Solved: Did my PowerApp get corrupted?

Power_Robert · ‎04-15-2020

Hi all,

Something is wrong with one of my PowerApps:

It has disappeared from the list in the Windows 10 PowerApps App.
When I want to edit it at https://eu.create.powerapps.com/studio/#, it just keeps loading. It has been 10+ minutes now.
Also https://apps.powerapps.com/play/.... just keeps loading after clicking Play.
I've tried an other app and this opens just fine.

What can be done to fix this?

Power_Robert · ‎05-01-2020

Thank you for your explanation.

The reason why the admin was not able to raise the ticket is still under investigation by a MS TAM and I asked a MS Partner to raise a ticket for me in his tenant.

Summary:

I started developing a PowerApp that got stuck loading at some point in edit mode as well as in play mode.

I have four (icon) control a part of a custom form in PowerApps. The type of icon (check of cross) and the colour (red or green) of the icon is based on the value of a property of a record. This value can be switched by clicking on the icon. The current state of the four controls was stored in a variable, like this:

If(
    varFormEditMode,
    Set(
        varIcons,
        {
            needsStretcher: !(varIcons.needsStretcher),
            needsExtendedLegrest: varIcons.needsExtendedLegrest,
            approvalAutomatically: varIcons.approvalAutomatically,
            approvalByNurseOnDuty: varIcons.approvalByNurseOnDuty
        }
    )
)

When the formula above was added to the OnSelect() of each the icon control (with a small adjustment fear each control). I was able to save and continue to develop the app and use the app in Preview mode to test it functionality and it all worked just fine without any errors. Strangely enough, when the app was saved and closed and when you tried to reopen/edit the app. PowerApps studio got stuck loading. The first time this happened I had to skip 4 previous versions before I was able to restore a functional version. (Every version of the app between 108 and 104 also got stuck during loading the app.) In the process of finding the cause of the issue I came across a lot of strange issues with PowerApps Studio like a greyed out formula bar which was stuck with a colour code of one of the controls. Just because I pasted the code above in the OnSelect() formula. You could still select other controls but the formula bar was still stuck with that colour code. Or nothing on that browser tab would respond any more and you had to close the tab and reopen edit mode of the app. Luckily this also happened during one of the sessions with one of the MS Support Technicians, so they could see I didn’t do anything special for this to happen.

One of the technicians advised me to use a collection instead of a variable. This is the result:

If(
    varFormEditMode,
    ClearCollect(
        colIcons,
        {
            Name: "needsStretcher",
            Value: LookUp(colIcons, Name = "needsStretcher",Value)
        },
        {
            Name: "needsExtendedLegrest",
            Value: LookUp(colIcons, Name = "needsExtendedLegrest",Value)
        },
        {
            Name: "approvalAutomatically",
            Value: !(LookUp(colIcons, Name = "approvalAutomatically",Value))
        },
        {
            Name: "approvalByNurseOnDuty",
            Value: LookUp(colIcons, Name = "approvalByNurseOnDuty",Value)
        }
    )
)

After replacing all instances of the variable in the formulas with the collection. I was able to save, close and re-edit the app again without any issues.

I informed the tecnical the workaround is working fine and that I would like her to find the root cause of the issue so it can be fixed within PowerApps Studio and to avoid running into this kind of issues (ever) again. This Ticket is still open and the root cause is still under investigation.

Hopefully next time it will all go a bit more easily.

View solution in original post

WarrenBelz · ‎04-15-2020

Hi @Power_Robert ,

If this persists, try this if you have no Flows attached

Rename your app
Select the app and choose Export Package (preview)
Give it a name on the next screen and choose Export at the bottom
A Zip file will now be in your downloads
Go back to your menu with nothing selected
Choose Import Canvas App
Choose Upload then Navigate to the zip file
Change Update to Create as New and then import
See if this one works

Please click Accept as solution if my post helped you solve your issue. This will help others find it more readily. It also closes the item. If the content was useful in other ways, please consider giving it Thumbs Up.

Power_Robert · ‎04-15-2020

Hi @WarrenBelz ,

Thank you for your time.

Unfortunately it didn't work. I was able to follow your steps, except for the first one so I had to give the version to import a new name. But it has the same issue.

I just tried to restore a previous version. This one does not start either. This doesn't look too good...

WarrenBelz · ‎04-15-2020

That is no good @Power_Robert ,

Maybe lodge a Support Ticket with Microsoft

Please click Accept as solution if my post helped you solve your issue. This will help others find it more readily. It also closes the item. If the content was useful in other ways, please consider giving it Thumbs Up.

Power_Robert · ‎04-15-2020

Hi @WarrenBelz ,

Unfortunately I don't have Admin Access. I'll try to send a PM to one of the MS Staff here at the community.

Power_Robert · ‎04-15-2020

Unfortunately still no solution for the corrupted app. Below some more info:

I only use Office 365 Outlook and SharePoint as connector.
Using incognito does not make any difference. The app doesn't load far enough to even ask for permissions.
I tried to restore several older versions, but the issue stays the same.
Please see image below. This is how far I get after selecting "Edit" for this app. Even if I let it load for 30 minutes.

WarrenBelz · ‎04-15-2020

Sorry to hear that @Power_Robert ,

The fact that older versions do not work (when they did before) is puzzling. This may be a broken data connection.

I am hoping one of the Microsoft Community Support team might assist here @v-bofeng-msft , @v-xida-msft ?

rimatos · ‎04-16-2020

Hi @Power_Robert,

I believe the best course of action would be to contact someone with admin rights to raise the Support Request for you, in order for this to be troubleshooted in depth on our side.

As for the tests as @WarrenBelz suggested. Do you have any other environment which you have access to that you could import the power app? Additionally try and export the older version of the app that you have, and then import it into a different environment to see if it works.

As for the connections do you have any troubles when attempting to create a different app with these same connections?

Regards,

Ricardo

Power_Robert · ‎04-16-2020

Hi @rimatos,

I finally found a version that worked and this is what I found:

The last version I saved and then published was version 108 (15/04/2020, 02:32:41 Amsterdam). This was the night before the issues started. (Yes, I worked till late/early in de morning.)
I've been testing with this version and it worked just fine before I stopped and went to bed.
About 7 hours later, the first end user rang me that he was not able to open the app.
I just found a version that I was able to open, version 104.
I exported this 104 version and restored the 108 version and then exported as well.
I extracted both zip files into folder 104 and 108, one folder each.
I also changed the .MSAPP ziles into .ZIP files and extracted those into a "Extracted_MSAPP_File" folder.
I used WinMerge to compare the content of both folders.
Then I compared the content of the files that had any differences.
There where only 2 files found.
Please see images below for all the differences. (I used red marking to hide some info that might be sensitive info. Not sure...)
Not sure why those small differences could cause an issue and why there are so few differences between the versions. (See the timespan between the 2 versions.)

Versions:

Result WinMerge:

Comparison Manifest.json

Comparison json files in app folder:

rimatos · ‎04-17-2020

Great investigation @Power_Robert !

From what I can see there this appears to be related with some images that were changed on both Icons and background image.

It can be that for some reason the images that were introduced could be corrupting your Power App, since if they are not found the App might freeze in attempting to display them in the app. However, at the time being I'm just guessing.

Did any new images were introduced or changed in the app that could cause this?

Regards,

Ricardo