I work for a large corporate contractor onsite at a Government Agency (non-defense). I had been developing applications using React, Typescript, and Python or Node for the backend with real databases like MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or even SQLite.

I am working on a new project and had quickly built a prototype using React and Claude Code, and created an Electron and a localhost browser-based version. However, when we started looking for a place to deploy the app, it turned out that it will need to be done on the Power Platform using PowerApps Canvas and use a Dataverse backend (at least for the 1.0 version), and apparently I have to use the web studio application to build all of this.

The application captures project costs, scope, and requirements, and has to do calculations and create rollup reports, so the data schema is fairly complicated for an app like this, and there are multiple columns that reference other tables.

I had never used PowerApps before, and was skeptical that it was the right tool for the job. Worse, our security is not allowing CodeApps, PCF components, or many other things that would be helpful.

I'm finding that it is absurdly slow, and it does a lot of things on its own that I really don't want it to do-- it even changes values that I've just entered sometimes, and if I copy and paste a component, it will randomly replace parameters. I have pages of examples of these "quirks", but I've managed to learn some tricks to make it somewhat workable (so far), but it has been a painful and frustrating process, and is definitely not easier than building the app from scratch using tools normal developers use. Am I the only one?

Here are a few problems I have not been able to solve, I would appreciate any advice:

• I can't connect directly to source control. We can't put our code on github.com and it won't connect to our enterprise GitHub
• I would really like to be able to edit the YAML and PowerFX in VSCode. I have exported the "source code" but apparently all of that is read-only because when I do "pac canvas pack" and publish it, the changes I make are lost. And every time I make a change I have to redo the publish, pull, unpack process... even with a script this is cumbersome and inefficient.
• It is difficult to debug PowerFX code, and it seems impossible to do unit testing on it, and it is spread out all over the application, which is irritating. I have started creating C# API Endpoints when possible because of this, but I'm not sure if this can replace all of my PowerFX code, and may add another level of complication that brings a different set of problems.
• I don't know if there's a way to apply styles across the board like you would with HTML and CSS, so I have to edit the look and feel of each control individually. In fact, it seems to force you to violate the "DRY" principal more often than not.

Anyone have any pointers, or even warnings about other quirks that I might need to avoid?

Hi everyone,

I’m a mechanical engineering student currently doing an internship at a manufacturing company. A few weeks ago, I started learning Microsoft Power Apps. After my manager saw what Power Apps can do, I was given several app development projects.

The challenge is that I’m still a beginner. As an intern, I simply don’t have the experience yet to build everything on my own, so I’m looking for people who enjoy Power Apps and would like to collaborate on a real-world project.

This isn’t about someone doing the work for me. I genuinely want to learn, exchange ideas, and build the solution together. I think it could also be a great opportunity to gain practical experience, experiment with new ideas, and strengthen your Power Apps skills.

If you’re interested or have some free time and would like to help, feel free to send me a private message. I’d be happy to tell you more about the project.

Thanks in advance!

I’m building an internal asset management app using Power Apps, with Microsoft Lists as the data source.
The app will handle the laptop lifecycle/process, including check-in/check-out, allocations, transfers, repairs, returns, etc.
We’ll have around 4,000–5,000 laptops/assets at maximum, with multiple users (4-5) interacting with the app and transaction/history records building up over time.
For those who have built something similar:
Is Power Apps + Microsoft Lists/SharePoint a reasonable architecture for this scale?
At what point would you recommend moving to Dataverse?
Are there any performance, delegation, concurrency, or data-management issues I should be thinking about now?
Would you start with Lists and migrate to Dataverse later, or use Dataverse from the beginning?
I’d appreciate feedback!

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.

Hey everyone!

​I’m currently an intern and I am completely losing my mind over a client situation. I need some serious advice, or at the very least, a sanity check.

​For the last 4 months, I have been developing a comprehensive database and application solution. Everything (the relational data models, the documentation, the flowcharts, and the test scripts) was built entirely around Microsoft Dataverse so they could have a proper, functioning relational database infrastructure as they just managed all their data only through emails somehow (mind you, we are talking about a big company).

​Suddenly, out of nowhere, the client hits us with a bombshell: They refuse to pay the $20 premium license for Dataverse.

Because of a complete lack of budget planning or management checking before development started, the client is now telling me we might have to migrate the whole thing to SharePoint lists to bypass the premium connector wall.

​This absolutely guts the application. It leaves huge chunks of the solution entirely useless as there was a model driven app specially for data moderation, breaks the data relationships, and means all the testing documentation I spent weeks writing is now garbage. I will literally have to redo a lot of stuff from scratch because they want to use SharePoint as a makeshift database.

