Daniel Cieckiewicz
In 2022 we had many updates regarding Power Apps. In this article I will walk you through 10 of them.
I will keep it short and consistent so you can go through all of them very quickly 🙂
Without further ado, let’s start with Power Apps updates of 2022!
Table of Contents
1: Canvas component and component libraries
The components and component libraries feature in canvas apps can be used to build reusable and centrally managed low-code UX components. Besides investments in reliability and fundamentals, this release will add component ALM support. Users will have the ability to package and ship component libraries and applications using standard Microsoft Dataverse solutions
What it basically means – now you can create components in Power Apps that are not connected to any app. What is more you can migrate these components through environments using ALM (Application Lifecycle Management). It is very important because previously components could be create from the app and had to be migrated with the app. This is not a problem anymore.
Components are visible in “Component libraries” tab as shown below:
There are two more things you must know:
- You can add Components to your app even if component was created separately.
- You can add Component libraries to solution.
Adding component to an app - screenshot
Adding component library to solution
Link to the Microsoft article: Canvas component and component libraries.
2: Command designer with Power Fx
Power Apps makers can easily customize command bars and command buttons in model-driven and converged apps, including the ability to use low-code Power Fx formulas for command button visibility and actions.
From April 2022 you can freely customize command bars and command buttons in Model-driven apps. This means that using Low code Power Fx functions you can easly customize actions that are executed when a button is pressed. This is really simple and will help customizing Model-driven apps bars a lot! To start customization you must follows these steps:
1. Go to your Model-driven app and edit it
2. Choose which page you want to edit and click “Edit command bar”
3. Choose a command bar to edit
4. You are good to go! Now you can work with your bar!
Link to the Microsoft article: Command designer with Power Fx.
3: Create and join Teams meetings from in-app appointments
Easily add Microsoft Teams meeting from an appointment in your model-driven app. You can also join a Teams meeting with a single click from the appointment or the timeline control.
As Microsoft said, from now you can not only create Teams meetings from the Model-driven app but you can also join meetings from the app as well!
To do that you must enable Collaboration settings for your Environment. You can find these setting in Admin center. At first choose an environment and the go to Features:
Then enable Collaboration settings to work with Teams meetings in Power Apps.
After that, from a Model-driven you can add an Appointment.
Then click “Teams meeting” while creating an appointment.
Now, after you create a meeting you can join it from a Model-driven app!
Link to the Microsoft article: Create and join Teams meetings from in-app appointments.
4: Build forms entirely using features available in the modern form designer
Makers can now build forms using the modern form designer with full parity with the classic form experience. With this update, makers will be able to customize their forms with all Power Apps component framework controls previously only available in classic, filter a lookup field based on another record through related record filtering, apply business logic to form fields through business rules, customize form elements with more formatting options, and more.
Microsoft prepares a huge update which will make legacy Dynamics designer deprecated. They are improving and heavily investing in Power Apps Model-driven apps new designer. From now on you can create apps and apply business logic from a new designer which is great!
Personally I enjoy modern view more so I am very happy to see it improves!
Link to the Microsoft article: Build forms entirely using features available in the modern form designer.
5: Power Fx formulas provide richer and easier to use column calculations in Microsoft Dataverse
Power Fx picks up where existing Microsoft Dataverse calculated columns and rollups left off. The Power Fx formula bar has been directly integrated into the column settings, making it easy to see and edit the column's formula directly without needing to save or open another window. Power Fx adds many more functions and richer data type support than was previously available. Formula columns can also be calculated in real time, making available calculations with Today() and Now() functions for the first time.
From now, you can add and edit formulas in calculated columns using simple Power Fx expression! This is just what we needed for calculations! As you can see Power Fx is expanding and show its capabilities.
For this one I could not find this option in my Dataverse Environment. So maybe you can! Share your thoughts 🙂
Link to the Microsoft article: Power Fx formulas provide richer and easier to use column calculations in Microsoft Dataverse.
6: Power Apps application on Windows running model-driven and canvas apps with full support for offline
The Power Apps for Windows is a new application in parity with iOS and Android. You can run both model-driven apps and canvas apps with full support for offline mode. Users can browse from the list of apps by recently used, favorites, featured, or search for a specific app. Power Apps for Windows also supports per app and per user licensing, native connection experience for Dataverse, and offline.
In 2022 Microsoft introduced Power Apps application that can be run on Windows. You can run Power Apps applications using this app. Application view really the same as it is in the web view. The only difference is that you can’t really “work” with apps from this app – so it means you have to build applications from the Web browser.
To download the app just browse MS Store on your PC! That’s all 🙂
Link to the Microsoft article: Power Apps application on Windows running model-driven and canvas apps with full support for offline.
