You've just added Dataverse to your Power Platform environment, opened Solutions in Power Apps, and instead of a list of solutions you get We couldn't load your data. Try again doesn't help. The cause is a missing security role, and in the Default environment it usually fixes itself within minutes.
Every screen of the Career Development Plan app reads from or writes to two SharePoint lists. This part builds them, and the site they live on, column by column and setting by setting, exactly as the app will expect them.
A SharePoint list can hold millions of items, but SharePoint blocks any single query that has to work through more than about 5,000 of them at once. An index on the column you filter by lets SharePoint jump straight to the matching items instead. It takes a minute to add, and the best time to add it is while the list is still small.
A new SharePoint list accepts file attachments on every item, and anything in it can turn up in your organization's search results. That suits a team's task list. It doesn't suit a list an app writes private records to. Four settings on the list's settings page fix that.
A SharePoint list is a table that lives on a SharePoint site: rows are items, and columns describe them. Creating one takes a minute. Getting its columns right takes a little more thought, because the name you give a column on day one is the name that apps and flows use for good.
When an app keeps its data in SharePoint, everyone who uses the app needs permission on the SharePoint site too. SharePoint's obvious Share site button can't give the permission an app's users usually need, and its other sharing dialog quietly adds people to the site's Members group. This guide gives a security group exactly Contribute, and nothing more.
A SharePoint site is where lists, libraries and pages live. When a site only needs to hold data or publish information, you don't want a Microsoft 365 group, a shared mailbox or a team created along with it. A communication site is that plain site, with nothing else attached.
Plenty of teams still track career development in spreadsheets: which skills each role needs, how far each person has got, and who has signed it off. This series replaces that with a Power Apps app. Each person sees the competencies their role expects and writes a short response for each one. Their manager then approves or declines it, all on SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 licenses you already have.
Giving a team access to something one person at a time works until someone joins or leaves. Then you're editing access in five places. A security group fixes that: you give access to the group once, and from then on you only change who is in it.
Microsoft 365 only knows who reports to whom if somebody tells it. That "somebody" is the Manager field on each person's account, next to their Job title. Fill them in, and Outlook, Teams and the apps you build all know who someone's manager and direct reports are, and what their role is.
