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Prevent the use of Special Characters in a Text input
This process prevents a user from saving a range of Special Characters if entered in a Text Input. This may have other application as well as the Text Box example. A working example is shown below So how does this work? Firstly do a Collection of all special characters (you can do this at Screen OnVisible) by using their ASCII value ranges. This puts 31 Special Characters into the collection under the field FieldNo.Below is a gallery (with wrap at 4) showing the characters Note you may want to allow some such as Underscore _ (95) and will have to adjust the above to suit.Now put this on the OnChange of the Text Box…
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Filters – combining multiple criteria
Filters use various criteria to “dissect” a data source returning the records required, generally for a gallery, collection or other data gathering exercise.Simple Filters will generally refer to a Control (drop-down/combo box) where the selected value needs to match a field in the data source. In this exercise, the model below is based on a simple data source (a list of PC Devices) with two combo box controls and a text input. All affect the output in the gallery below. The list is sorted by Model Name and completely unfiltered looks like this The first Combo Box is from another list of Manufacturers, with the maker’s name also contained in…
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Opening Attachments from Power Apps instead of needing to download.
Option 1 – View mode opening In the example below, the Form is started in Edit Mode, showing a normal attachment control, however once it is switched to view mode, a different attachment list appears with an icon at the right that allows direct opening of the attachment with “one click”. If the file can be opened in a browser (images, PDFs) it will do so, otherwise it will download. So what is going on here? Firstly, a small limitation – the “view mode” list is actually a gallery (which cannot be inserted into the form), so is simply placed in the same location as the Attachment Control. Consequently, if the Form is longer…
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Basic debugging and error tracing
Introduction When you are building your app, putting in some code and see the “red squiggly lines” appearing under it, you immediately start thinking “what have I done wrong”. There are many forum posts with these types of questions that can be easily solved with a bit of investigation and knowledge of where to look for the issue. Contents Intellisense Format Text Labels with values Looking directly at the data Using Variables and Collections Look at the error message Hover over your code Pull your code apart and reconstruct it And/Or confusion Back to top IntelliSense Firstly, IntelliSense is your best friend. It is a bit like a predictive Google…
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Attaching Camera photos without either a Flow or JSON
In the below example, the “Photos” control is a normal (but re-purposed) Attachment Control on a form. The Attachment Control on the right is in another form displaying the same record to demonstrate that this works. The photo names are simply the time they are taken – you could use whatever you want here. So what is happening? Firstly, when the “Camera” icon is pressed, it does this OnSelect You also need to set your Camera StreamRate – 100 (one tenth of a second) seems to work well. And then the “Save” icon OnSelect You can probably delete the Refresh in most cases and would also clear the collection at Screen OnVisible. The Update of the Data Card (generally…
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Power Apps Controls and their References
Contents General When you start your Power Apps journey and start working with controls and their inputs and output references, there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding that can be quite easily alleviated, saving you both time and potential errors. Initially, you had probably “left them alone” with the settings Power Apps provides when they were created, used SubmitForm() to save the data and all worked exactly as you expected. Now you are needing to refer to them in code and possibly change the settings in the control itself to meet your needs. All of this should not be overwhelming if you take a little time to understand a…
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Starting your app – good practices
Planning your controls Now you have read my blog on Data Structure and have a great one in place, you are ready to get in and construct your app. You have put in a gallery and a form and are ready to write some code. What else do you have to do? Firstly, planning to lay a foundation for your app, you need to know “where everything is”. You will have to refer to all of your controls (screens, galleries, forms, controls) constantly in your code. You are assisted in this endeavor by the built-in IntelliSense function, which “predicts” what you might want to type and displays it in a…
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A guide to posting on the Power Apps Community forums
This site is often used as a reference tool for user’s posts on the Power Apps Community Forum.The below is some guidance of the things that users should consider when engaging with the responders, who are giving their time and best efforts to assist with their Power Apps journey and is designed as general guidance to the facilitation of a quick and accurate solution for your issue. This guidance is broken into four important sections Before you start When you post When you receive a response When the issue is solved Before you start Before you start constructing your post – please consider the following: – The responders on this…
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Constructing your first Power App – before you start
This might seem a bit of a strange subject title, but in the words of a great man of the past It is a bit like putting a roof on a house then wondering whether the foundations will hold it up – you need to construct your foundations to allow for the things you might want to do in the future. You have opened your new shiny new O365 box and had a look inside. You have purchased an E3 licence as you do not want the additional expense of premium features and are now wondering what you can do with what you have. The answer is quite a lot…
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Power Apps Slide Show Into Screen
This image show can be used on any screen, but would be good as a company intro when the app is opened. The example above has three images, but as many as required can be loaded. What is going on is fairly simple. The three images are firstly loaded into the Power Apps Media Next there are three Timer controls in this one (which are hidden) – one for each image displayed. At App OnStart(or Screen OnVisibleif that suits), initialize the first Timer with a Variable Now the first Timer has the following settings AutoStart: true Duration: 4000 (4 seconds, but set to whatever you want) OnTimerEnd: Set(vTimer,”Start2″) starts the second Timer Start: vTimer=”Start1″ Repeat: false Reset: false The…