PowerApps Frustrations

[Commander_Data]

We use PowerApps with SharePoint as our main data sources. I have developed several production Apps, follow many of the MS and development standards as a seasoned developer, but still at times, the web design studio frustrates and slows development.

I was wondering if anyone else in the community has experienced the same scenario as defined below? I'm not able to share the code due to business rules, and there is too much code anyway to be helpful, just has anyone else experienced this? Hopefully not TLDR...

Variable mis-typing

Studio, sometimes after a Save, or Publish, will not exit when using the <- Back button (studio button not the browser back arrow). This has caused (not predictable, repeatable on command, or consistently) the App to be locked, user frustration, or even variables to become mis-typed. This instance of variable mis-typing has delayed a live publishing and hours of developer rework. After a Save and Publish in Dev where the page did not exit cleanly, testing in Play mode found that the App just hung. On re-edit, the App was locked and had to Overwrite (no one else works in this development environment), one variable was typed as a Variable instead of a Record. I spent 2 hours renaming, one at a time, every reference to try and find where this might have happened. All that did was, have a new variable built the same way as the previously named variable, but seemed to be fixed and no instance broke the record definition. I resaved and published. In Play it hung again. On entry to the studio, not locked this time, the same issue, but was using the new variable. I switched settings a couple of times between the old and new Formula bar editor, as I find searching very frustrating in the new formula bar, Saved, closed out and when I came back into the editor, suddenly all was working again, and the variable typed as a Record. I changed nothing directly that affected this variable. As a seasoned developer I understand I might have when reformatting retyped something slightly differently, but there was nothing obvious or deliberate, and there was no hint to where the variable definition type might be different from the Record type expected (that would be a good addition). There were over 3000 references to the variable, and set or patched many times across the App.

A little background

We use PowerApps to develop tactical short term solutions while we search for longer term strategic solutions. I like PowerApps. As a developer, I can see many advantages on using it for this purpose alongside IT developed longer term solutions, that do have potential to still be PowerApps solutions. However, I still believe as a tool, MS I understand back this approach, need to fast track continual improvement, make studio a developer enabled tool, and implement many of the excellent suggestions from the community. I can work with the limitations of the produce as we use it, employ workarounds for many of the issues faced, but the frustration while trying to develop are getting to a point where I could not recommend any business utilise PowerApps for any non-developer solutions. Our solutions are relatively simple, clean, and reasonable performant solutions. Non-development staff have just got lost when trying to implement anything other than a few dropped controls on a screen and have given up.

Following the downtime yesterday, I hope MS can deliver some sweeteners for the PowerApps development community, especially experienced developers.

[akshar24MSFT]

Hi @Commander_Data ,

Thank you for the feedback. I will try to pass along some of this feedback to right teams. Do you happen to have session ids for some of these sessions for us to look into some of the issue you are describing? I would also love to hear about what is it about searching that frustrated you the most in new formula editor/bar? Were you not able to access find and replace functionality in it and had to do a manual search?

[Commander_Data]

Hi, I do not have the session IDs, because it froze, I do not believe I would have been able to get the ID. The back button fail usually happens a few times a week, including today. If I can get a session ID, I can let you have it as long as this keeps our environment secure. I have not reproduced the variable mis-type since the last occurrence, probably only twice overall.

The frustration when searching is:

the new formula bar does not highlight the code found after you search. Left click in the left panel, does not highlight the code. Where code is more than say a few lines, it can be difficult to find the corresponding code section. Also, in the formula bar itself, there is no search / replace function as the older version; similar to NotePad, Visual Code, etc. I found this much easier to use when replacing in just the current code (formula bar property) rather then trying to be sure you have selected the right control / property in the right panel. I have accidentally, at times, replaced more than I meant to, then undo, redo, throw it out of the window frustration...!

A pop-out formula bar would also allow developers to move it around, ideally to another screen, but within the scope of the browser I understand this might be a step to far. Alternatively, resizing width, or just moving inside the current window, might stop parts of the screen being hidden when you need to view them.

To be fair, I like PowerApps. Trying to persuade the company IT department to allow us to use Premium licencing is like growing apples without trees. We have produced a series of bespoke Apps that appear to be more complex that Apps I've seen, using non-premium user licencing, utilising SharePoint and occasionally Excel as our data sources.

[akshar24MSFT]

Hi @Commander_Data 

Thank you for the feedback. In terms of your feedback around formula bar, we have fixed both scenarios around find and replace. You should soon be able to use ctrl + f or ctrl + h or f3 to access find and replace within the editor just like vscode. We have also fixed an issue to highlight the matches from find + replace on the left hand side. Those fixes should roll out soon. As for the resizing, we have it in our plans to consider that and improve the overall experience.