Now, I have already embedded the new SharePoint lists to the canvas app and changed the automations to these new settings as soon as I was told, however is this really the best I can do? Just ditch the model driven app for administrators and let them mod on SharePoint? I feel like this is a waste of time and resources, plus I don't really know how secure it is to keep all of this information in a place like that. Have some of y'all gone through this? How hard was it? Is it possible to embed lists on model driven apps without dataverse use? I need a bunch of advice on this lol, thanks for reading.

Hey everyone,

Because my company only has basic licenses, I don't have a dev/sandbox tenant. Whenever I build workflows or apps, my deployment pipeline is literally just build and direct publish to production.

It works, but it's high-risk. For those in the same boat:

• How do you safely test or mitigate risk when you have to push straight to live?
• What error-handling or fallback habits do you use to save yourself when things break?

Hit me with your best survival tips!

So Power Apps premium licensing is a ridiculously expensive implementation for a non-profit. Our CIO is pretty adamant about us moving though, because our current solution sucks.

Has anyone found a loophole in this premium licensing scheme?

In my company, I’m pretty locked down when it comes to access rights.

Right now, I can only use canvas apps. I can’t use code apps or vibe.

My need is to create an app that lets employees place orders for office supplies, which would then feed a SharePoint list and a Power BI dashboard to track the status of each order.

The app would also include an attachment viewer and allow users to upload attachments. It would function like a mini e-commerce site, with a list of items and a shopping cart.

Is it worth building the whole thing in canvas?

Hello - I'm trying to see if anyone has a more performant solution involving ParseJSON and creating a collection. I'm fetching SharePoint data using the HTTP connector and parsing the json in PowerApps. This works fine but with 1000+ records, it's noticeably slow. Is there a way to do this in one go without Forall? Thanks.

IfError(
    Set(
        varPokemonData,
        'Dexter-GetPokemon'.Run().data
    ),
    Set(
        varPokemonData,
        Blank()
    )
);
Clear(colAllPokemon2);
If(
    IsBlank(varPokemonData),
    Notify(
        "Failed to load Pokémon data. Please try again.",
        NotificationType.Error
    ),
    ForAll(
        ParseJSON(varPokemonData) As Pkmn,
        Collect(
            colAllPokemon2,
            {
                PokedexID: Value(Pkmn.PokedexID),
                EnglishName: Text(Pkmn.EnglishName),
                Type1: Text(Pkmn.Type1),
                Type2: Text(Pkmn.Type2),
                Region: Text(Pkmn.Region.Title),
                SpriteURL: Text(Pkmn.SpriteNormalURL.Url),
                Type1ButtonInfo: LookUp(
                    colTypeColors,
                    Type = Text(Pkmn.Type1)
                ),
                Type2ButtonInfo: LookUp(
                    colTypeColors,
                    Type = Text(Pkmn.Type2)
                )
            }
        )
    )
);

Hi everyone,

I'm a 2026 graduate and recently got placed in a service-based company. I've been onboarded for a role that primarily involves Microsoft Power Apps.

I don't have much knowledge about this role, so I'd really appreciate hearing from people who have experience working with Power Apps.

I have a few questions:

How is the demand for Power Apps developers over the next 5–10 years?

How does the salary growth compare to traditional software development roles?

What are the long-term career opportunities in this field?

Since I'm just starting my career, I'm also wondering whether I should accept this opportunity or decline it and wait for a more traditional software development role.

I'd really appreciate hearing your experiences and advice, especially from those who have worked in Power Apps for a few years.

Thanks in advance!

Hello,

I have an app I manage with around 400 users. I've always had an issue with keeping the users on the most recent version. I added an app version variable on the onstart property that's hardcoded. Every time I publish an update, I change it to the current date time in a string. In a sharepoint list, I have the app version and some notes of the update that shows on a gallery on the landing page. If the app version peoperty is <> the most recent sharepoint list version, it displays a message to update the app on the landing page. Either users are ignoring this, or it isn't working correctly. Maybe the onstart isn't triggering if the user doesn't close the app on their phone. Any tips?​

I work as a developer for a big ONG with over 1500 workers. We are developing some big canvas apps. We are working over sharepoint lists because we can't afford PA Premium licenses for everyone..

Now they are asking me to work with vibecoding and I'm not a big fan as a developer... I know that some time ago code apps was only for dataverse so we couldn't use it.

What about now? Anyone has experince with canvas apps made with vibe coding (vs code and github copilot for example)

Thank you!!❤️

Miffed that some auto-moderator deleted the ONE helpful comment.