7: Create standalone, native mobile apps with Power Apps
Mobile Power Apps users have historically accessed company applications through the Power Apps mobile app for iOS and Android. With this feature, makers can publish their canvas apps as standalone, native mobile apps.
- Discoverability in the app store - your app gets its own unique Apple/Google app store identity (subject to channel policies).
- Provide your own home screen icon and app name.
- Set an image to show on the custom splash screen and sign in screens.
- Launch directly into your canvas app (no app list).
- Manage your app exclusively with Microsoft Intune policies.
It’s really interesting feature I haven’t tried yet. What it basically mean, you can create standalone applications using Power Apps for example and then you can publish these app in app store on Apple/Google! This sounds crazy. Power Apps developers can actually grow their own business by using their skills to create applications they want to sell for example.
With this feature you will be able to launch the app from the main screen of your mobile phone – not from the Power Apps for mobile.
Remember that this feature is still in preview.
Link to the Microsoft article: Create standalone, native mobile apps with Power Apps.
8: Express Design - auto-generate Power Apps from design and Figma files
With the Express Design feature, you can use designs, sketches, or any such graphical presentation to bring your imagination into Power Apps and create apps based directly on your intended designs.
If you follow my blog I described this feature well on my blog previously. You can check it here: Overview of creating Power Apps from Figma.
But just for the purpose of this article I will shortly describe this update.
From 2022, you can create design in Figma and then convert this design into an Power Apps Canvas App. Simple as that 🙂 If you didn’t work with Figma yet, but you are interested in this idea, you must follow my article.
Link to the Microsoft article: Express Design – auto-generate Power Apps from design and Figma files.
9: Conditional access policies for individual Power Apps
Enterprises can extend their use of Azure Active Directory Conditional Access to individual Power Apps by adding extra layers of security to apps containing sensitive data.
This feature enables Power Platform admins to create more granularity conditional access to applications. If some applications contain sensitive data for example you can enable very strict access to the applications like:
- Designate specific apps to require users to perform multi-factor authentication.
- Designate specific apps to require users to be connected to their intranet to access the app.
- Designate specific apps to require users to connect from a device that is compliant with the organization’s device management policies.
- Apply different Conditional Access requirements for apps available in Power Apps mobile. For example, the Team Morale app no longer needs to run on the intranet unlike the Business Finance app.
- For a given app, apply different Conditional Access policies per environment (for example, Dev, UAT, Production).
Link to the Microsoft article: Conditional access policies for individual Power Apps.
10: Enable quarantine of non-compliant Power Apps
As a complement to Power Platform’s data loss prevention policies, Power Apps enables admins to quarantine an app. This allows admins to directly limit the availability of apps that may need attention to meet an organization’s compliance requirements, providing additional guardrails for low-code development.
You can now specify if the app is violating compliance rules within your organization and you can exclude this app from the use of users. It is now possible to really quickly terminate users access to an application using this procedure. It is part of DLP policies.
Power Apps makers can still work with the application and can change that what was violating the rules.
Link to the Microsoft article: Enable quarantine of non-compliant Power Apps.
Summary
As you can see, we have a lot of work with Power Apps. And I think there will be more 🙂 What do I mean by that? I mean that creating and administering apps is not our only responsibility. Being up to date with changes and updates is crucial for your Clients. Creating applications by the old ways will be not very efficient. What is more you will be more valuable if one – you will have really good knowledge on how to work with apps, and two – you can adjust the strategy to the one that is the most optimal. This is why I think being up to date with Power Platform changes is extremely important.
I know that this is very hard. You can watch Netflix or play games at the same moment when you are reading this article or some other stuff about Power Platform, but believe me that some of your time must be invested in those activities if you wanna be good at that stuff.
But we don’t stop there. I strongly encourage you to have your own environment when you can play with all these new stuff. I have mine from about 2 – 3 years and it is still active. I have tons of knowledge there, and many many experiments, haha 🙂 So this is my advice at the end.
Thank you for your time, and for reading this article. Feel free to rate this article down here and comment if you liked it. If you have any questions feel free to contact me (via contact@poweruniverse.org), but first, you may be interested in joining a Newsletter? Hmm? (Sign up here) If you already did, woow, thanks, thanks a lot 
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See ya!
Daniel Ciećkiewicz
I am a Senior Power Platform Consultant focused on Power Apps and Power Automate. I also worked as a Team Leader with responsibilities for every Team Member and their development paths.
In my private life I like video games, sport, gaining knowledge and a taste of good Scotch Whisky!
Oh, I almost forgot, I love our Polish Tatra Mountains!
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