Microsoft 365 Community Community Demos, 21 Apr 2021

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From YouTube: Make your Power Apps sessions persistent when switching Microsoft Teams tabs!

Description

Tired of losing data captured in your Microsoft Teams-based Power Apps when you leave the app to respond to a chat message or go to another channel? In this 21-minute Maker-focused demo, Hardit Bhatia shares how to store data and then reload data when restarting your Power App to effectively achieve session data persistence. Hint – make your app off-line capable. Works on desktop too! This PnP Community demo is taken from the Microsoft Power Apps community call - April 2021, recorded on April 21, 2021.

Demo Presenter: Hardit Bhatia (Hitachi Solutions America, Ltd.) | @thepoweraddict

Supporting documents:
• Blog post - Make your Power Apps sessions persistent when switching Teams tab! | https://thepoweraddict.com/make-your-power-apps-sessions-persistent-when-switching-teams-tab/
• Documentation - Inspection sample apps | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/teams/inspection (understand why app sessions were made persistent in this app)
• Documentation - Customize sample apps installed from Teams store | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/teams/customize-sample-apps (review the relevant code in Power Apps Studio)
• Documentation - Develop offline-capable canvas apps | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/offline-apps (the basic principles used in making offline-capable apps)

Stay connected:
• Twitter https://twitter.com/microsoft365dev
• YouTube https://aka.ms/m365pnp/videos
• Blogs https://aka.ms/m365pnp/community/blog

A

All right, thank you for coming on today. I imagine that you've been doing a lot of work with powerapps and teams lately, and that's how you came up with this topic.

B

Right, yeah, it's it's been something that I've been doing for the last approximately one year. Definitely one of my coolest projects crazy at the same time, uh but you know that perfect balance between craziness and fun is is what makes it interesting.

A

Yeah was, was this topic, something that you just got kind of personally annoyed with and decided to solve it, or was it something that you rolled your app out and then your users came back and went? Oh, my gosh, I'm bouncing back and forth between other things and teams in this power app. Can you fix this and make it easier on me.

B

So combination of both right so initially way back when this was introduced, you couldn't even pop out the powerapps maker outside. That was my biggest pain because I mean looking inside the studio, get a chat message go to the chat and then you come back and then you know you will have to start all over again.

B

So that was my biggest main point and then, um as people started using a couple of our apps, you know they started complaining about the same, because not all the apps would need this feature and I'll talk about um the I'll talk about examples of which ones would need this the most. So it was a combination of both couple of makers complaining about it, and then you know people in general just complaining about the fact that you know using apps and teams is cool awesome.

B

But the fact that when you come back, you lose your entire session uh was a huge pain point.

A

I've already seen two different folks in the chat. Oh, I said this is a huge pain point for me too. So yeah feel free to take over the screen there and show us what you've got you.

B

A

Your twitter profile pic must have been taken a little bit ago.

B

Yeah that was way back when, when I was uh then I did not have the covert weight gain and I was getting at it, so I wasn't even married and that big, so the combination of covert and marriage results in this.

B

So most of you, I'm sure, if not all of you know about dataverse for teams, but just some background. It brings the capabilities of our platform into teams. You can use power, apps power, automate flows, power, virtual agent boards right from within teams, and it's not just about using them. You can even create them from within teams, so so pretty powerful and makes a lot of sense, especially these days when um most of us spend a lot of time in teams right. So all of us are working from home. We chat a lot.

B

We have meetings and teams. So given the fact that we spend almost the entire time of our working day in teams, this just makes it more productive to stay within teams and still create all the fun stuff that you love, creating.

B

I consider dataworks for teams, or I like to call it the lighter version of dataverse, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but some of the capabilities of full data works like row level security, some of the complex fields like polymorphic lookups.

B

They don't exist in data works for teams, so it is a lighter version, but I still think it's awesome, because it's a relational database and one thing that I really like about dataverse for teams, which is not yet available in dataverse app maker, is the fact that you can edit tables using the table. Editor almost like excel. So you open a table, you start entering data and it gets saved. So I think I think that's pretty cool.

B

So that's why it's it's when I say it's a lighter version, I'm not diminishing what data works for teams is it. It has a few features that are better than full dataverse, uh but then some of the complex features or the rich features that you get with full database are not available in database for teams it brings with it a set of new controls called fluent ui controls. They are awesome, the very first time when I looked at those controls. I had a bad reaction, which was why do these controls have less properties?

B

Power apps is all about canvas apps at least is all about customization. So why should I give up on a few properties and then eventually, slowly as I started using them, I felt that I think that those controls are pretty cool because, yes, they come with less properties. For example, I don't think you can add a border to a label, but that's the whole point right.

B

If you start making a canvas app, if you don't pay enough attention to ui your app, even a functional can look pretty bad, so what this allows us to do is uh it allows us to create apps that look good uh without you paying any attention to the ui. Just to give you one quick example: uh if you add a button, you get a new property which asks if the button is a primary button or not.

B

If you say it's a primary button, it looks like the purple button you see in teams without you setting any color property for that button. So I think just for that reason. These controls are pretty slick. um I am not the best designer by any imagination, but the apps that I create within teams are actually looking way better than the apps I've created outside.

