Want to Keep a Power App Running during Unattended During Business Hours for Months without Daily Log Ins - What is Best Approach?

[skylitedave]

Hi Community,

I am building an app that is unattended and needs to stay open and running for many months during business hours without browser activity or user activity - it runs in the background collecting data and occasionally writes data to a SharePoint list.  Ideally, a user should not have to log in every day - I would just start it and it would run until I shut it off.  

Rather than 24/7 I need the app to run unattended during business hours so am wondering the best way to deal with session time out and browser inactivity and avoid having the user log in every day.

It does not grab or write a lot of data so am not worried about data throttling issues - I just want it to keep the app running in an unattended fashion for a long time (months)

What is the best way to be able to run a power app in unattended fashion that is connected to a SharePoint list for many months - Note it could "turn off" for up to 8 hours a day after business hours? 

Would it make any difference if I used Dataverse?

NOTE - Don't want to use Flow (Power Automate) - want to use Power Apps App

Not sure if the connector would timeout as well as the app

Hoping someone out there has faced this same use case and solved it

Thx!

[Pstork1]

I don't believe this is currently possible using Power Apps.

[skylitedave]

What is the maximum currently possible to keep a power app and SharePoint Connection open and running in an unattended fashion?

Where do I set that?

How do you set timeouts for the SharePoint connection and the Power App?

What if I auto refresh the browser using something like an auto refresh browser plug in - would that work?

[Pstork1]

There are no user settable timeouts on either the connector or Power Apps.  Power Apps is designed to be used by users through a User Interface.  Its not really designed to be an unattended backend.  I know you said you didn't want Power Automate, but that is the right tool for this kind of scenario.

[skylitedave]

I found Session Timeout Setting and Inactivity Settings in the Power Platform Admin Center under Settings > Product -  can max out Session to 1440 minutes and Inactivity to 1439 minutes so it is something an admin can set.

I am going to investigate some additional options around auto Refresh and RPA ...

Will let forum know what I learn as I run some experiments

I am using LOBE and the AI tool kit around image recognition within a Power App so need a visual interface for LOBE to ID images and then fire a Flow when a positive match is identified.  This is why a Flow won't work in my situation.

Will keep the community posted

Chime in if anyone has any ideas...

[JeckGill]

...is it available now/is it something you've seen 😅
I'm currently building an app for users to clock in and out of the sites they are on, and after 5-10 mins powerapps just kicks it back out to the main menu. This in turn means I am losing collections of data for things that haven't been submitted yet... which is quite annoying 

[Pstork1]

You don't want to keep the app open the whole time the users are clocked in.  You need to record the time they clock in and the time they clock out in a data source instead of leaving the app open.

[JeckGill]

Actually it’s exactly what I need - users clock in and out as the day goes on and that gets patched straight into a powerapps table. The reason I need the app open all day is for H&S events - I need to be able to pick the tablet up and leave knowing that the data of people currently in the building is in front of me and ready to go. I use a collection for this as it’s local, instant and (most importantly) doesn’t require internet access.

[Pstork1]

Power Apps apps aren't designed to stay open and running all day without timing out. You need to save the state of the app into a data source and retrieve it when the app is opened.