Key features introduced during the public preview:

• Code View: Developers can view the code for each control, making it easier to understand the app’s functionality
• Copy and paste: The ability to copy any control within Studio as YAML + Power Fx code and paste it into a code editor for modifications.
• Sharing: Makers can use code snippets to share their work using Microsoft Teams, email or forums, facilitating collaboration and reuse.

Based on the user feedback, we have made the improvements bellow.

Simplifying copy and paste

For any control, you have a single Copy button – code is always available if you need it, either if you use the menu or keyboard shortcuts.

You can also now copy and paste screens!

Improved code format

We have made improvements to the code format to improve reliability and to be easier to share.

Because of these improvements, you can source control your Power App, using the Dataverse Source Control Integration.

You can also, combine different screens in a single code snippet – so you can save your own templates to quickly start new apps.

Update your code snippets

These features will be rolling out to all regions through the following weeks.

If you have code snippets from the public preview, no worries, it should work!

We still recommend you update to the new format. Please paste your code snippet to Power Apps Studio, copy again and save the GA version! You can learn more about the schema versions here.

Sharing is caring

Explore samples and share your code at https://aka.ms/power-apps-snippets.

The post Code View is now Generally Available appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Visit overview of modern controls to learn more about all modern controls.  

As part of this milestone, we would like to highlight the following: 

• Text input has a trigger output property which can be used to control its onChange behavior 

• Date picker’s custom format can be achieved by editing the “format” property with a valid date format, i.e. format = “dd/mm/YY”, format = “MM/YY” 

• Combobox has a default limit of 800 records when using the dataset directly. However, makers can leverage PowerFX formulas in junction with the control’s searchText property to achieve dynamic searching and filtering on larger datasets, i.e.: Filter(<Dataset>, StartsWith(<Column name>, Combobox.SearchText)) 

• When a Number input is used standalone (outside of a form), its value will never exceed the max or min boundaries and will always round values to either one of the closest boundaries 

We look forward to hearing your feedback and seeing the amazing apps that will be created with these controls!  

The post GA announcement: 6 additional modern controls in Canvas!  appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Key Benefits:

• Unified Control Styling: Virtual controls with Fluent ensure consistent styling across multiple apps and app types.
• Improved Performance: By eliminating the need for isolated React trees and smaller control bundle.
• Simplified Development: The need to include React or Fluent libraries in individual component bundles is removed, streamlining the development process.

Note that code components created earlier via preview are backward compatible and will continue to work. Please rebuild them using the latest version of PAC tooling so that they are ready for future platform library upgrades.

You can find more details about this feature including supported platform library versions in our documentation for React controls & platform libraries. Please use Power Apps Pro Dev forum for any input or questions.

The post React and Fluent based virtual code components are now generally available appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Using Copilot with filter

Open a running app that uses a gallery against SharePoint.  If you have a premium license, then you will see an adorner on your gallery.

Copilot supports three kinds of queries – filter, sort, and search.  While you can type any query you might like, it suggests possible questions based on your data in your app at the time.

Copilot then scopes the records to satisfy the query. It displays a “Filtered” badge in the upper right corner of the gallery.  The exact query that was executed is displayed as a tag. And you can continue to refine your query with additional details by adding more query commands.

Filter, sort, and search galleries with Copilot to filter provides five key benefits:

• Copilot makes end users more productive and saves time. If an author has not built in search and sort capabilities, Copilot enables this scenario and makes them more productive. End users save time with the ability to directly express their query in natural language.
• Copilot saves author’s development time. Authors save time developing apps because they don’t need to develop all the UI controls necessary for the app. Instead, they can rely on Copilot for this functionality.
• Copilot enables queries over the full query result – not just what you can see in the gallery. Users can filter, sort, and search on fields even if the application doesn’t provide UI controls for these tasks. For example, you can search for records even if the application doesn’t have a search bar.
• Copilot is query safe. It only generates queries that can be run on the server. Authors don’t need to worry about whether or not their queries can be delegated.
• Copilot keeps private data private. It only works with the data that is normally returned to the application. It doesn’t access fields that aren’t returned to the app in a gallery/grid or form.

