212 posts tagged with "Low Code"

The modern Avatar control shows a person as a round picture, or as their initials when there's no picture. Out of the box it shows the signed-in user, which makes it an easy way to personalise a home screen. It also ships with an Available presence badge you probably don't want. Here's how to add it and set it up properly.

The Text control is the modern way to show words on a canvas app screen: a heading, a message, or the result of a formula, such as the signed-in person's name. It's the modern replacement for the classic Label. Here's how to add one, fill it with a formula, and make it grow when the text is long.

Screen reader users often jump from heading to heading to understand a page. In a canvas app, text only counts as a heading if you mark it as one, and the only control that can do that is the classic Text label, through its Role property. Here's how to add one, even in an app built with modern controls.

A horizontal container lines up the controls inside it from left to right and spreads them across the space it has. Placed inside a vertical container, it's the natural way to build a header bar, a row of buttons, or a picture next to some text. Here's how to add one and give it a fixed height, using an app header as the example.

A vertical container stacks the controls inside it, top to bottom, and works out their positions for you. You never type an X or Y for them. Put one around a whole screen and set it to the screen's size, and everything inside follows when the window gets wider or narrower. It's the starting point of a responsive canvas app.

Good names make a canvas app readable: btnMyPlanHS tells you it's a button on the Home screen, Button4 tells you nothing. Microsoft publishes naming guidance for Power Apps, and following it costs nothing but a rename. Here it is in one place, with the Career Development Plan app as a worked example.

Every new screen and control gets a placeholder name: Screen1, Container1, Button1. Those names end up in your formulas, and screen names are read aloud by screen readers. Renaming takes a few seconds, and doing it as soon as you add something saves confusion later.

By default, a canvas app opens on the first screen in the tree view. App.StartScreen lets you say which screen opens first, on purpose and in one place. It replaces putting Navigate in App.OnStart, which Microsoft has retired because it slows loading.

A named formula gives a name to a formula so you can use the name anywhere in your canvas app. It replaces the old habit of setting global variables in App.OnStart. The value is always up to date, nothing can overwrite it by accident, and Power Apps only works it out when something needs it.

Power Apps Studio has a setting called Enable App.OnStart property, with a warning that OnStart "can cause delays when loading an app". It's tempting to switch it off to keep an app fast. This guide tested what the switch actually changes, and the result is a little surprising: in Studio, an OnStart formula still ran with the switch off.