New to PowerApps

[sham1980]

Hi All,

Just a couple of quick queries hopefully to see if this is something that is possible with PowerApps.

For my organisation I manage system testing where we have a specific set of test cases that we execute then mark as pass, failed, not run or N/A. We then manually enter a time stamp. Is something like this possible? We currently record this on a spreadsheet.

My second query is when we have Live instance we try to recreate the issue by running manual checks - is it possible to design something in PowerApps where we can log number of attemps with successes an failures? Currently we do this by manually making a tally i.e 2/3 calls failed.

Apologies if very general but just trying to gauge if this is possible. Thanks in advance.

[JohnP]

I would say that anything recorded in a spreadsheet can be made easily in PowerApps - your second use case also sounds feasible. You can Check out the samples on the PowerApps home page.

[sham1980]

Thanks John, that's great! Will have a look at the app samples 🙂

[timl · Accepted solution]

Hi @sham1980 

I think that PowerApps is the ideal tool for this requirement. For 'internal company apps', the PowerApps platform deals with issues such as authentication and the sharing/deployment of apps - features that can be time consuming to build with other tools.

PowerApps provides a graphical designer. As you develop your app, you can use Excel like syntax to carry out tasks such as summing your pass/fail rates, or filtering records. Therefore, it's relatively simple to learn, compared to other platforms.

I would take @JohnPs suggestion and check out some of the sample apps to get a feel of the capabilities of PowerApps. You'll find lots of formulas and concepts that you can re-use from these apps.

As the amount of data in your app grows, I would recommend the use of SharePoint over Excel because SharePoint provides better support for searching/filtering of data. You can search for the terms "delegation" and "data row limits" on this forum to find out more.

In terms of recording time stamps, PowerApps can automatically adjust the display of time values to support users in different time zones. This behaviour can catch out some users and result in the display of unexpected time values, so this is an area that you should be aware of as you develop your app.

Good luck!

[sham1980]

Thanks @timl , brilliant summary.

I struggled initially as couldnt set up PowerApps on my personal email - wanted a sandpit area for testing and playing around. But have managed to create one using my work email.

Just going through the training basics at the moment...had a look through the samples and couldn't find one that pops out as suitable but I may have to look closer!

Thanks for the tip for moving to sharepoint - I am going to request a seperate sharepoint just for these two specific projects. Failing that....do you know if I can create and use a seperate directory on an existing sharepoint I have access to currently?

Looking forward to getting to grips with PowerApps 🙂

[timl]

Hi @sham1980 

In terms of SharePoint, yes, you can connect to SharePoint lists in different SharePoint sites. That won't be problem.