Getting started

Choose a build after 7.4 (expected on 7/29) and make sure you’ve also re-published your app on 7.4 or later. Then access your app while it is running. (Copilot with filter only appears at runtime, it does not appear inside of studio.) Select an item in the gallery to start using Copilot with filter.

See the documentation for this feature for more details. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/user/smartgrid

The post Use Copilot to quickly filter, sort, and search canvas app galleries with SharePoint lists appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

An improved static analysis made this speed up possible

While you edit or play your app in Studio, a continuous analysis of app elements and their interactions is happening in the background. This lets Studio determine the types of all the variables and collections in your app, maintain a real time dependency graph of relationships between different expressions, and keep track of what columns your app uses from every data source. For example, this allows us to know that if you change an expression `Set(x, 5)` to `Set(x, {Lorem: “Ipsum”})` that the type of `x` is now a record instead of a number, and any references in your app to `x + 1` will therefore be marked as erroneous.  

What’s New? 

• Performance Boost: The New Analysis Engine optimizes how we approach that analysis, ensuring that we can get it started faster when you load your app in Studio, and that we keep things up to date quicker while you edit. The new analysis algorithm scales linearly with app size, eliminating complex cases that previously caused performance issues. Complex Canvas apps that previously took minutes to load should now load much faster. 
  
  While this performance boost will be most noticeable for the largest apps that you build, we see improvements across the board when switching to the New Analysis Engine.
  
  Note: These improvements have no impact on app run time performance of a published app.
  
  Here are some statistics from real apps showcasing the performance improvement on app load for existing analysis and new analysis: 
  

• Accuracy: The New Analysis Engine is not only faster but also more accurate. It enables more accurate determination of variable and collection types. When analyzing field usage (Explicit Column Selection), the New Analysis Engine reliably identifies the columns used in your app, addressing several long-standing bugs and enhancing Data Source call performance in published apps. Additionally, it facilitated the development of the User Defined Functions feature, which would not have been feasible with the previous engine.

• Preview No More: Thanks to your valuable feedback during the experimental and preview phases, we’ve fine-tuned the engine. It’s now ready for prime time!
  

What You Need to Do 

• New Apps: For all new apps you create, the New Analysis Engine will be turned on by default. Enjoy the improved performance right from the start! 
• Existing Apps: If you have existing apps, we recommend enabling the New Analysis Engine. Here’s how:
  • Open your app in Studio. 
  • Go to Settings. 
  • Go to Updates. 
  • Look for the “New Analysis Engine” toggle on the New tab. 
  • Turn it on. 
  • Test your app thoroughly to ensure everything works as expected. 
    

Important Note: Starting February 2025, all Canvas apps will be migrated to use new analysis engine. We recommend testing your canvas apps with the New Analysis Engine to ensure they function as expected prior to migration.

A Word of Caution

While we’re confident in the New Analysis Engine’s capabilities, please refrain from using it for existing apps in production environments until you’ve thoroughly tested your app. Subtle behavior differences may arise, and we appreciate your vigilance. 

Your Feedback Matters

As always, your feedback is invaluable. Let us know how the New Analysis Engine performs for you. Share your experiences, report any issues, and help us fine-tune this feature further on the community forum. 

Thank you for being part of our Canvas app community! Together, we’re making app development smoother, faster, and more delightful.

Happy app building! 

The post New Analysis Engine Now Generally Available!  appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Since last update in early April, we have continued making critical leaps to enable our app creators to build truly modern apps. We have many exciting announcements – Updates to modern theming, availability of icon in buttons, more controls in generally available state and ~100 new styling properties across modern controls. These updates are live in preview and will roll out to more regions as per our deployment schedule. Let us dive into details. 

