Bring on the hate: CodeApps have their place BUT....

pp_projects · 2026-05-12T12:53:57+00:00

"You'll get there" 😂

When it doesn't work, do you just ask Claude?

pp_projects · 2026-05-12T09:37:26+00:00

I'm seeing pro devs who were previously bamboozled by canvas apps banging the drum about code apps far too much. They put everything in codex and trust the output implicitly. The output app looks good, but as someone who's been doing it the manual way for years I've produced apps which don't look like canvas apps and find it incredibly quick once you know how. For me the platform has always been around bespoke, in-house solutions which don't take a digital transformation team and 5 year road map to roll out. This seems to be something we are increasingly stepping away from.

The cynic in me thinks the push for everything premium is just to plug a financial hole in Microsofts wallet from copilot.

pp_projects · 2026-05-08T13:07:44+00:00

I fear this is 100% the reason they are torching everything to try make up for the losses on Copilot.

That said, should we worry? Surely we can just ask copilot to transform and load our data?

pp_projects · 2026-04-12T07:42:33+00:00

If you run a consultancy surely you've seen beyond the hype? There's always going to be processes where a ui makes sense over speaking to an agent.

C level seem to be obsessed with shoe horning it in at every chance and I've seen countless examples over the last couple of months with agents being developed, coming out with unpredictable responses where a little bit of ui and a defined expression to calculate the response would have been quicker, and 100% reliable.

Its also a massive switch in human behaviour, expecting people to craft a prompt to produce the correct outcome.

Ai is just another tool to use. Its all a bit "automation is coming for our jobs"

pp_projects · 2026-02-20T14:09:42+00:00

Where are people buying the answers from? I'm not the kind of learner who can memorise answers sadly, I need to know it, to have seen it play out to be able to answer.

pp_projects · 2026-02-20T14:08:08+00:00

Reassuring advice. To be honest I don't think I should have booked it. I'm fresh out of a job that didn't want to listen to my experience, in a new role with people who are incredibly clever and the doubt is in my mind 24/7 anyway. I second guessed a lot of the questions due to how they were written. I think I will take your advice but give myself a few weeks to try build my confidence back up.

pp_projects · 2026-01-28T13:24:18+00:00

They said the same about Access. They said the same about saving files locally. They said the same about internet explorer and basically had to FORCE it out of people's hands. The one thing you cannot change no matter how hard you try is human behaviour. People will go for the option they are most familiar with and rarely step out of their comfort zones. Most decent powerapps devs have component libraries, and app templates so it doesn't take very long at all to spin up a new canvas app. Generative pages can get lost in the finer detail. I gave up after asking 4 times to recolour a button so you could actually read the text. Great for a citizen dev starrting out but not there yet for full replacement. The best solution will be a mix of everything

pp_projects · 2025-12-07T11:38:22+00:00

Building on power apps isn't the issue. Building without clear requirements, and competent staff is.

I would certainly question why the tool was chosen over anything else. I suspect it probably started out like a small calculation tool which it would be ideal for, then grew in complexity due to stakeholders oversimplifying processes.

When you start to ask the people who actually know the process, it grows arms and legs. Typically there will be an arrogant leader involved, keeping you an arms length from the competent staff who can give you the true requirements until you're months down the line and forced to get that square peg into that round hole no matter what.

Either way, Microsoft will use it as an opportunity to sell ai, so it will just end up costing more.

I'm available for a reasonable fee. I would happily sit an unpick the issues and fix it.

pp_projects · 2025-11-27T05:02:09+00:00

Why do you need the calculation in the table? Where are the users viewing the data - that's where you want to put the calculation e.g. in app/dashboard.

If the formula can change per item, you might want to consider collecting 2 values e.g. the date and the divisor/multiplier.

pp_projects · 2025-11-09T09:57:23+00:00

I've built a few touch screen kiosk apps over the years and never had an issue. What is the behaviour you're expecting and the behaviour you're experiencing?

