Announcing the PowerApps component framework and the PowerApps CLI public preview & welcome to the PowerApps component framework Forum

[chass]

Hello Developers, 

Today we have reached an important milestone for Microsoft PowerApps: we are announcing public preview for PowerApps component framework for model-driven apps. The framework enables professional developers to build custom visual components for PowerApps. This is a significant step towards empowering 3rd party developers to build compelling visual components using the same framework which Microsoft team uses. The framework is the foundation for the new Unified Interface released with Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement apps version 9.0. Components created using the framework can be reused, configured as needed and are solution aware along with configurations.

You can find more details on the framework here.

To enable new component creation, the Microsoft PowerApps CLI is also available for public preview. The Microsoft PowerApps CLI is a developer command line interface enabling you to build custom components for PowerApps faster and more efficiently.

• The CLI will assist you with component creation by guiding you through predefined creation steps
• It provides a harness for quickly testing, debugging and visualizing your custom component
• Each development step has built in validations which minimize chances for mistakes
• Help menus are available to guide each step of the development process

You can find more details on the tooling here.

To help you get started, we will be conducting a live community on-boarding call April 30^th  10am PST:

Getting started with PowerApps Component Framework

In this live webinar with the PowerApps development team, we will have product team experts to walk through how to get started, sharing product details and answer your questions.

[Anonymous]

Is there any connection, either now or in your roadmaps, to link this framework to the SPFx and exchange component between the 2 frameworks?

[HemantG]

Hi Jorge, currently we do not have plans to integrate with SPFx . PowerApps component framework however will be supported on canvas apps in near future. Since both are based on client technologies, in general IP should be reuseable with some refactoring. 

[waldek]

Currently the CLI and the toolchain of the generated project are targeted exclusively at Windows users. Are there any plans to make the developer experience cross-platform? Also, are you planning to open source the CLI for the community to help extend it with additional scenarios or integrate with existing solutions such as the Office 365 CLI?

[peterv333]

A cross-platform experience is absolutely on the list of future capabilites and we are looking into open sourcing. To ensure that tooling is on a path to fully support cross-platform development, it is today being built using .NET Standard.

[waldek]

This is very good to hear! Any idea when we can expect cross-platform support? Will it be weeks or months? The reason I'm asking is trying to understand if having an intermediate cross-platform solution would make sense or if first party support is around the corner and any effort in this area is unnecessary.

[MZSR]

Will be this available to every licensed user, or only for specific plans?

It's cool stuff, but I'm afraid this is not something that contributes to the ongoing internal discussions around security risks in PowerApps & Flow (enterprise firm).

[HemantG]

Hi MZSR,

Please reach out to me (hemantg@microsoft.com) for discussion on this. In short any customization which has the client script added to the app (currently model and future canvas) needs to be reviewed and imported only by customizer and above roles. Users below this level of privelege cannot add any scipt whether web resources or custom controls. 

We will share guidance on the canvas app PCF usage as we release preview. This is currently planned to be driven by additional admin switch to allow the custom script on the canvas apps. Customizer gate to review and then import the control into CDS still reamains a valid pre-req like model apps.

Hemant