1. Updates to modern theming 
   • Classic controls – Modern theming now applies to more than just modern controls. When you select a modern theme, it also gets applied to classic controls through PowerFx formulas that utilize modern theme variables to set the color properties of classic controls. This allows you to create an app with a more consistent appearance with the click of a single button. And, if you do not like how the modern theme was applied to your app, no problem! You can easily undo the changes by clicking the Undo button once to revert the changes to the classic controls, and a second time to revert the application of the theme to your modern controls.Theme applied on classic control
   • Vibrancy and Torsion adjustments – When creating or editing custom themes, you can now utilize the Vibrancy and Torsion sliders to adjust the theme palette generated from the seed color you select, especially the colors at the lighter end of the palette. Vibrancy affects how muted or bright the palette is, and Torsion impacts the tint of the color. You can use these sliders to fine-tune your theme.
     
     Torsion and vibrancy options in theme
   • Theme preview – We have also added a theme preview in the “Create a theme” dialog. This preview shows you how the theme would be applied to various example controls, such as buttons, labels, and input fields. Use the preview to see the effects of your theme choices before you apply them to your app, and experiment with different options until you find the perfect one.
     
     Preview of theme on controls
2. Icons in button control
   We have enhanced our button control to display fluent icons. Makers have the option to configure icon to render on left, right or render only icon with no text in button. Makers can render icon in outline or filled state. Makers can also rotate icon within a button.Examples for icon in button
3. More controls are generally available
   • Checkbox – We have taken feedback from our app creators and along with more styling options, we have now provided granular control over checkbox size. With this update, this control is now generally available.Different sizes for checkbox
   • Radio – Similar to checkbox, we also have now provided configuration to update radio button size along with additional style properties making this control generally available for our customers.
   • Badge – We added the last few remaining align properties making this control generally available. Many app creators want to use badge as buttons, but we recommend using button control for accessibility and we have now also provided more customization to button for the same as described more in styling section below.
4. New styling properties on modern controls
   We have started rolling out critical styling properties on controls mentioned below. There will be another major update in a few weeks for more styling properties (refer to upcoming section).
   1. Alignment properties: Controls like number input, text input, button and badge have now both vertical and horizontal alignment capabilities.
   2. Padding properties: Majority of modern controls (like text, button, all input controls, checkbox, radio, and link) have now padding properties available.
   3. Appearance property for input controls: Now all input controls have appearance options available to update the desired visual treatment:
      
      Different appearance properties for input controlsIn long term, this property will also be available at form and theme level, so that makers can set desired style quickly for the whole app.
   4. Border radius: We have made granular border radius property available on button control like left top, right top, left bottom and right bottom radius properties. For all input controls, we have intentionally kept our experience simple and have provided one single radius value for the control to follow with a new property called “BorderRadius”. 
      
      Example of border radius
      (PS: Please note that we are rolling back other border properties for few weeks to stabilize them better and re-enable it soon.) 

Upcoming enhancements to modern controls and theming: 

Our team is hard at work to bring you more goodness to help our app creators build modern apps. Some of the critical investments which will be rolling out in another few weeks are: 

1. Styling updates to modern controls – We are adding more critical customization properties to modern controls: 

• Fill – This property will be available to add or edit background color of all input controls, text control and more. 
• Additional border properties – Border color, style, thickness, and radius properties available to all applicable controls including input controls. For some app creators, these border properties were already rolled out, but we are currently rolling them back and will be releasing them again in a few weeks with better stabilization of the feature.

As always, we are very thankful to our amazing community who consistently provide us with feedback! The feedback is the primary source of these improvements to modern controls and theming capabilities, and we hope to continuously work on this with you all. 

The post May 2024 updates for modern controls and theming appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Modern controls updates in canvas apps

We continued enhancing modern controls and theming and delivered some key enhancements, which are rolling out to our customers at the time of publish. Below are the updates made to controls and theming in the last month: 

1. Date picker – We fixed issues around different date formats. Makers can now also set a minimum and maximum dates instead of just setting minimum and maximum years. 
   
