{"id":7014,"date":"2017-03-23T09:39:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T09:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7014"},"modified":"2017-03-23T09:43:52","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T09:43:52","slug":"my-first-powerapp-a-business-mileage-recorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2017\/03\/my-first-powerapp-a-business-mileage-recorder.htm","title":{"rendered":"My first PowerApps app – a business mileage recorder"},"content":{"rendered":"

In common with many people who travel for work, I keep a record of my journeys so that I can claim mileage expenses. For the last couple of years, that record has been a spiral-bound notebook (for driving) and Strava (for cycling) –\u00a0though I haven’t actually claimed any mileage for cycling yet! I wanted to replace my analogue system with a smartphone app and, following a conversation a few weeks ago with my colleague Brian Cain (@BrianCainUC<\/a>), I decided to create something using Microsoft PowerApps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those who are unfamiliar with PowerApps, it’s a technology solution provided by Microsoft to help normal business users – people who are not developers – to create simple applications to connect systems and data. The resulting apps can run on mobile devices, as well as on Windows 10.<\/p>\n

PowerApps is available in my Office 365 subscription (though I think there are other ways to sign-up too) and I set to work creating my Mileage Recorder. A few minutes later I had something functional. Not long after that I had tweaked it to be pretty much what I needed. So I created an app in less than 30 minutes and it’s taken me three weeks to write this blog post! Hmm…<\/p>\n

Creating my first PowerApps app<\/h3>\n

My app is a simple three-screen app – taking a table in an Excel Workbook from OneDrive for Business as a data source. PowerApps recognised the data types in the columns of the table and formatted accordingly, then I tweaked things a little in PowerApps Studio.<\/p>\n

\"PowerApps\u00a0\"PowerApps\u00a0\"PowerApps<\/p>\n

I haven’t looked in detail at the architecture used by PowerApps but essentially the PowerApps app provides\u00a0a native OS\u00a0wrapper for any apps that I create. This means my app will work on any platform where PowerApps is supported.<\/p>\n

\"PowerApps<\/p>\n

I can also create a direct link to the app on my phone’s home screen but the look and feel is one of a PowerApps app – not a native application. None of that is an issue – if I want more complex cross-platform apps then someone who can cut code (not me!) can use Xamarin – but for a simple app, PowerApps seems to do the job.<\/p>\n

\"PowerApps\/Mileage<\/p>\n

The PowerApps documentation <\/a>helped me out a lot – and these were the tutorials I found most useful:<\/p>\n