: cardItemName, lblItemName, dataItemName, drpItemName, etc. Just copy the "Item Name" and rename at the same time. I also add a theme onto those controls which I will be very happy when that is available in GCC so i dont have to manually create the theme screen, etc.

[@oluwatobipaul6171]

Thanks for this beginner tips. I would recommend it to beginners I know

[@ShanesCows]

Glad it was helpful!

[@ShaneC0271]

I did get in the habit of changing label names because I once had some labels displaying different text based on complicated logic (if this and that OR that and this OR !that). And corresponding icons that needed to change color based on whether the related label contained a specific string. Rather than repeat the same logic in the icons, I changed their color based on if the substring was present in the label.text. Naming the labels something meaningful made that easier to write and to follow. Of course, now I realize it probably would've been simpler to update context vars in the OnChange property of the input that drove all of it and then use those vars to set the labels and the icon colors. But you live and learn

[@mickyslim1000]

Hi Shane... another great video that I have saved in my playlist and OneNote! What if you are a total beginner (9 months in to my new career) who has taken over from someone using more advanced methods... What tips do you have for me to unpick their code and troubleshoot errors? I have found it quite difficult to make new developments on the more complicated apps they created.

[@ShanesCows]

My first answer might be ChatGPT. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pJbImn5ogplqndE You can copy and paste their code and ask the 🤖 what the heck is this code doing. If you can figure that out, then you can ask for help with that topic or go looking for videos/blogs on that topic. Shameless plug but this class training.powerapps911.com/courses/power-apps-and-power-automate-201-september-2023-live would be perfect for you. It is all about connecting the dots by explaining how things work and helping you with the problem "you don't know what you don't know". There is an On-demand version of it as well. Hope that helps

[@lawrencesproul1541]

I rename labels that are referenced somewhere else. For example, sometimes I will use a set of labels to preprocess text for inclusion, by concatenation, in an html control.

[@ShanesCows]

Love it!

[@wendymason3263]

Thank you Shane, a great video as usual and even though I'm not a beginner, thanks to you, I am always learning. What I have learnt today is that it's ok not to rename every single control, even those labels that I don't directly reference - I am going to save myself so much time, happy days 🥳🥳🥳

[@ShanesCows]

Glad to help Wendy. Have a good day. 😎

[@JackalBruit]

i rename labels b/c i have found myself pulling settings from a "Parent" label e.g. like Parent.X or Parent.Font thus renaming at least that Parent label makes my life easier if i am debugging trying to find this driving Parent label

[@ShanesCows]

That is a perfect reason. 🤩 See, as long as you are doing it with a purpose I love it!

[@stuartduncan2772]

Another great video. Hopefully, I didn't learn anything here but still good to know that I'm doing it right. Thanks.

[@ShanesCows]

Yeah, sometime confirmation is the best learning. 🤩

[@simonball5602]

Great video Shane - thank you.

[@ShanesCows]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@nightfire1266]

Nice video Shane! I will say on the naming labels thing, i always will if they have conditional visibility as if i have a lot of labels on the screen and some are not easy to click on without activating the app's conditions, I will want to be able to find it in tree view - what do you reckon?

[@ShanesCows]

I like it. Some of the hidden controls I also rename so I can find them. Or worse yet the ones, like a timer, that are permanently invisible. Timer1-HIDDEN is a valid name fur sure.

[@cvkealey]

I'm one of those weirdos that renames *every* *single* *control*, even labels. However, the reason is that I almost always use relative positioning (yeah, yeah...I should use responsive containers, but I don't), so it really helps me keep track of what's where in a screen.

[@ShanesCows]

As long as you have a valid reason then 👍 😎

[@imax8307]

Great vid as always. The App Checker can be annoying as it shows the same red dot for delegation warnings so within some apps I've always got that pesky red dot, event though I know I don't have an issue with delegation as I know my data is not going to cause an issue. It's a pity there's not a way to acknowledge warnings and set to ignore.

[@ShanesCows]

The Red dot should not show up if a Delegation warning is the only issue you have. It does show as a warning but shouldn't cause the red dot.

[@ipapoutsidis]

GG Shane for videos.. About rename controls< I only rename when I use the same Title in other screens that using the same properties..I rename one just adding dynamic to others

[@ShanesCows]

I like it.

[@jenskemeijs]

Hi Shane, I do rename labels (I rename everything quite frankly) but I also have a good reason to rename labels! I often want to have inputfields right below or next to a certain label. As you say in the video, when you're reffering to something it is more clear to rename them. I have renamed everything so it is very clear for me on which screen the element is and what is its function. (Okay I admit... I'm a control freak and doesn't like it when it is a mess 😂😂 ) Cheers! Miss Meijs

[@ShanesCows]

Love that! As long as you renaming them with a purpose then 100% supported. 🤩

[@katlambourne3167]

@@ShanesCows it's also worth noting that renaming labels like that allows Accessibility tools like screen readers to better interpret the app for those who can't see the title. Very important for thos creating apps subject to section 508 criteria.

[@pavlochmykhalo735]

Hi Shane, I consider myself at least strong middle in powe apps, and I still use forms, not always, but quite often. Could you please explain what is so wrong with forms and why do you think that patch is so much better? If you have a video where you explain this, please give a link to it.

[@ShanesCows]

If Forms are working for you then please dont change :) It is only when your requirements go beyond what Patch can do should you change.

