1 step to update an item in an array in Power Automate
What do you do when you have an array of data in Power Automate and you want to update just one item? Generate an array In this example I will generate an array of numbers using the following expression: range(1,10) This will now generate the array when I run the flow. So how about updating item 7 to 17? I could imagine using Pieter’s method but there is an easier option. Just 10 minutes ago I was asked on the chat how I would...
Failed to load in Azure Synapse Workspace
After last week’s post about how to configure Azure Synapse Link to export data from Dataverse into SQL Server, today a post about some issues. How do you deal witht he failed to load messages that users might get when accessing the data. Failed to load When users try to access the data, they may get the failed to load message. The supporting details of the error may say something like Failed to load one or more resources due to...
Buckinghamshire & Northamptonshire Power Platform User Group launch
Have you been waiting for a new face to face Power Platform User Group in Buckinghamshire & Northamptonshire? First Power Platform User Group session Register now Our first evening will be on 28 September 7pm – 9 pm in the following location: Building 3, Royal Ordnance Depot, Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, NN7 4PS, United Kingdom Will have the following amazing sessions to kick off this user group: Laura Graham-Brown –...
Configure Dataverse exports using Azure Synapse Links for Azure SQL Databases
In this post I’m looking at the Azure SQL databases option that is part of the Azure Synapse link configuration. A bit of background Azure Synapse Links let you configure Dataverse exports to Azure. Quite often this results in a file structure in azure storage that holds csv files. These csv files are organised in such a way that the year (or month) of the records creation in Dataverse decide where your exported data will end...
5 steps to implement word based search in Power Apps
A common requirement in Power Apps is to create a word based search on data in galleries. Step 1 – Basic search in Power Apps First of all I would like to have a look at some basic (not working so well) search on data in galleries. In my example here I’m using a SharePoint list as my data source, but there is no real difference between SharePoint and Dataverse or SQL in this case. Imagine I have an app as shown below with...
900th post on SharePains.com, it is a time to celebrate and win!
This is the 900th post on SharePains.com and I thought this would be a good moment to celebrate that milestone. Ok, it is not the 1000th post but 900 is still quite a lot. The 900th Post Quiz With posts about many of the Microsoft Technologies, SharePains has grown from just a few posts in the beginning to multiple posts per week in the recent years. SharePains has helped with user pains related to SharePoint, Power Platform, Azure,...
Resolved – Avoid variables in Apply To Each steps in Power Automate
Yesterday I was asked about how to avoid variables when you want an index number of the item processed by an apply to each step. Variables or Compose? The variables or compose question is quite an old question in the Power Automate world. The main issue with variables is that inside an apply to each variables lock the processing of items by the Apply to each. This disables the possibility to run the processing in parallel using the...
Debug Compose actions and Conditions in Power Automate
Debug compose actions and condition steps can be difficult as flow runs will only show the output of your expressions. In this post a workaround, to make this easier. Try-Catch-Finally Before I go into the solution, it will be useful to reintroduce the Try Catch Finally pattern used within this post. It has been a while since I wrote my first Try catch pattern post, 4 year ago, and since then it has been accepted as general best...
What can I do with my Power Automate Licenses?
Do you know what you can do when you purchased Power Automate licenses? Or what does that Trial that you enabled give you? Power Apps Plan(s) In Power Apps the option to see which licenses you have has been available for a little while in the Settings menu under Plan(s). This then gives me the underwhelming overview of my licenses. But if you want to know more you will need to go to Power Automate. Power Automate Licenses Today I...
Azure Application Insights and Error Handling in Power Apps
This post is all about error handling in Power Apps with Azure Application Insight. Logging all events in your app (wanted and unwanted) within an easy to use log. Enable the Application Insight feature To enable the Azure Application Insights integration we will first need to enable to Pass errors to Azure Application Insights. If however you want to also catch any erroring code you will also need to enable the Formula-level error...
Boolean logic in Power Apps
This post is all about Boolean logic in Power Apps. So that is all the true/false stuff within your app. true and false In short we have two values that are important in Boolean logic. And we actually have 3 values that are relevant: truefalsenull/empty/nothing/undefined ( or whatever you would like to call this) In Power Apps we can now use this true and false to check if something is true or if it is false (yes this sounds indeed...
Secure your SharePoint data in Power Apps using Power Automate
Although Dataverse is available many of us still use SharePoint to store their data. But how do you secure your SharePoint data? Or are you just happy for people to edit your data outside your app? SharePoint is not a database!? I often hear that SharePoint is not a database. Our friends from Oracle use the following definition of a database: A database is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored...