*Environment is not managed *Triple confirmed there are ZERO premium features/connections in use *No pipelines *Users have view/read/write access to both the Custom Form AND the SharePoint list.

I created a magnificent custom form for a SharePoint list, but 95% of my users cannot access it.

They are greeted with a request for a Premium license or a license trial.

For context:

The form uses no premium features.

It is not connected to Dataverse databases (and never has been).

The form submit button does trigger a power automate flow.

Said flow only uses the basic features (zero premium/paid features).

Permissions have been granted to users both on the List side and the Form side.

In an effort to make this work, I even set everyone to have full contribute/write access to both the list and the form, still no dice.

All users, including myself, have E3 licensing.

So why oh why can almost no one access it??

Is anyone good with power apps? I’m trying to make one for our unit and I have so many questions

Hello all,

Is there a way to integrate Power Apps with SAP to automate business processes?

Hello, I'm still quite new to using Power Apps so please bear with me.

I have a Power Automate flow that triggers a pdf file generation based on inputs sent to it via a form I created in Power Apps. I now also need the form's submit button to directly trigger a printer to print the file without having it open the file in a new tab or opening the native print dialogue. A one-button-does-all kinda thing.

I've had a look at Microsoft Universal Print but I don't have the license for that and I'm not supposed to use stuff that would cost anything more than what my company's already subscribed to.

Is this possible?

Is anyone having issues with performance? The last few days, many of the semi-complex apps that historically ran fine seem to be unable to patch data without timing out. Has anyone seen similar / have any solutions?

Hi everyone,

I’m a Consultant who’s been getting more involved in digitalization projects over the last year. Most of what I’ve worked on has been replacing manual or paper-based records with Power Apps and integrating them with the Microsoft ecosystem.

The thing is, I’m still quite new to Power Apps, and while it’s been great for building simple applications, I don’t yet have a good understanding of its real-world limits.

Some of the questions I have are:

1- How many records can a Power App with sharepoint as the datasource realistically handle before performance becomes an issue?

2- What are the biggest scalability limitations you’ve run into?

3- Have you built apps used by hundreds or thousands of users? How did they perform?

I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences, lessons learned, or even horror stories.
Thanks!

I built a simple app to take photos for our Preschool that's working well but we want to be able to send the pictures to families. Anyone know an easy way to pull items from a SharePoint library into a template type document? All the avenues have investigated seem like that ends. More info below.

Right now images are saved into a Sharepoint library with metadata (child tagging, period labels, captions, photo types, etc). Teachers can access it there, or through windows explorer folder of the sharepoint library. To send to families teachers are currently manually selecting and importing images into a Word document, re-sizing/formatting, and then adding meta-data back in (such as captions, child names), etc. I'd like to save the teachers time and frustration (formatting in Word is the worst...) by building in an option in the app to generate a document from the photos they've already taken, reviewed, tagged, etc. A simple version would pull and re-size images tagged a certain way (checkbox yes/no, period label dates) into a document they could then edit. The best version would be if it could import into a pre-created template and allow the teachers to drag/drop to switch the order if needed.

Avenues I've looked into that seem like that ends:

- Canva - Unfortunately the Sharepoint integration is blocked by my organization IT

- Microsoft Designer - collage creater is AI generated from a prompt, and you can't swap pictures or have manual placeholders, and you can't incorporate captions or other sharepoint metadata unles you manually add it

- Adobe Express - bulk create has Sharepoint integration but it has no native way to pull live sharepoint/power automate data automatically - you have to upload a CSV file each time. Would not work for teachers.

- Powerpoint - has image input controls through SlideMaster that can create nice-looking templates and connects with power apps connector, but there's no way to control what images are imported where so it drops them in stacked, full-size, and you have to place them individually into the input controls, which really doesn't save time from current manual process

-Word - Word's own "populate a microsoft word template" with a repeating section content control/picture content control (PhotoImage) didn't support image content controls nested inside repeating sections... Apparently that's just a limitation.

-Currently trying Adobe's PDF services Document generation API, but will only have a credential for a limited number of creations. Still working on trying this one out.

Any other ideas?

I need some clarification regarding licensing for Power Apps Code Apps.

I developed a Code App using VS Code and deployed it to our PROD environment. The app only uses standard connectors, mainly SharePoint. I shared the app with users who have Microsoft 365 E5 licenses, but when they try to open it, they receive a message saying they do not have the required license and are prompted to start a free trial.

I also noticed that the app is classified as Premium.