   
   
   
2. Table control – Users can now easily sort the data in the Table by using dropdowns from the column headers for supported data types. You can enable it using “EnableSorting” property.
   
   
   
3. Base palette color – A new visualization for picking color palettes has been added to reinforce to makers that they are picking a set of colors to be applied to the control holistically, and not a single color.
   
   

Upcoming enhancements to modern controls and theming: 

We are currently working on a few exciting updates that will be released in next few weeks: 

The post January 2024 updates for modernization and theming in Power Apps appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

As we enter the new year, let’s take a moment to reflect on our 2023 modernization journey in canvas apps and provide a glimpse of what is to come soon in 2024. In this blog, we’ll delve into the highlights, from the initial introduction of modern controls in April, through their continuous progress up to the recent GA announcements, and finally to the innovations coming in early 2024.

2023 recap of modern controls

In 2023, Microsoft made substantial strides in modernizing Power Apps, focusing on controls and theming to enhance the app-building experience. The year was marked by continuous updates, new control releases, and improvements in usability and customization.

We started by launching 13 modern controls based on Microsoft Fluent 2 in preview. These controls were built for performance, ensuring fast and fluid app experiences with accessibility also as a key focus. Our makers started providing direct feedback through thumbs up/down on controls to Microsoft. Across next few weeks, we updated the canvas studio experience, added new controls, and started shipping numerous property improvements based on maker feedback to address the core usability of these controls.

In July, we released a new theming system for modern controls with PFx support. It allows the makers to change the look and feel of apps built with modern controls with greater ease and flexibility while also enabling classic to consume theme tokens. We recently added SharePoint and Teams themes to the set of available modern themes.

Another key pillar for modern controls is composite controls. Composite controls are easy to configure new responsive controls designed to reduce app complexity and improve performance. By September, we released multiple out-of-box responsive composite controls – Table, Header and Form as part of modern controls.

Recently, we also announced general availability of five modern controls – Button, Link, Slider, Tab list and Progress Bar. This list is based on high satisfaction reported by makers and critical feedback addressed on these controls. With this update, we will also be now providing full supportability to generally available modern controls to our customers.

We made critical strides for styling of modern controls. We first released the “Base palette color” property on modern controls to detach from app theme and have a different color theme on individual control. In last two months – November and December’23, we added all the expected typography properties (font color, font, font weight, and font style) to the modern controls.

Since, October updates were the last one of this series, below is the summary of recent updates in Nov and Dec’23:

• Table – We released following important improvements:
  • More configuration options – Makers can control the visibility of the footer, column headers, and the avatar (for the list view). They can also enable users to sort the data in the Table using the column headers directly.
  • Header style properties – Makers can style the Table header with much more flexibility. We added header font, font size, font color, and font weight properties.
• Tab list – For large set of options in tabs, the flyout will dynamically adjust according to position of the control.
• Info button – Introduction of line break support.
• Text – Fixed alignment and wrap issues.
• Link – Added a tooltip for the link to be displayed to app users.
• Updated settings – We also moved the opt-in setting of modern controls from the Upcoming section into the General section in the app settings in studio.

The progress made in 2023 across controls and theming in Power Apps reflects a commitment to providing makers with a modern, customizable, and accessible app-building experience. It also highlights Microsoft’s responsiveness to user feedback and its dedication to staying at the forefront of low-code application development.

