Formativ_ is an app I showcased during an Open House livestream I held a few months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbl4MujHB9U
During the livestream, I showed some of the patterns I had in the app, but the app was not as complete for sharing yet.
Most of the app functionality is complete now. I am sharing its current form so you can see some patterns inside.
The big idea with the formativ_ app is to take existing questions I have in a spreadsheet and make it into a form, rather than repeating that content in another service. Previously, I would redo questions I wanted to ask one by one in another online service. This takes a lot of time and copy pasting.
Creating an app would allow me to have a nice interface for users to respond to questions. And the neat thing about PowerApps is I can edit my questions from the spreadsheet or within the UI of the app. I work where I'm comfortable.
Across the app, I use SVG images. This lets me add effects like drop shadow and gradients. The icons I use are consistent in style and minimal.
The app has logic built in to autosave. As the user is creating or editing a form/quiz, their changes are saved immediately. As a user is responding to a form or quiz, their responses are saved immediately. This avoids situations where a browser is accidentally closed and progress is lost.
While the purpose of the app is to use spreadsheets in harmony with PowerApps, I made a UI to make form/quiz creation to be easier in the app space itself. This interface includes a couple of features I want to call out:
- reordering records in a collection
- duplicating a record in a collection
- adapting the content in each row of a gallery depending on what type it is
- copy-pasting a column of choices and having it split itself apart into different rows
- jump to a question
- apply autoheight to a text input box
Existing quizzes and forms can be searched and revised.
On the Play screen, you can see how I use an accordion to show each session the user has started for a given form.
The app is used for both experiences of creating and responding to forms and quizzes. Unique to PowerApps is the ability to include an ink control. I did not put in logic to save the image back to OneDrive, as I leave that up to you to save image content to the service of your choice. @timl can help explain how to have images saved to your OneDrive from the same spreadsheet.
And as a bonus, the app can be translated. You can see a method of gathering text across the app and translating it. You'll also find that I've worked in tabbing for accessibility.
I am sharing this app with you sooner rather than later. Much of it is complete, but there is a lot that is open for you to implement on your own.
Here's some ideas to get you started:
- implement date, datetime, ratings, etc.
- create a theme selector for high contrast modes and dark mode
Instructions
- Download the msapp file and this excel sheet:
https://8bitblob.blob.core.windows.net/powerapps/formativ_.xlsx - Move the Excel sheet to your OneDrive
- Open create.powerapps.com
- File > Open > Browse for the msapp file
- View > Datasources > remove all tables from OneDrive so you can add your own.
- Add all the tables from the Excel sheet in step 2 (using OneDrive or Dropbox)
- Try it out.
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