In one of my last blog posts, I have shown you my ALM process optimized for my Citizen Developers. I have used a solution based on a Power App and some Power Automate Flows to run a fully automated solution export and import in Dataverse. You remember also my simplified process focused on the needs of a Citizen Developer: This slim process is great for Citizen Developers to get started with ALM. But I’m a Pro Developer – I need…
Component development is not a big deal for me as a Pro-Developer. On the other hand, I recognized during my session at PowerApps Developer Bootcamp our citizen developers need help and examples. For that reason I want to share one example presented in my session. To cut a long story short: Write less code by creating reusable components! The reason is obvious: During development, we generate lots of copy & paste content in our canvas apps. And yes, I also…
It took me a while to realize, my Citizen Developers need a simple approach of an Application Lifecycle Management process. In detail, I can’t talk about Git repositories & branches, Azure DevOps, build and release pipelines. This is to technical and out of scope for my Citizen Developers. In conclusion, a classic Citizen Developer ALM process must be simple. For instance, as a Citizen Developer, I develop my Power Apps and Power Automate Flows. Afterwards, I create my release by…
Are you a Citizen Developer and new to Microsoft Dataverse? Have you just created and shared your first PowerApps and Power Automate flows? Then the whole chapter of application lifecycle management is certainly completely new to you. That’s okay, because as a Pro Developer, it’s my responsibility to get you on the right track! In my session, I will explain why it makes sense to have a clear environment strategy. Furthermore I’ll show you, how I use solutions to pack…
Manual work vs. automation? I am definitely someone who automates as much as possible! For this reason I am always looking for Cmdlet’s or suitable APIs. Most important for me is that I can use these tools and scripts for build automation and application lifecycle management. In Dataverse, my manual work is importing and exporting solutions when I transport my canvas apps between my DEV, TEST, and PROD environments. In addition, I want to store the source code of my…
Once you have started setting up DEV, TEST and PROD environments in Datavers, the next big question arises. How can I transport all my stuff to the next deployment stage? It’s not just my model-driven or canvas apps. I have to take care of their dependencies as well, of course. There are all my used cloud flows, custom connectors, Dataverse tables and much more. In the beginning, as a citizen developer, I transferred every part manually. This means, I exported…
Power Apps are amazing! Any Citizen Developer can digitalise fantastic processes if they have the APIs they need. In my session, I show Pro-Developers tricks for providing missing APIs in Azure. Azure Logic Apps, for example, help me to setup quickly and with almost with no code such missing APIs. But the complexity increases mostly during development. A single Azure Logic App suddenly grows into 10 or 20. As a consequence, my Power App has 20 custom connectors. This is…
Components are a fantastic asset for Citizen and Pro Developers. In my session, I’ll show how I use this feature to reduce the complexity of my canvas apps. I provide insight into defining properties and event triggers to encapsulate UI elements. Another highlight of this technology is the use of function components as reusable and central code building blocks. You have missed my session? No problem here is the recording from Deutschland Powerthon 2021, 2nd November 2021 (GERMAN only):
One of my personal highlights this week and the reason I always say #NeverStopLearning: I discovered how to create a named record for a gallery control in my Canvas App. You might say: why should I need this, you can use the ThisItem operator to access the record. And yes, you are right. This is a common solution for child controls in a gallery. I can set up my child controls and connect them to the data. To do this,…
My journey with Dataverse started as citizen developer. I discovered this funny new environment and used canvas apps for cool & portable demos. After a while, my demos, prototypes, and tiny apps became a productive status and started to grow. I think each of us knows these problems and the resulting questions. I faced new challenges: How can I maintain my apps and how can I continue adding new features? Furthermore, how can I stop breaking existing features? Well, the…