Announcing the general availability of Monitor in Power Apps

Since its early announcement back in October, 2019, Monitor has helped thousands of citizen and professional developers to efficiently troubleshoot and more rapidly solve issues they come across while building their Power Apps and solutions.

Monitor is a tool that offers makers a true low-code approach through a rich troubleshooting experience that does not require any complicated setup such as plug-in installations, or configuration settings. Through a one click experience, Monitor enables makers to start viewing a stream of events from a user’s session to diagnose and troubleshoot app behavior during development in Power Apps or to monitor published apps during runtime.

Monitor can help you diagnose and troubleshoot problems faster and build more reliable apps. It provides a deep view into how an app runs by providing a log of all the key events during app authoring and run. Monitor tool also provides a better understanding of how the events and formulas contained in your app work so you can improve performance and identify any errors or problems.

Now, we are excited to announce this tool is generally available (GA). We have introduced a new collaborative troubleshooting capability “Connect User” in Monitor to better facilitate team collaboration and troubleshooting.

This feature has started rolling out and is available in all commercial and government clouds today. Let us look at the new capabilities for Monitor.

Collaborative troubleshooting using Monitor

Monitor tool offers two features to facilitate collaborative troubleshooting and debugging of Power Apps’ problems. The first feature “Invite”, enables makers to share a monitoring session by inviting other members within the same organization to the same monitor session. For example, a maker troubleshooting a performance problem with Power Apps, can invite a member from the technical support team to concurrently view all the flowing events through the same troubleshooting monitor session. The second feature “Connect user”, enables makers and support teams to share a link with end users to launch a published app and connect it to a monitor session so that support teams can watch the sequence of events generated by end users’ interaction.

Invite user

Makers can share real-time monitor session with others, such as a support technician, to help investigate problems. Inviting other users to your Monitor session enables you to quickly collaborate and debug an app together, without the need to share your screen. When you invite others to participate in a session, they see the exact same app events in their own browser, without having to open the app or the need to reproduce the specific scenario that you’re debugging. This allows you and other participants to browse, view, and inspect the app events independently without stepping on each other or handing control back-and-forth to identify the problem.

When using Invite user feature for a published app:

1. User A plays the published app from Power Apps.
2. User A invites User B to a monitor session.
3. User B joins the monitor session with the link User A sent.
4. User A interacts with the app.
5. User B watches the events generated from User A’s interaction with the app in their own Monitor window.

NOTE :You can invite any user in your organization to a Monitor session. Users joining the session will see all the events generated by the app, including any data.

Recipient users can use the link to open the Monitor and connect to your Monitor session.

Connect user (Only for published Canvas Apps)

Maker can enable an end-user to launch a published canvas app and connect using a monitoring session. This feature allows the maker to watch the sequence of events generated while interacting with the app, and help with problem investigation.

• The Connect user feature enable makers and support teams to share a link with end users to launch a published app and connect it to a monitor session so that, support teams can watch the sequence of events generated by end users’ interaction.

NOTE : Connect user requires the app with Power Apps version 3.20042 or later. For earlier versions, publish the app again for this option to be available.

When using Connect user feature for a canvas app:

1. User A choose the desired app to monitor and open monitor.
2. User A selects Connect user and share the generated connect link with User B
3. User B plays the published canvas app by clicking the link shared by user A.
4. User A watches the monitored session as user B interacts with the app.

Monitor Grid Improvements

The ability to organize and filter the session events is an essential part of having a focused and effective troubleshooting session in Monitor. With the updated grid view, makers can now move columns left or right to change their order or pin a column by choosing the “Pin Left/Right” column menu option.

Additionally, the “Filter by” menu now offers multiple options based on the data type to enable makers to specify one or more filter condition to easily spot or search for specific event types and keywords.

As always, we would love to hear from you on how we could keep improving Monitor. Please leave your feedback and comments on this post so that we can keep track of your comments and requests.

You can learn more about Monitor here