Canvas Apps in PowerApps

Greetings to our Excellent non-profit organizations. In this article, we will give you an introduction of a method that helps you in developing applications with low-code experience called Canvas apps.

Canvas apps are types of Power Apps which are a great tool for creating custom business applications in Microsoft PowerApps with low code or no code experiences.

Power Apps is a set of low-code tools for building apps, workflows, AI bots, and data analytics that allows you to create modern applications from your data.

With Canvas apps, you can create custom business apps that connect to your data stored either in the data platform, which is Microsoft Dataverse, or in various online data sources (such as Excell, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and so on).

The applications built with PowerApps are part of the Power Platform. Therefore, you can only run your application inside the official PowerApp. You cannot publish it on AppStore or PlayStore.

Features of Canvas Apps

• Canvas applications can be run on multiple devices including mobile, desktop, and tablet.  
• A canvas environment allows you to drag and drop elements to build custom applications. These elements can be formatted to design a user-friendly interface for the users.
• Canvas apps can be easy to use and become user-friendly for the users.
• Once you create an app with templates that would be easily customizable because it has easy drag-and-drop functions element.
• By embedding canvas apps in an iframe, you can integrate those apps into websites and other services, such as Power BI or SharePoint.
• Canvas Apps also provides role-based access and supports all platforms. So, it is easy to access.

Now, you're going to create your first canvas app in Power Apps using data from an Excel table.

• To create your first canvas app, start by logging into the Power Apps with an admin account. Or if you don't have a license for Power Apps, you can sign up for free.
  1. Under Start from, select Excel.
  2. If you don't have a OneDrive for Business connection already, you'll be prompted to create. Select Create to create the connection.
  3. Select OneDrive for Business connection.
  4. Browse to the location where you have the Excel file.
  5. Under Choose a table, select the table.

Run the app:

Now that we have created our canvas app let’s run the app:

• To run the app, open “Preview” by pressing F5 (or by clicking or tapping the play icon near the upper-right corner
• Toggle the sort order by clicking or tapping the “sort” icon near the upper-right corner.
• Filter the list by typing or pasting one or more characters in the search box.
• Add a record by selecting the plus icon!
• Add the data that you desire, and then select the checkmark icon to save your changes.

Regards,