cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results forย 
Search instead forย 
Did you mean:ย 
Migrated_User

Printing

Submitted by Migrated_User on โ€Ž04-26-2016 02:37 AM

As this is designed for ENTERPRISE, printing from the within the APPS will make PowerApps superior to Excel and even ERP / SAP system.
If ONENOTE can be accomplished (for printing) after our request, why not PowerApps.

 

Anonymous shared this idea  ยท                      

Status: Started

An update on progress here:

First of all, a sincere thank you to all the folks who filled out the survey. (https://aka.ms/pa-printing ) We, the product team, have leveraged a lot of this information in our work on these features. We are still accepting responses for those who have not had the opportunity to fill it out.

We realize this Idea has been open for a long time as weโ€™ve prioritized other items, but this is very top of mind for us. Reflected in this printing Idea, there are several different asks here for different types of โ€œprintingโ€. I want to be entirely transparent and break these different requests out to give those a feel for the direction of the platform for each of these needs.

  1. Report generation capabilities โ€“ This request is document-style reports with visualizations that provide additional control, like which tables expand horizontally and vertically to display all their data and continue from page to page as needed.  Think of this as generating fixed-layout documents optimized for printing and archiving, such as PDF and Word files. Currently there are existing methods of doing this today on the platform. People creating canvas apps with SQL leverage SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).  People using CDS are leveraging the CDS reporting capabilities available to them (backed by SSRS). PowerBI Paginated Reports are now generally available for use as well. Long term, the strategy here for PowerApps is to become more integrated with PowerBI to allow a common report generation story for the platform. At the PowerApps Vision and Roadmap session at the Microsoft Business Application Summit when this question was asked, the answer is that we want to avoid having both PowerBI Reporting Services AND a hypothetical โ€œPowerApps Reporting Servicesโ€.  We donโ€™t currently have a further timeline to share, but our teams continue to work together on this integration.
  2. Export to PDF from a canvas app โ€“ This request comes from a lot of InfoPath, Access, and LotusNotes users, in addition to many many other people who want to print PDFs as part of invoices, summaries, status updates, work orders etc. We hear you that there will always be a need for having a readable output and archiving whether it is all digital or still requiring paper. This request also came from people who were leveraging SharePoint and other data sources without reporting capabilities.  Today, users are leveraging Flow with the Word connector to create word documents to become PDFs, and another strategy is writing HTML to use with Flow to create a document using OneDrive, or other connectors with convert to PDF capabilities. These options are available today but require some knowledge of HTML and some effort to accomplish. The plan is to provide a simple way to export the contents of a printable screen to a PDF from a canvas app, primarily focusing on the export form scenario. This allows users who use all different data sources to create PDFs using skills they know. However, this solution is not intended to be the answer for really long table heavy documents, banded or cross tab reportsโ€‹, as well as a few other advanced scenarios. These features can be found in the Report generation solutions provided in Number 1. Now, the work on this particular item has already started, and we have been working on the infrastructure to enable this capability. This is a complex problem, with a lot of different requirements and this is expected to be delivered in 2020.
  3. Export to Excelโ€“ We donโ€™t currently have any plans to support this as a further capability. PowerBI Paginated Reports have this as a capability. In canvas apps, you can connect and write to excel today through a connector to write to the templates needed. Additionally, most data sources themselves (CDS, SharePoint and others) have the capability to export data to excel.
  4. Generate Barcodes & print bar codes โ€“ This ask is covered by number 1.
  5. Printing direct to a printer โ€“ This is something that users will still have to configure for themselves utilizing existing device and browser capabilities and defaults. However, the first parts of this ask involving getting a prinatable output should be covered in 1&2.

To sum up: PowerBI Reporting Services and Paginated Reports is to become more integrated with PowerApps. Canvas Apps export to PDF is a separate capability to arrive in 2020.

As always, your feedback is appreciated. This is a top ask in our community and it is being taken seriously.

226 Comments (226 New)
Comments
QuangHa
QuangHa
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž03-19-2019 09:44 PM

Rizzle, I share with you the same feeling and I believe many of us here had hit the brick wall after feeling happy about the power of powerapps :-). I felt I was an idiot to not know about this before I tried my best promoting it in my organization.

 

hope they will provide printing soon

AmyRock
AmyRock
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž03-21-2019 07:17 AM

FYI - We found that PlumSail has a great workaround for a fairly minimal month fee based on how many prints you have.  We opted for this solution until it is available in PowerApps.  It will cost us around $20 a month.

blanghorst
blanghorst
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž03-21-2019 07:49 AM

What is the Plumsail workaround?

AmyRock
AmyRock
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž03-21-2019 08:00 AM

@blanghorst if you go to plumsail website and look at Products it is called "Documents"

CNT
CNT
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž03-22-2019 03:54 PM

Hello!

 

Any updates on the progress? When are we going to get Printing?

xzDan
xzDan
Level 8
โ€Ž03-29-2019 07:23 AM

It really is pathetic how such a fundamental feature is so far down in priorities, where there is no communciation at all.

It exists in Power BI - I can hit Export to PDF.

Why is it so difficult to do it in Power Apps?

You have multiple screens, just let us print out each screen, or to choose which screens to print.

You have a scrolling canvas? Allow for, inside that screen, to have it all exended out and then printed.

Why is this so difficult? How can it be that something that exists in Excel, Word, even Power  BI can not be in this? "Minimum viable product"

 

 

CNT
CNT
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž04-04-2019 01:19 PM

Hello!

Any updates on the status? Any plans for a beta?

Rayb-101
Rayb-101
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž04-12-2019 05:00 AM

I am replacing an infoPath form with a  PowerApp form, and need the ability for a user to eMail the form directly from the app.  Sending an email currently does not allow for formatting the email since the Tab code doesn't work.

Brammers
Brammers
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž04-17-2019 05:38 AM

Really??? 3 years, and no further information on this?

 

It's as bad as not being able to put HTML in an Outlook signature on iOS!!!!!

blanghorst
blanghorst
Level: Powered On
โ€Ž04-17-2019 05:55 AM

I was at a partner event recently and approached a couple of the MS employees about this MASSIVE gap and I expressed my disappointment at the lack of printing.  One tried to tell me you can print form a PowerApp but when I pressed her on it, she could provide no real details.  Right now, I have a "Print" button which emails the data to someone for printing in a simple, two column table.  I could obviously make a fancier HTML table to try and replicate the appearance of the form and have people print that, but I'm a consultant and clients don't want to pay for that additional work when printing absolutely SHOULD HAVE been a release function.

 

I'll be honest - as a SharePoint person, InfoPath is just a more full-featured product with much faster development cycles.  Yes, I do think PowerApps is more powerful (especially in terms of OOB connectors), but it lacks so many obvious features and MS seems to send mixed signals regarding using it as a replacement for InfoPath.  I see a lot of "it depends" kind of comments from MS, but then they turn around and remind everyone InfoPath is going away.  I can't sell clients on InfoPath knowing this and after using PowerApps as a replacement, I'm left scratching my head at some of the decisions MS made.