PowerApps Canvas apps with CDS as back-end

[david_castillo]

Hello,

I have some PowerApps-related questions about CDS. My background is SPO with PowerApps Canvas + Flow, but found out that there's a limit to displaying it in SharePoint. So with that, I believe the long-term solution would be CDS for scalability and data. With that said, we are in the process of deciding if we are going to buy Plan 2. We are currently in the trial of Plan 2 and we have an existing system that we need to move to Plan 2 (for making CDS as back-end) if we can satisfy the current requirements. I have went through the documentation but all it did was to guide me in creating an app. I would like to know the following:

1.) How do I create custom formulas in the entities?

In PowerApps Canvas + SPO list + Flow, besides the SharePoint GUID (ID), I have a Single Line of Text data type that's being updated via Flow. Flow has the formula to update that ID (in the format that we want. In SPO, ID is just a number, but we want to be more flexible than that). 

I saw the Calculation/Rollup but right now, I don't know how that works since based on the MS Docs, you only have specific functions to do that. Will this be in Flow, too?

2.) How do I create a workflow and set the stages in model-driven PowerApps?

 In some examples, I saw that there are stages in PowerApps model-driven apps (see below)The red line with points signify the stages

How do we achieve this in model-driven apps? Is it configured in Views?

3.) How do we set line items in model-driven apps?

In our  current canvas app using SP list as the back-end, we have this configured:

SP List 1 contains the general info, and SP List 2 are repeating tables (when you click the icon on the right (diskette, hidden now), it automatically creates a line item. In SP, each line item is considered 1 record, but they're all tied up via MasterID. The MasterID is based on the original ID of SP List 1, so they can be connected when displaying them via gallery.

Is this doable in PowerApps CDS, and if yes, how can this be done via CDS?

[Anonymous]

Hi @david_castillo thank you for posting and proposing this question! I am adding in @mr-dang to assist. 

@Anonymous

[Mr-Dang-MSFT]

Hi @david_castillo, I would like to gather some more details from you by PM.

Brian