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Power Apps For A Cause: Learn To Build An App End-To-End

Education

Introduction

Today, we embark on an exciting journey together to create a Power App and Dataverse solution from start to finish. Along the way, we'll also be helping a wonderful charity through our hackathon model. Earlier this year, I had the incredible opportunity to visit Guatemala with a group to support Potter’s House, a charity dedicated to addressing educational and nutritional needs among children in that region.

Understanding the Importance of Potter’s House

The average child in Guatemala receives only 2.8 years of schooling before entering the workforce to support their family. Potter's House is committed to changing this, providing holistic support to children like Alexis, a cheerful and ambitious boy from the community of Fenero Chima. Alexis wakes up early every day to attend school and then transitions to participating in Potter's House programs that ensure he receives adequate nutrition and educational assistance. His story exemplifies the critical work done by this charity over the past 38 years.

Building Our Power App

I have teamed up with some outstanding Power Platform instructors to guide you in learning Power Apps while assisting this charity. We'll start with Matt Peterson, who will walk us through the prerequisites necessary for today’s development. Next, John Silva will facilitate a brainstorming session to outline our design solution. Nate Hallowell will build the Dataverse tables, and then we'll see Matt return to create the model-driven application. Finally, John Silva will assist us in crafting the canvas application later in this journey.

Steps to Create Our App

  1. Creating the Environment: It's essential to begin by establishing a conducive environment for building our application. An environment in Power Apps acts as a container where multiple users can collaborate on projects, enabling you to perform app lifecycle management much more efficiently.

    • To create your environment, navigate to make.powerapps.com and log in to your account. If you don't already have a developer environment, you can register for one for free.

  2. Setting Up Dataverse: Dataverse acts as the underpinning data storage for our application, allowing for structured data management and security features. We aim to create a table to hold records of health evaluations, relating each record back to the children being served by Potter's House.

  3. Designing the User Interface: Once our environment and tables are configured, we can begin designing our app. We'll lean on both model-driven and canvas applications to present different functionalities effectively.

    • Model-driven apps are built on top of the architecture designed by Microsoft, creating user-friendly interfaces that are easier to set up than traditional canvas apps.
    • Canvas apps give us flexibility in design and would require a bit more detail but allow for bespoke user experiences.

  4. Implementing Conditional Logic: As we design our app, we should include elements like dynamic titles or the ability to search for children based on specific criteria. Incorporating search functionality allows users to easily navigate the application.

  5. Finalizing and Publishing the App: Once everything is configured, we need to save and publish our work, making the app accessible to those in need at Potter's House.

By following these steps, we will create a powerful tool that helps manage child health evaluations, contributing significantly to the mission of Potter’s House.

Keywords

  • Power Apps
  • Dataverse
  • Charity
  • Potter’s House
  • Development Environment
  • Canvas Application
  • Model-Driven Application
  • Health Evaluations
  • User Interface
  • Search Functionality

FAQ

  1. What is Potter's House?

    • Potter's House is a charity in Guatemala focused on providing educational and nutritional support to children in need.

  2. How do I create a Power App?

    • You can start by creating an environment in Power Apps and setting up your Dataverse tables before designing the user interface of your app.

  3. What are the differences between model-driven and canvas applications?

    • Model-driven apps are standardized applications built on Microsoft's architecture, while canvas apps provide more flexibility to design bespoke user experiences.

  4. How do I publish my Power App?

    • After developing your Power App, you can save your work and hit the publish button to make it accessible to users.

  5. Can I register for a free developer environment?

    • Yes, you can sign up for a free developer environment to build and test your Power Apps at make.powerapps.com.