B

So I think those controls are pretty cool. If you haven't checked them out strongly suggest you do uh one thing to keep in mind. There are certain properties that have been renamed.

B

I think uh can't can't remember them off the top of my head, but properties have been renamed, so that has been throwing off makers a little bit, especially those who have used dataverse earlier, so do check it out. There is a link on microsoft, docs, which I can share, that explicitly lists out the properties that have been changed and then it it just provides better integration within teams. And, yes, we have the teams connector that we can use outside of dataworks for teams, but there is a teams.

B

Integration object when you create an app within dataverse for teams which gives you a lot of contextual information. With regards to where you are in a team. Are you in a meeting? Are you in a channel and so on and so forth? What is what is your uh team's mold or theme? Is it dark mode or is it high contrast? Is it default so a lot of cool stuff using the teams, integration object and if any one of you has used embedded canvas apps that has canvas apps inside of model driven apps?

B

You would know that there is a model driven form integration control which gives you the context of where your canvas app is or which record it's in. um So just like that there is this contextual integration object for data members for teams as well with that said in the last year, or so I think, we've created like five out-of-the-box sample apps for dataverse for teams. We are in the process of creating four or five more.

B

I'm gonna talk about a couple of them where this particular feature that we will be reviewing today makes a lot of sense. I'm going to use inspection as an example.

B

So what that allows you to do is it allows you to set up areas or assets and then define inspection, forms or checklists, and then each checklist can have multiple checklist steps. The it comes with three apps. So if you install inspection from the teams, app store, you'll get three different apps one is the manage inspections app where you can set up areas you can set up. Checklists next is review inspection where you can review the finished inspections. It also gives you some basic analytics information using powerapps canvas app charts.

B

So even if you don't have power bi, you will get some insights into um how the inspections are going and then the third is the end user app the inspection app which you can use to perform an actual inspection and there are multiple different ways. You can record your findings for each step. You can record if it was okay or no or if um it's it's not applicable, and then you can also add notes to each step, and then you can capture multiple images for each step, which, for an inspection, makes a lot of sense.

B

What happens is when you open an app, uh let's say within a channel, and before that, let me let me get to one one other point. So there are two ways now or two places now, where you can add an app well, three one is within a meeting. I'm not gonna touch that for now.

B

um First way that you can add an app to teams is within a channel and then the other way which was rolled out not too long ago is broad distribution, where you can actually pin your app to the left nav in teams. It's just like how you have chat teams, calendar or meetings.

B

You can actually have an app pinned there, so you can easily access it without having to go inside of a channel, and I, like broad distribution, a lot because just like how you can pop out the maker studio now within teams, you can even pop out a broad distribution app from your left nav.

B

So keeping that one aside, if your app is inside a channel when you switch when you start the session, you start, let's say with inspections right, so you start recording your findings. Then you figure out that you need to go to another channel. Maybe I don't know you might want to go to wiki to get some information or you get a chat message that you have to reply to. When you come back to the app you lose all your information, so the session that you were in gets lost.

B

Let's see if this works fine, um I have a small recording of the inspection app on my phone. It's an older version. So if you install it now, it will look slightly different, but I'm going to select an area here. I selected a checklist step and then I'm going to start recording my findings. So the first is: ok, I'm going to add a note and I'm not going to add a picture because really isn't needed to illustrate the point.

B

But now, when I go back into the app it'll again, ask me if I want to perform an inspection and if I say yes, it will make me go through the entire process again and the information I added gets lost. Now in this particular example, it's a couple of steps.

B

Sure you can do that again right, but in reality most inspection forms have five or six or ten different steps, and if- and you might have captured images as well, so a lot of information that you can easily lose, which you have to which you will have to capture again. So it's a huge huge pain point and out of the five different apps, so inspection, employee ideas, bulletins milestones and issue reporting. This is the most relevant. This is most relevant for inspections and issue reporting, because these are used by front-end workers.

B

Who are you know, performing inspections or reporting an issue, and that's when you are capturing a lot of information. So you definitely need this feature uh if you're creating a project in milestones. Even if you lose a little bit of information, it's not that critical. Surely you can go into the app and add it again, but these two apps specifically inspections and issue reporting- will make this very painful.

B

So um what when we say that we need to retain a session? The first thing that comes to my mind is offline capability. Sure it's not exactly the same. You are still within network within range you're, not losing connectivity, but you're still kind of losing the connection with your app so because it sounds very familiar to offline capabilities.

B

That's why the approach that you can take to resolve this is the approach you take when making an app offline capable and the basic steps right. uh Are you save all your data in collections? Then you save that collection using save data on your as a local file on your device.

B

Then you load those collections using load data during app onstart and then, if based on what data you get back, you can redirect the users uh to the appropriate screen.

B

So with those changes, this is how the same app behaves. So I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to start an inspection.

B

I will select um area start the inspection now and then record the findings for the first step. So I'm going to mark this. Okay, add a note and then save it, and then I'm going to navigate out of this app go to another tab or or another chat, doesn't really matter, and then I'm gonna go back into the app and see what happens so as I as the app loads it checks.

