You type a formula with Set, Navigate or Patch into a property, and Power Apps underlines it in red: Behavior function in a non-behavior property. The formula isn't wrong as such; it's in the wrong place. Functions that do something can only run when something happens, such as a button being selected.
The app gets its home in this part: a Power Apps solution that holds the canvas app and three environment variables, which tell the app where its SharePoint data is. By the end, the app is created, connected to both lists and to Microsoft 365 user profiles, and ready for its first screen.
Where you create a canvas app matters. Create it from inside a solution and it belongs to that solution from the start: it can use the solution's environment variables, and it moves with the solution to other environments. This guide does exactly that, and takes a first look around Power Apps Studio.
A canvas app that reads a SharePoint list normally has the site's address and the list built into it. Move the app to another organization and it still points at the old site. Environment variables fix that: the app asks the variables where its data is, and each environment gives them its own values.
A solution is the box you build a Power Apps app in, so that the app and everything it needs can move to another environment together. Every solution belongs to a publisher, and the publisher's prefix ends up in the name of everything you create. Ten minutes spent on both now saves renaming later, which often isn't possible.
Being a Global or Power Platform admin doesn't make you System Administrator of an environment's Dataverse. Microsoft stopped assigning that role to admins automatically. When you need it, you give it to yourself in the Power Platform admin center, in four clicks.
Power Apps solutions, the packages you use to move apps from one environment to another, are stored in Dataverse. Your organization's Default environment doesn't have Dataverse until an admin adds it. It takes a minute, uses storage Microsoft already gives the Default environment, and can't be undone.
You open a SharePoint list environment variable in your Power Apps solution to change something small, such as its display name, and the panel starts with a red error: We are unable to find the list. Site is empty, the list isn't shown, and Save is disabled. The variable still works. The edit panel just needs you to choose the site and list again.
You're creating a SharePoint environment variable in a Power Apps solution, you've typed its name, and you have no SharePoint connection yet. You choose + New connection, and Power Apps asks Are you sure you want to discard changes? Discarding throws your form away, and no connection page opens. The fix is to do things in a different order.
You open a solution in Power Apps and a yellow bar across the top says One or more commands are unavailable due to your current privileges for this environment. Nothing is broken. Your Dataverse security role simply doesn't allow some of the solution's commands, so Power Apps hides or disables them.