Upcoming updates in 2024

Now we turn our attention to the early months of 2024, where we will be building upon the foundation laid in the previous year. Our customers and makers can expect the following updates to be released in the first few months of 2024:

• Core controls – We will be introducing the following new features to our core controls. First, built-in label and required properties will be added to input controls like Text input, Combo box, Dropdown and more. We expect this to reduce app building time for makers by significantly reducing the number of controls needed by an app. We will also be introducing more styling properties on controls, including Fill, Padding, Align, and Border related properties. Finally, we will also be releasing Fluent icons as a new control as well as an integrated feature in modern controls like Button.
• Composite controls (or building blocks) – In continuation of our strategy of releasing high-value responsive composed controls, we have two new controls in the pipeline – Dialog and Toolbar. We will also continue improving our existing composed controls of Header, Form, and Table.
• Updates to modern theming – We’ve heard your feedback on needing custom themes, and we’re working on providing the first iteration of in-app custom themes soon. After that becomes available, we will be evolving custom theming over time to add more capabilities.
• Transition of existing controls to general availability – Our team is working hard to ensure that all the remaining preview controls are ready for prime time. We are addressing the critical gaps required to transition these controls to general availability.

We hope that this glimpse into 2024 excites you as much as it does us. In expressing our gratitude, we acknowledge and appreciate the role of our customers, makers, and community in this ongoing journey, and we continue to welcome your feedback to help drive this journey. Thank you all! Here’s to a year filled with continued innovation and progress in the modernization journey of Power Apps.

The post Recap of modern controls evolution in 2023 and a glimpse into 2024 innovations appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

In October’23, we continued enhancing modern controls and theming and delivered some key enhancements as mentioned in this blog, which is rolling out to our customers at the time of publish. Our ongoing investments spans across improving existing controls, improving theming, and adding new controls to be used by makers.

A step ahead – general availability of some modern controls in canvas apps

Many of Power Apps customers have already started adopting these controls at scale. To support them in their journey, we have now started transitioning controls from preview to general availability starting Nov 13^th. The first set of controls are – Button, Link, Slider, Tab list and Progress Bar. This list is based on high satisfaction reported by makers and critical feedback addressed on these controls. In coming weeks, we will continue to add more customization capabilities like font color, background color, padding and more – on all controls. With this update, we will also be now providing full supportability to generally available modern controls to our customers.

We will continue this momentum and soon transition more controls (including the input controls) to general availability by early January. The remaining controls will be moved to the GA stage individually on a week-by-week basis.

Despite moving some controls to GA, modern controls and theming will continue to be an opt-in feature until the end of this year. We will, however, be moving the opt-in setting from upcoming features panel to general tab in settings by end of 2023 and will be turning modern controls on by default progressively for new apps in the next year, as we continue addressing reported gaps and adding new capabilities to these controls for our makers.

Enhancements to modern controls & theming

Below are the updates made to controls in the last month:

• Font size and color property: In an effort to extend customization capabilities on controls, we added the capability to update the base palette color and font size on controls. It provides our makers capability to customize the color and font size of text within a control. These properties provide makers the ability to customize the font size of text within a control and the color palette used to style the control. This update will be followed by adding more font-related and visual customizations in coming month(s).
  

• Improvements to controls for general availability: We enhanced Button, Link, Slider, Tab list and Progress bar as following:
  1. We updated the controls to provide right output properties.
  2. All accessibility issues have been fixed and controls are ready for prime time.
  3. Overflow menu and padding to tab and button are now optimized to have the best experience for our end users.
  4. We are setting better defaults and sample data for all controls.
     
• Introducing field validations: Field validations represent a significant improvement for managing error conditions in input controls in Power Apps. This is done through a new property we introduced called – ValidationState – that is applicable for all input controls. This property has two states – None, Error, with controls in an error validation state showing red borders.
  
  Makers can leverage this property using PowerFx to write advanced scenarios for error handling and can also describe patch rules based on the value in this property. The new form control also now uses this property for error handling by default!

• Table control: The Table control now supports more connectors, including Excel, SQL, and SharePoint connectors. With this update, we have removed the limitation of only supporting the Dataverse connector. We have also fixed the issue where ids were showing choice type columns for Dataverse tables.
  

• Form control: We have updated the current form control in preview to now support combo box for choice type and multi-select scenarios out of the box. We also fixed the title issues in the horizontal layout of the form by introducing right truncation patterns.
  
• Theme pane accessibility: As we continue attracting new Power Apps makers in huge numbers, we have addressed the remaining accessibility issues for the Themes pane.