B

If there is data, if there is, I expose another button that says continue last inspection and it retains all the data that I had captured. So it says that I had recorded the first step as okay and I also added a node. If I would have captured images, they would show up here as well, so this this makes it pretty useful right. Users won't have to think twice before, navigating to another chat or tab within a team fearing that they lose all the data.

B

So with that said, with offline capabilities, excluding the windows app for power apps, which has its has a lot of issues- and I don't think, has been supported in a long time. Offline capabilities are supported on mobile devices. They don't work on web, but with data works for teams, they work on mobile devices and your team's desktop app.

B

It still doesn't work within a browser which I really hope happens one day, but it brings those capabilities to desktop as well, so with that I'm going to cover a few tips and best practices.

B

So if you have records especially ones that have image fields in them, don't store the entire record right. You can just store the good and when um you load the app again, you can find the good do a lookup and then get the full record.

B

This is uh important special, especially when you are on desktop, because the storage limit is limited to 1 mb and most of the pictures that we take these days are more than 1, mb or very close to 1 mp. So if you take one picture, you're done so that makes it very important that you conditionally store images based on the device that you're accessing the app from if you're on a mobile device feel free to store everything.

B

But if you are on desktop, you want to make sure you conditionally save data limiting the number of records you store or limiting the data that you store because of the storage limitations, which is 1 mb on the teams desktop app.

B

So how would you do that there is a parameter called host line type. It has four different values: web desktop, ios and android, so web is when you're accessing teams through a browser desktop is when you're accessing it through teams desktop and ios and android are, if you're accessing it through an iphone or an android device.

B

So what you can do in the app onstart is check what the value is for host line type. So I'm setting up this very simple variable checking for the client type if it is web or desktop, then I'm setting that variable to false if it is ios or android. I'm setting that to true now after that, wherever I'm storing data storing my collections into local files using save data, I check for that variable. So if I'm on a mobile device, then save my collection of images.

B

If I'm not ignore the images, so with that one simple parameter, you can conditionally control what data you want to save if the user is on a mobile device versus if the user is accessing teams through desktop- and I I'll get to one of the best practices and tell you why this is important and how I ran into this accidentally.

B

So a couple of best practices here: uh first, one which applies not just to this particular use case, but whenever you use load data there is a third optional parameter called ignore, non-existent file. I set it to true every single time, because if you don't do that, when the when a user accesses this app for the very first time, data has not been saved yet on their local devices.

B

So in the app on start, when you do load data, it's not going to find the file, and it throws a very ugly error which you don't want to show to your end user, especially if they are accessing the app for the first time so set that to true. uh If load data doesn't find find that file, it will ignore it. If it does, it will load the data.

B

Second, is the clear data function? It's I don't think it's listed in the powerapps formula reference, but it is another function in this group of functions for saving data and loading data. Clear data, at least in my testing a few months ago, and um until until actually even a few weeks ago, doesn't work. It actually doesn't clear data in your local files and you can do a quick test to check if it works.

B

Now right, you can add a button, store, a text in a variable and then add that variable or try to save that variable into a local file. Using save data, then clear the data and check when you re reload the app do you still see it and most likely you would you will um so? What I do is I clear the collection and then use save data. So it's a combination of clear and safe data that gives me the same result as clear data would have given the last one.

B

Here is an error message that you might see when you use save data. The error message is actually pretty misleading. It says there was a problem: saving your data name could be too long. When I first ran into this issue, I thought my collection names or my local file names are too long, so I actually went through the entire app renaming my collections renaming my local files, and I was still running into this issue.

B

That's when I figured out that this error comes up when the amount of data that you're trying to save is more than the limit so like I was actually storing images, even when I was accessing the app through the team's desktop app, and that's when I was getting this error so that conditionally, storing data when you are on desktop makes a lot of sense because it reduces the probability of you reaching the data limit and that prevents you from seeing this ugly error message right at the top in your app.

B

That's pretty much it from my from me today hope. uh Hopefully that was helpful and um thanks chuck and todd for giving me the opportunity to share it. Sharing this with the community.

A

You're welcome thanks for coming and sharing it with everybody. I see a few different folks talking about how helpful they find this in the chat already. There is one question that that popped in chat that you didn't answer along the way. I don't know if you even saw it, but it was related to trying this in sharepoint. Have you ever tried this in in a sharepoint power app?

A

I I don't. um I've never tried save data and load data in in a to do that in the sharepoint form powerapp before so, I'm not sure. If that is capabilities available there, I think it would be.

B

So if you're accessing and again I haven't used sharepoint a lot, but if you're accessing sharepoint through a browser, I think it won't be supported. Just because uh save data load data are not supported in a browser. um That would be my guess, but yeah would definitely be fun to test it out and figure. If that works.

A

So you probably, I don't know of any way to open up the powerapps player app and then open up the app associated with the sharepoint list. I just can't fathom how that would work, so I I guess in that case it's probably you're not going to be able to pull it off for that one.

B

A

Great thank you for sharing. That's awesome come on back next time. You have something else: cool to share we'd love to have you again.

B