[@pavlochmykhalo735]

Got it, but would be great if you could shed some light on when it makes more sense to use patch vs submit form. I prefer to use forms because it does a lot of stuff for me, like managing required fields, including error messages and placing asterisks etc, also I is OnSucces property a lot etc.

[@qwertyytrewq8796]

Hi Shane I need your help about the following: I have shared Library, and I need to make some fields (read only) not all. so how can I do that??

[@ShanesCows]

SharePoint doesn't support field level security like that. SOrry

[@RadamésMRD]

Hi Shane! I hope you read this because I need some help... I'm trying to build an app here but I decided to go with a design that uses buttons to set some of the values for the new entries in the DB. But they need to stay pressed after their "value" is selected. For some reason I'm not being able to make it work. Can you help me out, please?

[@ShanesCows]

Don't think of leaving them pressed, you cannot do that. What you can do is set the Display Mode to be disabled after they are pressed. You would need to set a variable when they are pressed and then use that variable in the logic of the DisplayMode property to set them disabled.

[@RadamésMRD]

​@@ShanesCows Thanks a lot for the feedback, Shane! Much appreciated. I'll replace the buttons for dropdowns. I think it'll work like that.

[@moisestatis5418]

Thanks so much for these tips

[@ShanesCows]

You are so welcome!

[@diamonddoeer2075]

How can i patch incremental number to text refrence number in sharepoint list

[@ShanesCows]

This very old video talked about how to do it in Excel. Same idea could work with SharePoint. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pp2uqJKum7uZrbs

[@thereagalistofbeagle-ist4229]

I would name a text label using a Concantenate. Using text input boxes, I can copy full templates with a single button

[@ShanesCows]

Very nice

[@MichaelDeBlasis1369]

I'm going to add #6 as I wish I found this video sooner. LOL! Oh BTW. I would like to request a video on power apps portals. I don't see a ton out there about it.

[@ShanesCows]

Great suggestion! I might have something in the hopper 😉 In the meantime, in my free 101 class there is now an hour module on Pages 🥰 training.powerapps911.com/courses/power-apps-and-power-automate-getting-started

[@MichaelDeBlasis1369]

Thanks Shane! I'll check it out tonight@@ShanesCows

[@MichaelDeBlasis1369]

I, well GPT, created a fully responsive html FORM with dynamic contentand drop shadows. I'm amazed. All I had to do was attach a screenshot of my form design and it made it look exactly like it. Now if only I could figure out a way to patch it. LOL Not sure that possible but still a cool project. @@ShanesCows

This would be a great video for beginners if it was actually pitched at beginners. Seems it's pitched towards more experienced users who just wanna go "oh yeah, me too". Regardless, thanks for your uploads. They are helpful. A beginner

[@ShanesCows]

What could I do to help you as a true beginner better? I want to make the content you need. 😎

@@ShanesCows Your vids are great. Just keep on keeping on. I'll find my way around :) I will make one suggestion though. A vid that prepares noobs on a couple things ahead of them getting stuck into a project. Such as: The fact there's chat and APIs That there's additional charges for APIs That setting up APIs is a PitA :) so give yourself plenty of time. That there many services but they often share LLMs, sometimes not. Maybe pick three different types of service that have different usefulnesses with fair warning that two or more may be required depending on need. I watched a vid at the weekend on Make and its integration with Perplexity Pro (my current fav) and ChatGPT Pro, with no clear indication that both are paid services and the APIs are extra. Just a few thoughts, but as I say, I appreciate your content.

@@ShanesCows Don't know why my reply hasn't appeared. I'll give it a few more hours!

[@lot5953]

I'm trying to learn Power Apps at workplace so I'm curious if I create basic app just for my learning purpose, can my colleagues see the app too? if yes, is there option to hide it?

[@ShanesCows]

You can choose who you do or don't share the app with. Click the share icon in the top right corner and share away.

[@lot5953]

@@ShanesCows thank you.

[@Lachesisms]

I always name my labels with the name of the object it references, such as lbl_txt_FirstName

[@BorelaxDota]

"seasoned pro who is faking it" I took that personally.

[@ShanesCows]

Shhhh. It can be our secret. 🤩

[@JackalBruit]

"everyone says i should always use Patch" ... You haha Shane Young === "everyone" 😂🤣

[@ShanesCows]

Everyone that matters. 🤪

[@sarathsubramaniam7991]

People with Development-OCD will rename everything like they are on JavaScript.

[@ShanesCows]

If it makes them happy then more power to them. 😎

[@DataisKing]

I stay away from Forms whenever I can and just use Patch. Why not learn the best practices as a beginner and use Patch? Bingo Bango lol

[@ShanesCows]

I love me some Patch but for beginners it is daunting. But I love your idea, Patch is king. 🤩

[@Admin_REX]

im not u .....lol

[@ShanesCows]

Fair 🐶

[@amiturmipurohit4297]

Great, simple and very informative video as always Shane. Wish I could like the video for each of the 6 things described. May I add the 7th thing? "Watch, and rewatch, videos at www.youtube.com/@ShanesCows". Liked "Forms are OK." the best. "Ok to start with forms..." I plus one that. After more than an year of working with PowerPlatform (and learning from your videos all along) I often resort to forms (and to your videos).

[@ShanesCows]

Thank you very much. Kind words like this is what keeps me making videos.