Power Apps is extremely powerful for anyone looking to be able to rapidly create environment apps for your business. With Power Apps, it's possible to create simple solutions and deploy them to your team to be able to add automation, easy-to-use front ends, and drive action.
With this guide, we're going to help you create your very first Power App and show you what the software can be used for.
Follow along with Shane's guide on Creating Your First Custom App on YouTube:
Step 1: Create a new Microsoft Teams Team
To build your first Power Apps app, you're going to need to create a new Team. All Power Apps instances need to be tied to a team. Once we build this first app, we'll put you on a path to making your own additional custom apps.
This guide is just get you ingrained in this new ecosystem of Microsoft Power Suite and Project Oakdale.
Create a new Team in Microsoft Teams.
Once it's set up (it may take a few moments to load up), we're going to add Power Apps to that Team.
Step 2: Add the Power Apps (Preview) App to that Team
Go over to the ellipses on the left, and Add a New App. We're not selecting Power Apps - instead, we're going to select Power Apps (Preview). Click it, and it will add. It'll automatically pin to your apps on the left, and it'll open up the Power Apps functionality. You can pin it so you don't have to hunt it all down later.
Step 3: Create a Test App
Now that that is built and installed, go ahead and click "create an app". Select the team you want, because every team that you create an app in is in a self-contained world. Each team has its own data sources, its own apps, and so on. You don't have to create a channel - just select your team.
This process will take a minute, as it's provisioning all of the infrastructure required. Not only does this give you the ability to create apps, it also creates a really rich data source called Common Data Service. And so the common data sources, a light version of that, but it's underneath the hood that's going to let you store your data there, which might be a little bit different if you built an app before we stored data and SharePoint or Excel or SQL.
The Common Data source is the fastest data source going, and it's got a lot of other robust features that allow. This is great for us non-developers - I have never written like a C
sharp code my life. Probably you haven't either. As a non developer types, we're still going to be able to take advantage of that data source.
Take a minute, go grab a coffee, and let it set up the environment.
Once it's set up, you'll be able to access the dashboard of that app - the Hero Template.
Step 4: Starting at the Hero Template, Create and Fill a Table
Once you're in, you'll be at the "hero template" as we say. The hero template is going to get you started. Now, I know I can build an app so fast with you guys, so the first thing you want to do is over on the left, click on create a new table.
Give your table any name you want. You might want to make it something descriptive. And so typically with me, I use examples like my employees just because it's a fun little data set. But maybe you need to track stuff in it's inventory, maybe it's projects. You know, just think of this is the same way. If you will go make a new spreadsheet over an Excel to track some data, that's the same thing you're doing here. But instead of being in an Excel file, it's in a rich, powerful database under the hood.
In the video, and in this example, I'm just going to call it my employees to make my life easy. Another little pro tip here, always check in advanced settings. For this, it's only the plural table name. Who cares, right? But always look at the advanced settings and look to see what's there. So you know what you have the ability to do in the future.
So now they create and this is going to provision us a table and it gives us this fun little table. This is where we'll start wanting to populate data.
In my example, I want to have the very first thing I want to talk about my people is not their name. It's actually going to be their title. So I select from the column header's dropdown what kind of data I want there. Tons of options. Once you select the type of data that's going to be there, and I've titled the column, you can start adding additional columns for new types of data.
Step 5: Modifying Your Hero Template to Fit Your Needs
Once you've populated your database with the correct fields, you can return to your hero template and see what it's done to display your data. From here, you can adjust the template columns, colors, or a myriad of other options - to suit your needs.
It's that easy! Once you've started with your basic template and functions, you can add new information to your database and start customizing your app to suite your needs.
Learning More About Power Apps
We've created tons of educational tutorials, just like this one, on the Power Apps 911 YouTube Channel! There, you can find tons of helpful tips, news updates, and more to help become a master of Power Apps.
Want an even better educational experience? We've created full classes to help anyone become a Power Apps expert. Head on over to our Power Apps Training Center to get started.