Integration of PowerApps with SharePoint

Business organizations use SharePoint to access, share and also collaborate data internally with employees, partners or other authorized people. If you have been on the net for the past few years, you must have heard of PowerApps that allows non-developers to easily create and publish web as well as mobile apps through easy to use web based tools. Microsoft recently announced that PowerApps is now available for Office 365 and the tool is now completely integrated with SharePoint.

This integration will allow the users to create custom SharePoint applications and also automate the workflows directly from the SharePoint list.

What are PowerApps?

PowerApps is a software for creating customized business applications without having the knowledge of custom coding and app development. It is a means for Office 365 users to create custom business apps that help connect the data and work seamlessly across the web and mobile without having to invest in complex software development. Users can easily create them that integrate with the common data sources like the SQL database, Salesforce, Excel spreadsheet, Dynamics 365 and etc.

PowerApps is independent of SharePoint, but it is tightly integrated as it is a part of Office 365 suite. PowerApps is designed to work with numerous and varied sources, like the external databases, it can easily be connected to any SharePoint list, One Drive or library, allowing you to retrieve or store information without the knowledge of databases and SQL.

Creating business solutions by using PowerApps forms on SharePoint lists is a powerful means to modify the SharePoint online sites. Consider the below tips if you want to build a successful PowerApps forms.

• Use PowerApps with managed metadata fields: For a long time PowerApps did not support complex fields in SharePoint forms, but now it does. Managed Metadata fields are the most widely used, complex and versatile SharePoint field. The hierarchical set of terms enables the users to create the taxonomical classifications that are needed to describe the data.

The term store management offers features like synonyms and additional labels for various terms that support varied languages, as well as copying, moving and deprecating terms. PowerApps forms support single as well as multi choice Managed metadata fields and also supports regular fields and Enterprise Keywords.

• Lookup field and filtering: Another useful field type in SharePoint business forms is the Lookup filed. The values are populated from the SharePoint list instead of the static choice or term store values. It allows the users to do something interesting like having a list for the orders or another list for order rows and while editing an order row, you can select the product from the products lists.
• Set the correct permissions with PowerApps integration: This is very important because it is something that users always want to do when building a SharePoint form by using PowerApps. Everyone using the site is either the owner or a member of the site and the problem is that members have the Edit permission with which they can either add or modify the list and basically create or even modify the existing PowerApps. But every member should not enjoy the right to amend the edit permission.

“So, making a few modifications to the permissions at the list level is required and this can be done by changing the members to visitors at the site permission or by granting contribute permission to the site visitors.”