Application Lifecycle Management and Power Pages
In my recent posts about Power Pages, I’ve looked at development of pages, but I’ve not considered Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) yet. Application Lifecycle Management In general I would recommend to have at least 3 environments for any development work. These environments should include: DevelopmentTestProduction But they could also include environments like training, UAT and quite a few more depending on your ALM...
Get started with Liquid in Power Pages
In this post I’m going to introduce some code into my Power Pages ultimate user guide, by introducing Liquid. Find your liquid in Power Pages In one of my recent posts I talked about editing pages in Power Pages. Using the most left icon of the above four, you can open the page editor. As you open the editor you will notice some html code and some code that sits within {% and %} or {{ and }}. The stuff sitting between these...
User relevant Power BI components in Power Pages
Do you want to have a different Power BI component configuration in Power Pages depending on who is logged in, making the data user relevant? Some background How about creating a page in Power Pages that lets you display Power BI reports depending on the user that is logged in? So depending on which company a user works at, they get a different report shown? So for different companies I have a different Power BI report to be...
5 years of Microsoft MVP-ness
Today I received an email confirming my 5th Microsoft MVP award. Time has flown since those first nomination emails in 2017. The Microsoft MVP Award For anybody reading this post I thought that it might be useful to explain what the MVP Award stands for. When do you get the MVP Award? And what do you need to do get get an MVP Award and become part of the Microsoft MVP program. The Microsoft MVP award is given to community leaders who...
Error when trying to retrieve data from the network
Today I got the error: Error when trying to retrieve data from the network What is causing the Error when trying to retrieve data from the network error? The first step is to identify which line of code is generating the error. Quite quickly I identified that the following code caused the problem. ClearCollect( colAllDocuments, ‘Documents’ ); The above line of code is reading document details form a document library and in...
Return Arrays from Power Automate to Power Apps without a premium licence
When you want to return arrays from a flow in Power Automate to an app in Power Apps you could use the Response action, however this requires a premium connector Avoiding the premium licences First of all if your flow really uses premium features then just get that premium licence in place, but if you don’t use any other premium features then you might want to use the method described in this post to avoid the costs of a premium...
Display the environment name in your Canvas App in Power Apps
So you start using environments and you deploy the app across multiple environment. How do users know which environment they are in? Get the environment name There are two easy options to get the environment name while running an app. Use an environment variable that you set during deploymentCreate a flow that finds the environment name The first option is easy, just set a text environment variable to the right value and your done....
Create custom content instead of components in Power Pages
After yesterday’s post about components today I’m looking at a bit more detail and how we can create custom content on our pages. Finding the technical bits To find out how the Power Pages really work, there is a model driven app available. This model driven app can be accessed through the Portal Management option the Power Pages menu . I’ve created a page in Power Pages And when I look in the Portal Management app I...
Style your Power Pages, the easy way
When you try out Power Pages, and you have created some pages, you might want to adjust the styling of the page. In this post the options. Style your pages with a Theme Once you have opened your Power Pages site, you can select the styling option on the left hand side to change the Theme used by your pages. This way you can change a page that looks like this: To a page that looks like this: The above change you can make with just a...
1 Client ID, 1 Secret and a Bearer token in Power BI
Connecting to data sources in Power BI can be very easy. But when you need to call three end points to get to your data with Secrets, Client IDs and Bearer tokens it can be a bit harder to get your data. Background on the API Sometimes APIS are nice and easy to use and sometimes APIs are just a pain. If all you have to do is connect to your data source by clicking a few button, it would be no fun. In this post I will look at one of...
Create custom content instead of components in Power Portals
After yesterday’s post about components today I’m looking at a bit more detail and how we can create custom content on our pages. Finding the technical bits To find out how the Power Pages really work, there is a model driven app available. This model driven app can be accessed through the Portal Management option the Power Pages menu . I’ve created a page in Power Pages And when I look in the Portal Management app I...
Components in Power Pages, a quick overview
As we saw in my most recent post about Power Pages, content of pages are made up of components. In this post I will go through the existing Power Pages components Available components The following components are available in Power Pages TextButtonImage, VideoSpacerPower BIListFormiFrame The Text component The text component might look like the simplest of components, but it is actually even simpler than you think. In the below...
Edit Pages in Power Pages, a quick overview
So you got started with Power Pages, and now you’re ready to edit pages in Power Pages. This post will guide you through the first steps. Power Pages Studio vs Site Preview Our site is ready and now we want to make some customizations to the site. Before we edit pages in Power Pages, I will walk through the options by clicking on the Edit button. First of all it is important to understand the differences between the Power Pages...
