Announcing the general availability of Power Apps component framework for Canvas apps
Today we are very thrilled to announce the general availability (GA) of Power Apps component framework for canvas apps. This release marks a significant milestone for Power Apps as we achieve GA status on both model-driven and canvas apps. First-party use cases, combined with deeply engaged community whom we are very thankful for working very closely with us, makes this a truly customer-driven release.
Custom code development bridges the gap between professional and citizen developers offering true no-cliffs extensibility. Now, pro developers can not only utilize power and flexibility of modern web technologies, but also can include their existing IP and external third-party libraries to seamlessly extend industry leading Low-Code Development Platform for Professional Developers. Note that this is the same framework Microsoft uses internally to build first-party UX controls for both model-driven and canvas apps. The framework is equipped and geared to have enterprise grade support for usability, performance, security, ALM and other fundamentals.
With Power Apps component framework preview announced for Power Apps portals recently, we are super excited about the prospects of catering to millions of new Power Apps portals users.
In addition to a continued focused on quality and fundamentals, following features are being released as part of this release –
- Simplified code component import experience can now be used to add code components to the app using “get more components” flow – inline with the canvas components.
- Default properties panel now can show component manifest properties, enabling quick access for all makers to easily configure a code component.
- Visual premium indicator for code components that use external services will help makers better understand licensing implication upfront.
- Property-set configuration for data-set now support intellisense, and just needs the column name from configured data set.
- ALM support tracks and adds solution dependency from canvas apps to code components inline with model-driven apps. Code components that are in use by canvas apps can’t be deleted.
- Additional framework APIs are now added to supported set for canvas apps.
- Advanced Dataset APIs support enables advanced operations like filters, pagination, and sorting.
In addition to canvas apps GA feature set, we are also adding new data type support for model-driven apps based on community feedback. We have been closely tracking component framework feature requests on ideas portal and have delivered many top-voted features asks. These changes will be available soon as we rollout PAC CLI update this month.
- Lookup data type support enables developers to build Lookup control type and also configure Lookup column type to properties of the control.
- Multi-select option set data type can now be used to build custom code component to replace multi-select option type field.
Thousands of code components developed across various platforms have really helped mature component framework to be more robust and feature rich over last few years. As the new changes roll out, we look forward to continued engagement with our customer and partner community via pro-dev forums and other channels.
Cheers,