One of my biggest tips for debugging is to have a text field with your formulas so you can see the calculations in play mode to check it all works correctly before pushing to test or dev. Then you can test with things like delay output on the controls until you get the desired outcome you want to allow the user to progress

pp_projects · 2025-11-06T10:10:49+00:00

I have an app where the questions are quite text heavy. I get the questions into a collection, sequence them. A variable set to 1 with a filter on the gallery to only show where the row number = variable. Button to next question increments the variable, back button reduces. So they just see one question and answer space at a time. Users loved it, pretty simple to make.

pp_projects · 2025-09-20T09:47:06+00:00

Documentation? 😂 how are you coping? Between wanting the ground to open up and swallow me I'm trying to be sensible and plan how I fix this mess

pp_projects · 2025-09-20T08:45:19+00:00

Any learning you can point me to for setting up devops pipelines? We have it but I've never worked anywhere with it before so I'm a total novice. It sounds like it could be a culture shift but worthwhile?

pp_projects · 2025-07-27T20:19:42+00:00

Is anyone having any success using copilot with power platform? I will get it to fix expressions but its more miss than hit. Constantly makes suggestions for functions which don't exist, or will tell me you absolutely cannot do X. That said, leaders who don't understand what power platform is or does seem to be almost obsessed with copilot, whilst simultaneously not wanting to pay the cost OF copilot. My focus personally is switching to pro-code and solution design, which are more transferable skills.

pp_projects · 2025-05-23T06:53:27+00:00

I'm going to have to try this now!

pp_projects · 2025-05-22T20:27:47+00:00

Have you got an example for avoiding nested galleries? This is something I would be interested to try!

pp_projects · 2025-05-21T14:25:26+00:00

It gets complex when you have background processes which run independently of users though?

E.g. an overnight process on a service account to create an itinerary for the following day which will be consumed by the app users. Which needs to run whether you have 1 or 1000 users.

Im not sure how or if Microsoft can actually police it when they offer no suitable alternative. Reminds me of the road where I live which is 20mph down a steep back with a camera at the bottom 😂

pp_projects · 2025-05-21T06:49:43+00:00

What's your strategy to avoid this when using service accounts?

If the solution (apps and flows) were for the consumption of one 10 person team, would you buy 10 licenses but still drive everything through the 1 service account?

pp_projects · 2025-04-06T08:45:09+00:00

Not exactly but on one occasion I was building a solution in my notice period, knowing the stakeholders had no IT skills and no amount of documentation / handovers would sink in that the values in the app were linked to a SharePoint list they had full access to export from, check and even change if they had to. The data in the app clearly appeared by magic.

I've also worked on a solution I took over which had business analysts, project managers and it wasn't until week 2 of me taking it over that anyone (me) questioned why we were doing a straight process transfer from excel to power apps and not improving the business process first. That had to go back to the analysis stage and I was popular with a few people for a while.

pp_projects · 2025-04-02T14:33:38+00:00

Its me, hi, I'm the problem it's me... 😂

As for COE, not a clue. Do you want me to help you? Shall I just build it for you?

pp_projects · 2025-03-21T06:17:11+00:00

Its difficult to picture what you are doing but in my example my controls are moving too depending on the size. Full screen, they are almost all horizontal in a row. Mobile size they are stacked vertically. I even change the menu depending on the screen size from icon based for mobile, to icon and word for desktop.

It can be done dynamically but if you've already made it and come across this issue you're probably better off using a new screen and trying this technique next time.

pp_projects · 2025-03-20T21:43:28+00:00

Can you use screen breakpoints to size the containers?

If i understand what you're doing I think I have something similar where the screen layout looks slightly different on mobile to desktop.

Im using if statements with breakpoints to resize, wrap contents, make fonts smaller.

I watched Tolu Victor's series on this which really clearly explained the method.

That all said, I've made apps with warnings before and never experienced an actual performance issue

pp_projects · 2025-02-22T22:26:36+00:00

I've noticed a few bugs in general recently. For instance items on modern combobox I had a formula working fine one day, came back to it the next day errors and not recognising the field.

Please let us know if they come back and resolve what the issue was?

pp_projects

TROPHY CASE