Get started with Power Pages super quickly in 5 minutes
In this post I will look at how to get started with Power Pages. In this post I will guide you through the first steps that you can take with this amazing platform. The first steps You might ask, What is Microsoft Power pages? Well Power Pages is the new platform that Microsoft have recently launched that will help you set up your own website. Complete with option to let your clients or user login to your site. Time to dive into the...
Runtime error when running tests: TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading ‘errorMessage’)
How do you deal with Runtime error when running tests: TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading ‘errorMessage’) in your Power Apps Test Studio? Automated tests Automated testing in Power Apps can reduce the time to test your app dramatically. First of all the automated testing in Power Apps is still in preview. About 2 years ago I wrote a post about it, and as the automate testing depends on a preview feature...
Create an app using the new image import in Power Apps
Earlier this week a new feature was released in preview. Take any image of a form and turn it into an app. All using the standard out of the box Power Apps editing experience. Create an image I’ve seen a few people testing this new feature with nice looking images. But I’m not good at drawing, so I used paint.net and my finger to drop an interesting form. Ok, nothing complicated here. As you can see my boxes are far from...
3 steps to implementing a better date picker in Power Apps
One of the biggest annoyances of Canvas Apps in Power apps is the date picker. It just doesn’t feel right. Some improvements needed There are quite a few improvements that you might want to make to the date picker, that aren’t easily possible. Having to press the OK button after you selected a dateDisplay the last days from the previous month or the first days of the next monthBranding the date picker And so much more. In...
Power Automate Flow run failed: Connection not configured for this service
Today I was battling with the Connection not configured for this service error. Background Iv’e got an app in Power Apps that manages documents. And the different levels of access to the documents I’m controlling using AD groups. One of my flows is run while the app is starting, and this flow will get the groups that the logged in user is part of. Iv’e got 3 versions of the app. One app in a Development environment,...
Open Word documents in the desktop app from Power Apps
When you open Word documents from Power Apps you might have noticed that Word Online is used, but can we open documents in the Word Desktop app instead? Displaying Word documents In my app I have created a gallery that displays the icons and the name of the documents. Now there is a property available ThisItem.’Link to item’ to open a document. And Using the Launch function. We can open the document....
Introducing Portal Apps in Power Apps
Power Apps has three types of apps. One of them is the Portal app. In this post a how to get started with these websites that present data from Dataverse. First steps to building a Portal app The first steps to take are to decide what you want to present to which users. Or maybe we should even identify who these users are. There is quite a bit more to it all, but I will not focus on that in this post. Once we know what we want we can...
NEVER give your SharePoint fields the displayname of Value!
After an hour of banging my head against a brick wall when my Patch command failed I found the issue with a field named Value. Value It is not uncommon to call a field Value inn SharePoint. For example when you want to keep track of the Value of products you might think that Value is a good name. But it is not if you use Power Apps in combination with SharePoint. The word Value is a reserved word in Power Apps as you might have found...
Collect flow runs of your failed child flows
When you use child flows, you might need to collect the flow runs of your failed child flows to identify any issues. In this post some error handling tips. Introduction into error handling We all know (or should know) how to do basic error handling in flows. And then a while back I also wrote about error handling in child flows. And I’ve explained that the following expression can give you the url to your flow run:...
Cancel Flow Run instead of Terminate in the middle of an apply to each in Power Automate
Have you tried using terminate in the middle of an apply to each? Did you get The operation terminate cannot be used inside a for each? Terminate The terminate action is so often misused. As I mentioned a while back the terminate action should really not be used. But if you are inside an apply to each processing 1000s of records then cancelling out might be something that you want to do. Cancel flow runs There is now an option to...
Copy SharePoint files from one tenant to another using Power Automate
Have you ever tried copying files from one tenant to another using Power Automate? Create a file in another tenant Well, the copy file action isn’t going to work in this case. So we will need an alternative When you try to connect into another tenant using Power Automate you migth ghetting error message like the one below: We are unable to find the site address. Please try selecting a site address from the dropdown So if the...
Create vibrating icons in Power Apps
Last week I got a strange question about how to make vibrating icons. So this post is to show you how to make icons vibrate so that you can point them in the right direction. Icons in Power Apps Icons have X and Y locations to make my icon vibrate. In this post I will adjust the X only but of course if you wanted to vibrate your icons by adjusting the Y then that would be fairly similar. I’m creating an app that has the...
Create a custom connector in the Power Platform – The WordPress example
Have you tried to create a custom connector in the Power Platform? As I was getting annoyed with the limitations of the existing WordPress connector here a full example. Step 1 – Find an API for your connector In my case I found that the existing connector for WordPress was just not good enough. Just a few actions that would give me hardly anything, didn’t do the trick for me. I quite quickly ended up on the REST API...
