Create Your First Gallery in Power Apps
Have you ever wished you had your own app to make changes to your business records? That would be nice, but of course it would cost several thousand dollars to develop, right? No, you can make your own app and you don’t have to write any computer code.
With our advice and complete guide, you can create your first gallery in Microsoft Power Apps, also shortened to PowerApps.
Other Considerations: Power Apps Guide To Controls
The Power Apps app has controls that structure your functionality and interactivity. These controls include simple buttons, timers, imports, and exports. Button facilitate user actions and programming, while timers create periods in which these actions perform or play on autostart. Import and Export controls are necessary for safe data sharing. These functions compress files so only business users can use the company’s Power Apps.
What Can Power Apps Do for Me?
Power Apps is an easy way to create an app for your desktop, tablet, and phone that connects to multiple data sources. This suite, including the Microsoft Power Platform, aims for user-friendly optimization. You can update the company’s data wherever you are with custom web apps. It’s a great tool —especially if you’re working away from the office with multiple confidential users.
How To Use This Power Apps Guide
Power App creation simplifies business data usage. We’ll show you how to create the gallery for this app. Then, we will touch on the edit form. Once you do this basic training, you can easily connect to external data sources.
How To Create Your First Gallery in Power Apps
The first step to creating your Power App Gallery is to open the Power Apps builder in your browser. Once open, we will click the plus button on the left. Then choose to create a blank canvas app as shown below.
Next, a dialog box will appear that asks if we want to create a form or a gallery. Here, we choose a gallery. This brings us to the starting point where we’ll build our app, as shown below.
Now, we can connect to our data source. For this app, we’ll choose SQL Server. There’s an easier data source Microsoft released in recent years called Dataverse. We already have a great article about using Dataverse with Power Apps, so we’re going to use the SQL Server approach in this article.
Here, we’ll work through the screens until we can pick a table in the database we’re connecting to.
We select a table and Power Apps will automatically populate our gallery with data. But it won’t be ready for prime-time yet. It will look something like the screenshot below.
So, we need to make a few changes. To fix this, we’ll select Gallery1 on the tree view in the left-side pane. Then on the right-side pane, we will choose the properties tab. Next, click the “Edit” link that’s next to “Fields” as shown below.
Now, a data fields pane slides out to the left from the properties tab. See the screenshot below where we changed the title to the “ArticleName” field and the subtitle to the CF_Code field.
You’ll notice the gallery now shows the “Article Name” with the CF_Code underneath it. We are just getting started, but it has only taken a minute or two to reach this step and we have written no computer code.
We still don’t like the detailed gallery view, so we’ll change it to sort in the order of the newest articles first. We do this by adding a simple formula to the formula window at the top. This window is just like Excel except the formulas are a little different.
The sort formula in the window is “Sort(data source, the DateTurnedIn field, and descending order).” Had we wanted the oldest first, we would have chosen “Ascending” for the last part.
Now, we’ll add two more fields to the gallery view. We do this by selecting any fields that’s already on a data card. Then, we go to “Insert” at the top ribbon and click the drop arrow. Then choose “Text label.”
Power Apps will choose a data field for your label. You’ll change this by selecting the entire data card for the first item in the gallery before going back to the data slide out from the properties pane on the right-side. You do this by clicking the “Edit” link again.
Use the dropdown below Label1 in the screenshot above and choose the data field you want to display in your new label. We chose two labels and put the “DateTurnedIn” field and the “TimeTurnedIn” field into them.
The second card shows 16:18:00 instead of 4:18 PM. We don’t want to be on 24-hour time. Adding a line to the formula window fixes this issue. See the screenshot below.
Now we have a nice gallery, but how are we going to edit it? Since this is an article about the gallery, we will only show a quick overview of how to add an edit form.
Select “Screen1” in the tree view in the left-side pane. Then go to the “Insert” dropdown on the ribbon. Then choose “Edit form.”
It will show on the left side of the screen over the top of the gallery. You will drag it to the empty space on the right and resize it. See the screenshot below.
Now, you’ll connect it to your data source. And then connect the edit form to the gallery.
To connect the edit form to the gallery, you select the edit form from the tree view on the left. Unless you renamed it, it will show as “Form1.” In the formula window at the top, you need only type “Gallery1.Selected.” Your edit form is now attached to the gallery. You’ll be able to click on any data card in the gallery and see the edit form for that item.
Here’s what you have when you have finished your gallery and edit form.
This app can work on your computer desktop, tablet, or phone. You can select the item in the gallery and it will display the edit form for the record. The edit form can:
- Add a record
- Delete a record
- Update a record with new information
This app makes changes to your SQL database tables. It’s great to have the capability to update your database with an app. You can make the updates anywhere you are on any device.
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