Experimenting With SharePoint Lists in PowerApps
PowerApps is a handy app building tool. It allows people within businesses to create apps fast without in-depth programming or design skills required. It offers a variety of data source types that can be connected to.
There are standard tier and premium tier connectors available to choose from. The premium tier connectors are indicated in the image above by the diamond icon. When a premium tier connector is used to build an app all users of the app need to have a Premium Plan license. The focus of this post is the SharePoint List connector which is a standard tier connector and fortunately does not need users to have a Premium Plan license.
The SharePoint List is a feature available on the SharePoint platform (Microsoft Lists is an extension of SharePoint Lists). It allows the storing and capturing of collections of data that can be associated with a particular SharePoint site.
As part of my experimentation with SharePoint Lists in Power Apps, I created a simple app that allows team members to capture topic requests for presentations done regularly within the team. The purpose of the app is to allow team members knowledgeable in requested topics to be aware of knowledge they can share within their team.
To use a SharePoint List connector in Power Apps an existing List is required. As shown in the image below I created a List named Topic Request Board to use for my experimentation.
There are plenty of options for column types that can be added to a List (eg. Text, Number, Person, Image, Yes/No, Currency). For my experimentation I added the following columns: Requestor (Person), Requested Topic (Single line of text), Requested Topic Details (Multiple lines of text) and Date Requested (Date and time). These columns were added in addition to the Title column which is added by default and cannot be removed.
With the List ready I connected to it in Power Apps:
Connecting to the List creates a basic app with Browse, Details and Edit screens, shown respectively in the image below. I have added images and a background to the Browse screen to improve its appearance.
Besides the added images and background on the Browse screen, I did not change anything else in the basic app. It has all the features that are required in the app. Team members can view captured requests, add new requests and edit existing requests.
Power Apps can easily be published in Microsoft Teams. It can be added to a chat, team or as a standalone app within Microsoft Teams as I did in the image below.
Users that have access to the app are able to add or edit topic requests and these changes affect the underlying data in the SharePoint List, as shown in the image below.
My experience in making the Topic Request Board app taught me that PowerApps makes it very easy to create simple apps. An app created using one of the standard tier connectors can still provide a lot of functionality and utility. When tasked with creating an app that allows users to interact with data, I might initially have been tempted to go for a SQL Server connector, which is a premium tier connector, to make use of the processing and storage capabilities of the relational database management system. However, a SharePoint List connector can provide an adequate level of storage and processing abilities for simpler forms of data. Although it does not provide as much freedom in designing as a relational database management system does, a SharePoint List is easy to set up, it provides some processing abilities ( eg. totals can be obtained for columns) and it can be secured by restricting access rights.