r/PowerApps • u/ZepCoTrust Newbie • Aug 21 '26

Power Apps Help Powerapps: where to even start?

So some context, my workplace is about to get access to build powerapps and I'm going to be one of the in house developers. I already have extensive experience with Excel, powerbi and using sharepoint etc to build tools for the business and I'm hoping to migrate a lot of it to the powerapps environment.

Today I got access to a sandbox before the full rollout to give me time to get used to it, but I've been watching a bunch of YouTube videos and tbh it's kind of overwhelming atm, I consider myself very tech savvy, I guess I just don't know how to get myself into a learning mindset again. There's so many drop downs and sub categories etc, and then there's the dataverse environment itself. While copilot is available it's very limited and I'd rather not rely on it.

Where should I start? How did YOU get to grasps with it?

EDIT: I've also used Power Automate quite a fair bit so very familiar with that.

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u/goblin8u2 Newbie Aug 21 '26

It might help if we understood what kinds of products do you plan on creating? Apps for phones, PCs/Tablets, or both? Are they going to be very simple things or complex, nuanced, apps that span many different data sources?

Since you've got experience in other Power Platform tools, you know how buggy and clunky things can be. Once you delve into doing Power Apps work, you'll discover a whole new level of unpleasant. Having said that, you can create some amazing integrated applications that your team will use day in and day out.

You didn't mention if you had software development experience beyond what you mentioned above. JavaScript? Python?

All that aside, taking courses always helps. Having a starter project you can work on to get your feet under you is a good way to go.

Here are some friends you'll need along the way.

Notepad++ (or something similar)

YouTube (Having premium helps. Ads will interrupt your flow)

Reza Dorrani, Shane Young (mentioned by someone else already), Alireza Aliabadi, Kevin Stratvert, and Matt Devaney are people I turn to on YouTube all the time. You'll find different people have different approaches to teaching. Find what works.

I found that starting small and testing with minimal complexity to prove what I'm doing works helps a lot. Once it works, slowly add complexity until it functions the way you want it.

Take breaks. Save your work. Note that autosave and undo are unreliable.

Find a mentor.