Forum Discussion
Using Forms as a front end for a database
badongism Forms is not the best tool for this: unless you are using Forms Pro and CDS you can't pre-populate the form. And Forms doesn't have a feature to select course code and it then shows the course start date etc.
You would need to build an app in Power Apps to connect to the SharePoint list of courses for the user to amend as necessary.
Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User
- I am following this post because I have a small project as well.
I don't have Power Apps in my list of tools because I am not sure if all the users that are going to access the forms must has a license in Microsoft, and second the users need access to Internet for accessing the Power Apps hosting and the Power Apps host connects to On-premises database, which is a lot of network traffic, I know that a form has very small foot print regarding to network traffic.
I think Power Apps is more suitable for all the layers online, web host and database.
I am reading about .Net MAUI and I like it because the code can be deployed for Desktop and Mobile and, it is easy to code a form.
One point for Power Apps is security, hosted and maintained by Microsoft, while .Net MAUI is deployed to a folder so the form will be accessed in the office only. RobElliott what is CDS?
And what if our org uses a central database outside of SharePoint lists. Can the Power App be used to read from/pre-populate, then give the option to fill in/overwrite, that non-SharePoint database?
My org has a number of databases all linked internally so they can be queried as the data source within Power Apps, but I am not sure if Power Apps has the ability to write to those databases, or just read from it. Thanks!
andrev5 CDS was the old name for Microsoft's Dataverse database. The ability to read & write to/from a database depends what that database platform is; if it's Dataverse or SQL then a Power Apps can write to those. But it can't read or write to Access for example. It depends on whether there is already a connector for your database platform or whether someone will need to build a custom connector.
Rob
Los Gallardos
Intranet, SharePoint and Power Platform Manager (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)Thanks RobElliott - I really appreciate this info!