Upcoming enhancements to modern controls and theming:

We are currently working on few exciting updates and will be released in few weeks:

• Font properties on all applicable controls: You will soon be able to customize font, font color, font weight and font style on all modern controls.
  
• More customization options on text control: We are in process of updating text control to also support background color and padding for our makers to use these controls effectively.
  
• Table control: We are introducing additional customization properties on table control:
  • Show Avatar: You will soon be able to show and hide avatars in your list view of the table control.
  • Show Footer: You will soon be able to show and hide footers in your table visual.
  • Show column headers: You will soon be able to show and hide column headers in your table visuals based on the scenario makers want table to achieve.

• New color picker for base palette color: Since the BasePaletteColor property generates a new color ramp that is applied to a modern control (and not a single-color selection), we are updating the color picker to better communicate the selection of a set of colors rather than an individual color.

• Modern controls and theming will be default on in preview: Before end of this year, all new apps built in make.preview.powerapps.com (and in preview environment), will have modern controls enabled by default as a control set. The opt-in setting will still be part of general tab and can be switched off, if required.
  
• Fluent icons: Makers will be able to add standalone icons. Makers will also be able to add an icon on the button.

We sincerely thank our community and makers for continuing to provide us feedback and help us build these capabilities. We will continue to ship updates to improve our controls and theming in response to the feedback we receive from you all.

The post October updates for modernization in canvas apps (includes GA of few modern controls) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

We thank our community and users for the active engagement on the journey to modernize Power Apps. This blog outlines the modernization updates we rolled out or are rolling out on both canvas and model apps.

Modern controls updates in canvas apps

We recently released the following improvements for modern controls:

• New insert pane design for modern controls: We have established concept of modern & classic controls for fluent based vs current controls – a paradigm which will be used frequently as we progress towards canvas modernization. The same is now reflected in how our makers will use controls in studio. After enabling modern controls, if you open insert pane, you will see a new tab with all modern controls in it.
  

• Key control improvements: We are constantly shipping additional properties while also modifying existing properties based on your feedback. Here are the latest updates about the changes published in May:

We have many more updates exciting updates coming to control properties to enhance functionality as well as align on best practices for the control to be used by makers.

• Improved property reference & Enums:
  • We have simplified property references for modern controls. Earlier, the properties had long reference in format
    PowerApps.CoreControls.<Control name>.<Property name>.<Value>.
    The new format is <Control name>.<Property name>.<Value> to increase usability of these controls.
  • Earlier, many enum based properties were incorrectly represented as ‘strings’ confusing makers about the type of property. But we updated our infrastructure to correctly represent those values, now making it easy for our makers to manipulate them correctly.
    
• No more extra step for arrays to work on dataset based controls: We have removed the PCF limitation to select the default ‘value’ field in order to make dataset based controls work while providing an array as input. This increases usability and steps to configure key existing controls like tab list, radio button & dropdown, and also for upcoming controls like breadcrumb & combobox. Our makers can now directly add list of items in control and control will work as expected.
  

Visual improvements in model apps

We’ve also been improving our model driven app modern experiences. In May we’ve released the following updates to our modern apps preview.

• Dialogs: Dialogs now flow to the height of their content, reducing white space for small dialogs. The buttons and icons have also been modernized.

• Loading indicators: We’ve modernized loading indicators in the header and form. Loading spinners within the app have also been modernized.

What is next?

We will soon be making new theming available, initially for canvas apps and then subsequently model apps. The announcement will follow dedicated blog post later. We will also release new controls soon – Combobox, Toggle, Slider & Breadcrumb. And as mentioned above, we will continuously update property sets and enhance functionality of existing controls to make them production ready. We are releasing improvements each week. We will add the release notes link in the comments below.

For model apps, we are working towards modernizing remaining experiences and enabling dark mode as part of upcoming general availability. We will provide more details in the next blog post.

The post May 2023 updates for modernization in Power Apps appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.