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Home / Business & Management / Business Technology / Dynamics 365: Using Power Platform Applications / Building Canvas Applications Summary

Building Canvas Applications Summary

Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform
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16.6
We spent a little bit of time on our course learning about Canvas apps. First we covered the fundamentals. We learned about the life cycle of a Canvas app. The visual design, the save and publish, the share, and the running of the app. We learned about our visual designer connecting to data sources at runtime. So that gives us a truly WYSIWYG experience and allows light design. The WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. So with that runtime access, then it gives us exactly what we’re trying to see. We saw the core concepts from the screens that we build to the expressions that give direction and the controls to add access to the screens.
55.2
In the hands on we began to take our model driven app we’ve been building and bringing it to a Canvas app. When we were discussing working with data and services, we talked about connecting to CDS, how when you edit the schema, all you need to do is simply refresh the entity to pick up those changes. We were connecting the gallery to some data. We used patching to update one or more of the records. And then, when it came to our hands on, we were able to get our current user, added points for our assessments, feedback, and a result screen for our knowledge application.
90.3
With the pixel perfect ability that we have here with Canvas apps, the user experience is very important. We use themes that give us some predesigned visual elements, offers us that consistent experience for our users. We talked about forms and how do we want to use the forms for our users to be able to experience the application, what views do we expect them to use, what form factors. We went through galleries and the choices that we have here and how we lay out the items on the forms. Do we want to have tiles only, subtitles, images, and so on. With our signals, we can get information back from the user’s device if it’s been enabled.
128.1
We can do things like use location or altitude information to determine next action. We looked at opportunities to make the application more intuitive for the user to work with. In our hands on here in our app, we put it all together, adding a few more features, buttons, and results for our user and then tested the app. Canvas apps can be embedded into SharePoint pages, Power BI, Microsoft Teams, and other websites, and soon, into our model driven forms. When embedding in other apps, you bring the flexibility of the Canvas app design surface plus use all the connectors to the app you are building in the context of that other app.
164.4
In many cases, this can mean bringing the Power Platform app or data directly where the user is spending their time. While model driven offers a quick way to get an app up and running on a data-centric app, it doesn’t allow the blank canvas design experience of a Canvas app or access to all of the connectors. In preview at the time that when are recording this, the ability to embed a Canvas app in a model driven form unlocks what used to require a developer to build, a custom control, or an HTML web resources. Now that can all be done with the Canvas app.

In the previous step, we learned about Embedded Apps. Let’s summarize Building Canvas Application in this step.

First, we covered the fundamentals, then we learned about the lifecycle of a Canvas app. It’s the visual design, then save and publish, the share, and the running of the app. We learned about our visual designer connecting to data sources at runtime, so that gives us a truly WYSIWG experience and allows the live design.

Join the discussion

We spent a little bit of time in the course learning about Canvas apps. First, we covered the fundamentals and then we learned about the lifecycle of a Canvas app. How do you think WYSIWYG affects Building Canvas Applications and why?

Use the discussion area below to let us know your thoughts. Try to respond to at least one other post and once you’re happy with your contribution, click the Mark as complete button to check the Step off, then you can move to the next step which is a quiz to assess your knowledge on Building Canvas Applications.

Up next, we complete a Poll on BI then wrap up the week.

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This content is taken from
CloudSwyft Global Systems, Inc. online course,

Dynamics 365: Using Power Platform Applications

View Course

Want to keep learning?

This content is taken from CloudSwyft Global Systems, Inc. online course
Dynamics 365: Using Power Platform Applications
View Course
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