Compare two arrays, tables or lists a lot faster in Power Automate
When you want to compare two arrays, lists or tables in Power Automate and you might end up with a very slow flow. In this post the speedy solution. Two arrays I’m going to create two arrays in compose actions. But most likely you would have a list in SharePoint or a table in Dataverse or maybe data coming from a completely different data source. One important thing to notice is that the two arrays have a different structure....
Handle unmanaged changes made to tables in the default solution in the Power Platform.
The default solution in the Power Platform is an unmanaged solution even in production. How do you handle unmanaged changes in the default solution that are edited manually? Unmanaged layers Deployment of apps, flows and tables should be done through solution packages. And you will find that as you deploy the solutions to production environments as managed solutions after you have developed them in a development environment as an...
Disable editing of your production apps and flows in the Power Platform
So often people edit apps and flows in production environments just to make them work. In this post I will look at why you shouldn’t and how to disable editing. Managed vs unmanaged solutions Within the Power Platform we have managed and unmanaged solutions. And you migth already know that managed solutions stop you from making modifications to some things in solutions, however deploying managed solutions doesn’t stop...
Comparing collections, table variables and data sources in Power Apps
In Power Apps you can use data sources directly or you could use collections or you could use variables. But what is the difference? Performance and behaviour In my example app I’m reading data from a SharePoint list and display this in three galleries. Within the app startup I’m setting a variable and a collection to the content presented by the connection to my SharePoint list. The variable and the collection are set...
Ambiguity in Power Apps
Recently I was asked about issues related to ambiguity in Power Apps code. In this post I will look at how to avoid any ambiguity issues in Power Apps. Ambiguity First of all what is ambiguity? According to the dictionary, it is all about things not being clear as multiple explanations can be given to the same thing. Ok, that’s all great! But what does that have to do with Power Apps. Power Apps and Ambiguity I’m going to...
Set the task priority in Microsoft Planner using Power Automate
For quite a while I’ve been looking to set the task priority in Microsoft Planner when using Power Automate. The preview version of the Create a task actions can do this. Create a task action The Create a task action now has two versions, and the preview version allows you to set the priority to […] Continue Reading Pieter Veenstra’s Article on their blog Set the task priority in Microsoft Planner using Power...
Co-Authoring in Power Apps
Recently Microsoft added the option to use Co-Authoring as an experimental feature to Power Apps. What is Co-Authoring? You might already be familiar with Co-Authoring in Microsoft Teams. Co-Authoring in teams lets you edit a document while another person is editing the same document. With Power apps it is just the same. You can edit […] Continue Reading Pieter Veenstra’s Article on their blog Co-Authoring in Power Apps...
Control access with RecordInfo and DataSourceInfo in Power Apps
When you create apps, you might find that different users get different things to do. With RecordInfo and DataSourceInfo you can control elements in your app by using Dataverse permissions DataSourceInfo When you use a table in Dataverse that a user doesn’t have access to you might get these error messsages: You don’t have access to view this data. Server Response <Tablename> failed. The message is clear, the user...
Enable the new Power Automate pane feature
You might want to Enable the new Power Automate pane feature when you add a flow to your app and you have to find the right flow in a long list of flows. Enable Power Automate pane preview feature It can be a real pain to get the right flow in that long list. But not when you enable the new Power automate pane feature. All you need to do is enable the Enable Power Automate pane and restart your app And now there is an additional...
Loaddata, Savedata and Cleardata in Power Apps
Today I’m having a look at some of the preview features arriving in Power Apps. This post is about the new LoadData, savedata and cleardata in web players feature. SaveData, LoadData and Cleardata LoadData, savedata and cleardata have been around for a while, but up to now they were only available within the app player. […] Continue Reading Pieter Veenstra’s Article on their blog Loaddata, Savedata and Cleardata in...
Synchronize two data sources with Power Automate
Over the last few weeks I’ve been asked a number of times how to setup a flow to synchronize two data sources. In this post a pattern that can be … Read More Continue Reading Pieter Veenstra’s Article on their blog Synchronize two data sources with Power Automate Over the last few weeks I’ve been asked a number of times how to setup a flow to synchronize two data sources. In this post a pattern that can be...
3 Ways to avoid duplicate records in Power Apps
When you create items or records or rows in your data sources using Power Apps, you will often want to avoid duplicate records. In this post 3 ways to avoid … Read More Continue Reading Pieter Veenstra’s Article on their blog https://sharepains.com/2021/12/15/avoid-duplicate-records-in-power-apps/ Blog Syndicated with Pieter Veenstra’s Permission