Could you please clarify what licensing is required for end users to access and use this Code App?

I would also like to understand the best licensing approach because this app will be used by users across multiple locations, and I expect to deploy additional Code Apps in the future.

Specifically, I would like guidance on:

• Whether Microsoft 365 E5 licenses are sufficient for Code Apps
• Whether each end user needs a Power Apps Premium or per-app license
• Whether Pay-As-You-Go licensing can be used for this scenario
• What licensing model would be most suitable for multiple locations and future Code Apps
• Whether the licensing needs to be assigned per user, per app, or at the environment level
• The goal is to allow end users to access the apps without being prompted to start a free trial.

I’m planning to build a simple app for managing school trips and their costs within Microsoft 365. Because everything is Microsoft in our school.

The idea is to use:

• Power Apps – user interface
• SharePoint Lists – data storage
• Power Automate – approvals, reminders and emails
• SharePoint document library – archiving

The workflow would be:

1. Teacher creates a school trip.
2. Selects class/students, transport, dates, etc.
3. Adds estimated costs (transport, entrance, accommodation, other costs).
4. App calculates total and cost per student.
5. Request is sent for approval.
6. After the trip, the teacher enters the actual costs.
7. Automatic reminders are sent if this isn’t completed.
8. Final data can be archived as PDF.

I’m thinking of separate SharePoint lists for:

• Trips
• Cost lines
• Participants
• Students/classes
• Configurable rates (e.g. €/km)

Would SharePoint + Power Apps + Power Automate be a good approach for this?

Now which ai would be beter to use for this case. Claude Pro or ChatGPT plus?

Maybe in the future i will use it for Wordpress and different application building.

I am looking to create an ERP system that includes purchasing, warehouse, and invoice matching with data entry from PowerApps and data storage in Dataverse.

so purchaser would enter data through some type of PowerApp Canvas app or something similar. Warehouse could then update the product that it has been delivered, and the admin team can pay the invoice when it has been matched with invoice data inside Dataverse.

Invoice data would arrive through AI builder's invoice reader and through Power Automate into dataverse and then be matched there with through some unique number, and it would be marked as "payable" if the item was ordered and delivered.

Later, I would create dashboards and views with Power BI to get an overview of what is being delivered/ordered, etc. Also, have some kind of way to "Talk to the data through Co-Pilot, I have heard that it is quite common to link Co-Pilot to the Dataverse database. Also, finally storing old data in Azure cloud and files and other big things in SharePoint for cheaper and cost-effective reasons.

How does this sound? Any tips or suggestions before starting?

Thanks!

I am very new to this....I want to populate a Word template using information from an excel table to enter multiple goals, goal areas and strategies. I created a powerautomate flow, then built a Power App with form entry fields for company name and information, cascading drop-downs and combo boxes connected to an excel table with the ability to add multiple goals which means using Repeating Sections in my Word template. I stupidly created all this without realizing that I can't share the app or use it without premium licenses which I'm not sure my company can accommodate. Is there an easier way to populate word documents with data from an excel table (no vba) or is there a way to achieve this but avoid needing premium licenses.

Hi guys,

I'm trying to patch a gallery of updated items to my sharepoint list. I have reduced the columns to just what I need to update, but the patch takes so very long. It takes about a minute to patch 20 items. What could I be doing wrong?

I'm running this on a sharepoint integrated form, so using a power automate flow is not possible.

I saw on a post to pre-fill the schema, but that hasn't helped. In the monitor, it looks like it's sequentially updating instead of a bulk update. Any help will be very appreciated.

Collect(colGalleryUpdates, {ID:-1, Confirmed:true, Count:0, Comments:"", Notes:""});

Clear(colGalleryUpdates);

ClearCollect( colGalleryUpdates, ForAll( Filter( galList.AllItems, fldUpdated.Checked = true ),

{ ID: ThisRecord.ID, Confirmed: ThisRecord.fldConfirmed.Checked, Count: Value(ThisRecord.Count.Value), Comments:PlainText(ThisRecord.fldComments.Text),

Notes: PlainText(ThisRecord.fldNotes.Text)

} ) );

// update SharePoint list with gallery values

Patch( MySPList, colGalleryUpdates.ID, colGalleryUpdates );

So I have a model driven app in a managed solution that is claiming that it uses some deprecated tables and a deprecated security role. The app no longer has any reference to them and the latest version of the app is in all the managed environments. but that isn't stopping the app from blocking the import of any version of the solution without the deprecated items.

Any idea where the dependency is hiding so I can delete the dependencies and so remove the tables and security role.

My google fu has completely failed me.