A PowerApp for clients to look up their status in a waitlist

[drnemer]

Hello,

I would like to create a PowerApp that will be used on our companies lobby tablets for clients to look up their waitlist status in our system.

We have thousands of clients, and our database has their first name, last name, birth date, ssn, address, and their sign up date for the program.  

The idea is that if a client walks into our office and wants to see their status in our system, they can go to our tablets in the lobby and look their name up and see it.  

The key point is that they need to be able to look themselves up, but we must protect the privacy of other applicants, so we don't want them to see everyone else when they look themselves up.  Also another key point is that not every applicant might have correctly given us their birth date or ssn, sometimes that is missing, so a second feature of the app would be a button that will allow the person to send a notice to us to update any important information on this list--perhaps add a phone number or an updated home address.  

I am not sure how to architect this type of app.  I believe it is technically possible to build this on powerapps. I just would like some guidance as to how to make this work properly. Perhaps someone knows some tutorials they can recommend for setting this type of app up.

Thank you,

Drew

[BCLS776]

Can I share a few thoughts to discourage you from doing this on a shared, public tablet? For a Power App to work correctly and protect privacy, it relies on authenticating users. Usually, this means asking them to type in a username and password. Power Apps can handle this through a Portal and a secure backend, but there are a few issues:

• Devices such as tablets store a cache of browsed information, which can include info viewed on a Portal. That makes a publically-accessible tablet a valuable target for identity thieves.
• People aren't very good at logging out after they log in, leaving their own data exposed for the next person to see

If you want to offer this customer experience, how about you ask them to use their own device to access the Portal? Most people will take care of their own tablet/phone, and at worst if it is compromised it is one person's data, not everyone's.

Hope that helps,

Bryan

[drnemer]

That is very fair, and i brought up this very concern.  The response that I got from those that are asking me to develop this is that we will use a quasi-authentication of having the participants fill in their first name, last name, and either a combo of their birth date or ssn or both and then it will search to see even if they are on the list---there is a likelihood people will try to look themselves up and not find them.

The goal of using the tablets in our lobby was to make it less burden on staff to answer common questions--one of the very most common question from people is when we are going to select them from the waiting list and are they on the waiting list. 

i wasn't planning on building a portal app, but is that a better option?  do you need to have a license to use a portal app?

[BCLS776]

Portals licence a bit differently - by usage, rather than by licencing each individual user.

Another option to at least deal with the question of "am I in line and where am I in the line" is to set up a Twilio service that integrates through Power Automate. It could take the phone number, or maybe an appointment number, in via SMS from a person's phone. From that, it could search your data using that number to send back an SMS response indicating their position in the line or a default response indicating they don't have a spot in the line. This sends back very limited and impersonal data and doesn't require anything more to authenticate.

Bryan

[drnemer]

Can you tell me more about Twilio?  never heard of it.

Would i still need a Power App?

[BCLS776]

Twilio offers a service to receive SMS (text) messages from phones. Those can be configured to send an HTTP message that a Power Automate flow can use to search a datasource and return results to a phone by SMS. For that part of the solution, you wouldn't need a Power App - just a sign in your lobby that says something like "Text YES to 12345" to get your appointment update".

You could use a Power App for your staff to handle data updates and other changes to your customer list, but it's not necessary for the notification part of the solution.

Bryan

[drnemer]

Hi,

I am sorry for the late response, i was taking your idea to our executives.

Here is what they are envisioning for the Kiosk Tablet.

Someone would enter the requested information and one of the following types of responses would appear:

1. Based on the information you submitted, your application date is July 2010.  We are currently serving participants who applied in September 2008.  If you would like to update your contact information, please click here.
2. Based on the information you submitted, we are unable to determine where you are on the waitlist.  Please click here to leave a message for our Gateway team to follow up with you.

My issue mainly is how do I do that in PowerApps because that wouldn't be a gallery or a datatable.  So I am not sure what would make that work. 

How would someone perform this type of search?

[BCLS776]

You're right - a gallery or datatable is not necessary for this. You would need one or two input controls, such as a text input or dropdown, to gather the person's details. Then, using a LookUp(), the app can retrieve the waitlist data (if any) and display the appropriate message

The functionality for #2 in your post can happen with a Text input box and a button to send an email to your team with the user's message.

Bryan