Slow performance in Power Apps Studio when building large apps

[mwbyrtie]

TRYING TO RAISE SOME ATTENTION FROM MICROSOFT HERE

... so please add a comment, if you face a similar issue.

Let's rally and make some noise!

ISSUE

When building large apps, Power Apps Studio (i.e. the editor) becomes insanely sluggish when the number of screens/controls increases. 

I am currently building an canvas application with more than 100 screens, which works perfect in player-mode - but my ability to proceed with the development is heavily impeded poor performance in the editor (Power Apps Studio).

EXAMPLES OF PERFORMANCE ISSUES

• Loading the app in the editor takes 15-20 minutes (and is interrupted by an authentication prompt).
• When an object is selected, it takes 4-5 seconds before the formula bar is adjusted to the correct code.
• When a formula is entered, at it takes 10-30 seconds before an intellisense-suggestion appears.
• Inserting object takes 5-10 seconds (a loading screen appears).
• Opening "Preview mode" takes 2-5 minutes.

MICROSOFT

To any Microsoft support staff reading this - you have a problem, which cuts off developers ability to build some serious apps, that actually can be used for more than just handle a simple process. Please fix this.

Many before me have raised this issue - here's 15 examples from a "Power Apps Studio Slow"-google search, where I only looked at the first 3 pages:

• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/App-loading-in-Studio-incredibly-slow-today-...
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/PowerApps-super-slow-when-editing/m-p/398393
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/PowerApps-project-runs-very-slow/td-p/824328
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/Power-Apps-SLOW/m-p/240137/highlight/true#M7...
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/PowerApps-VERY-SLOW-When-Editing/td-p/322028
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/Is-anyone-experiencing-some-real-slow-perfor...
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/POwerapps-performing-way-too-slow/td-p/52609...
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/Editing-a-slow-loading-app-can-break-the-stu...
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/Extremly-slow-performance-PA-studio-UI-unacc...
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/Extremely-slow/td-p/50434
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/PowerApps-is-running-extremely-slow/m-p/1843...
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/PowerApps-is-Slow-not-saving-and-Hanging-now...
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/PowerApps-Slow-Performance/td-p/845323
• https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/PowerApps-Editing-Environment-Laggy-Buggy/td...

I have even raised a ticket to your support staff... to which the response was - "Try to delete some of your screens".

... c'mon - get in the game, please!

[TheRobRush]

Wouldn't it be more productive to post this in the "Ideas" section? So people could actually vote on it etc. This isn't a bug, or just you in need of help writing a certain function it's PowerApps performing as it is intended to. So Ideas is where it belongs.

[TheRobRush]

Also like, going through so many old posts and commenting on every single one of them to direct them to yours? All that really accomplished was pulling all those posts above the posts of all the people actually trying to get help today, making it harder for their posts to get seen. That's really not great forum etiquette.

[TheRobRush]

Power Apps Ideas - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com)

[mwbyrtie]

Hi @TheRobRush 

Wrt. posting it in the ideas section 

I am profoundly against posting something as an idea, when it is in fact a bug (fixing a performance issue is not an idea). The right channel is to go through the support - but when the support team provides a counterproductive answer, the alternative is to make some noise.

I am a bit perplexed by your statement: "This isn't a bug (...) it's Power Apps performing as it is intended to". So Power Apps Studio is supposed to become slow as apps become bigger? That's a pretty weak statement with no justification behind it. 

Wrt. to etiquette 

When +15 people (plus all of those who have responded to those posts) have experienced the same issue, it signals that this is an issue which is continuously being overlooked by Microsoft / has been overlooked for years.

The reason why I am attempting to bundle the posts together, is so that people at least can have a common thread in the future that they can refer to. If nobody bundles the tickets, nobody will be able to see the forest for the trees.

... I'll brush up up on my etiquette, when the forum functionality allows us to link tickets together more smoothly.

[TheRobRush]

Is it working as intended?

Don't add more than 500 controls to the same app. Power Apps generates an HTML document object model to render each control. The more controls you add, the more generation time Power Apps needs.

I'm going to say yes.

Source:  Performance tips and best practices  

And linking those posts in your OWN post was fine, it was resurrecting a bunch of dead threads most of which were 1-2 years old thereby pushing a bunch of peoples posts who were looking for issue resolutions of their own off the front page of the forums that I took issue with.

[mwbyrtie]

Hi @TheRobRush 

Working as intended?

Have you ever built a good app using less than 500 controls? It's an unrealistic number - you can easily hit that number with 2-3 screens (at least if you care about UI/UX).

The "App Checker" by the way recommends, that the maximum number of controls per screen should be less than 300 - so something is not aligned.

Needless to say - we have all bought a development tool, which we expect to work on some level. But I guess the difference between you and I, is that I expect that the development tool performs independently of the scale of my application - as long as I adhere to general performance considerations that may affect the developed application during run-time. In addition, I guess the difference is also, that I think performance degradation issues are solved through fixes (which are promoted through noise)... rather than yet another random idea post... which will never be picked up... because Microsoft is too busy working on some kind of new, irrelevant AI Builder-feature... that they can promote at the next XYZ-conference to indicate "progress".

Etiquette

... and then this post would just have been yet another post, which would have drowned along side the 15 ones that came before it. For the people who created the other threads that I linked to, I am sure the threads aren't dead to them...

[Alex_10]

@mwbyrtie 

For me it is a serious Power Apps limit that does not allow building complex apps. I don't think it is a bug.

I had similar performance issues in studio mode for an app with 3 screens only. App's logic code was placed in 2 controls ( 1200 lines of code in the first control and 700 in the second ). If I place all that logic into a single control resulting appx 2000 lines of code, the app becomes much slower in studio. Users never experienced the issues in web player though.

Any time I edit those controls, the response time depends on app's real-time app checker (see screenshot).

The app does not respond until 'Checking...' is finished.

 

 

[PaulD1]

@Alex_10 Agree that this falls more into the 'limit' category than 'bug' category, though the outcome is the same, it is very difficult to build large/complex Apps.

A possible solution would be the ability to suspend the App Checking (much like you can turn off automatic formula recalculation in large Excel sheets) - think I have previously seen that posted as an Idea.

Another option could be to edit using the preview VS Code editing options, though once you go down that route I think you are losing what benefits Canvas Power Apps has and might as well just develop a Blazor App or something instead.

I think MS has a view of what sort of Apps they expect people to create (relatively small, simple and short lived) and any scenario outside of that is probably not going to receive much attention in the near future.

[DennisTKuhn]

Seems to me the basic Power Apps concepts are not followed by developers and now blaming it on Microsoft. A App with 100+ screens, seems some re-factoring it in several apps would create improvement on a lot fronts 🙂