Start your PowerApps Project

In my article What is the powerplatform , I finish by creating a new Common Data Service environment. The question you might ask yourself is:

What do I do now ?

After creating your database and CDS environment, you can go to your PowerApps configuration page: https://make.powerapps.com/home .
In short, this interface is the brain and the skeleton of your system. It centralizes all your applications, customizations, connectors used, etc … Hence Common Data Service or Centralization of data services in raw translation. This platform is dedicated to the intelligent organization of data.

Before making any changes, check that you are on the correct CDS interface. To modify it, click on Environment at the top right of the screen (See below).
Hence the importance of choosing logical names with prefix or suffix: DEV // TEST // PROD

Start your PowerApps Project
Choosing the right CDS environment

Let’s start with the menu description on the left.

Start your PowerApps Project
  1. Home: Home page of your CDS. It groups together your applications and offers you to create new ones.
  2. Learn: Documentation made available by Microsoft.
  3. Apps: List all of your applications available on CDS (model Driven / Canvas / Portal / AI)
  4. Create: Application creation page. Examples are available there.
  5. Data: Represents all the objects in your database (Entities, etc.)
  6. Flows: Management page and creation of your personal and shared flows
  7. AI Builder: Managing your AI applications
  8. Solutions: Contains all the solutions containing the elements of your database.

I invite you to navigate this menu to identify which components you are interested in.

If your environment is the development environment, your goal is to create elements, customize existing ones, create applications, etc. and deploy them on your Production platform. Before proceeding with these operations, you need a container for your components created or modified in order to organize your delivery package.
This content is called a solution on PowerApps. To better understand what a solution is, you can read my article on best practices .

The first thing to do on the PowerApps platform is to create a new solution. Click on Solutions then on New solution :

Start your PowerApps Project
Creation of a new solution.

On the right of the screen, a form unfolds, it contains mandatory fields.

  1. Dsiplay Name : Label of your solution. It is possible to change it after creation.
  2. Name : Technical name of the solution. Impossible to change it after creation.
  3. Publisher : More information on my article on solution editors here .
  4. Version : Allows you to manage versioning easily. Info: at each export, the last version number is updated.
  5. Configuration Page : HTML page that can be added here.
  6. Description : Multiline text
  7. When everything is filled, click on Create .

Once created, your solution is completely empty. You can add existing CDS elements to it or create new ones.
Before creating new objects, I strongly advise you to check and test if the already existing components do not meet your needs.

In a future article, I’ll explain the difference between Model Driven / Canvas / Power Portal / Ai apps.

For more great content, check out the Resource Centre

About the Author:

For more than 10 years, I have been working on Dynamics 365 and Power Platform techn ologies.
Lately, I have become more and more interested in Power Automate and I specialize in integrations with Model Driven Apps.

Reference:

Miquel, J. (2020). Start your PowerApps project. Available at: https://guidemicrosoftpowerapps.com/2019/08/22/debuter-son-projet-powerapps/ [Accessed: 13th January 2021].

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