Get Help Using PowerApps – Key Support Offerings!

It is a wonderful thing when PowerApps works as intended, and we’re all able to make and use awesome apps quickly and easily! Although this occurs most of the time, we know how frustrating it can be when you’re bottlenecked due to lack of information, product issues, and/or unclear error messages. With that said, I’d like to outline the many options available for getting support when you need it.

Our determination to make you successful extends into four principal support areas, and I will cover three in this blog, and the fourth will be covered in more detail next week:

1. On-Demand content

• Guided Learning (Level 100) – Guided Learning is intended to guide you through the process of learning PowerApps. It sets you up for success by outlining a logical path to understanding its’ business value and core features. Update coming: We are currently updating the Guided Learning topics, so expect to see new and revised topics and videos coming very soon! Get Involved – Action Item: Please post your guided learning suggestions in the comments below, or in Forum Ideas with the label tag of “GuidedLearning”.

• Articles and Feature Documentation – Our articles provide complete usage and reference information for the many features and services available in PowerApps. They not only explore each topic in detail, but they also provide practical examples on the bottom of each article. Get Involved – Action Item: Add a comment to the bottom of any article topic whenever you’d like more clarifications. Our documentation team is paying close attention to your comments!

• Webinars and Conference Recordings – Recordings give you a second chance to catch the magic of an online, or in person, event with Microsoft product teams. Currently we plan at least two (2) online events per month, but if you’re busy or on vacation, you can always watch them on-demand when you get back! Get Involved – Action Item: Please share your favorite webinars and conference recordings on social media with the hashtags #PowerApps and @ArtsyPowerApper whenever you like the content and want more like it.

• Product Blogs – Microsoft’s product teams are always looking for ways to share the newest features, as well as new ideas on how to use apps in your business. We do this directly from our Product Blog. FYI: In addition to blogs by the product teams, our community managers are also looking for exceptional external blogs that highlight features or practical business scenarios, and will reach out to you to repost and to amplify your best practices as a leader in this space.

• Community Forums – Community Forums extend your collaboration out into the worldwide community of PowerApps users! Although we do have monitors on the forums to help in answering questions, the greatest opportunity comes from your own answers to questions, which can earn badges and kudos from contributing and solving issues. It took me a while to get used to the forum, but once I did, I had so much fun answering questions and becoming a leader in the community (before I started as an employee). Try it out! I bet you’ll also get a ton of new app ideas just by helping others in the community forums. Get Involved – Action Item: Find an unsolved question in the forums and solve it! Help us make someone’s day! 

• New! Best Practices Forums – We are encouraging usage of our newest forums that are focused on “app makers” by covering the 3 critical components of app design: Data Sources (“Creating and Managing Data Sources”), App Building and Sharing (“Community Apps Gallery”), and UX/UI (“Design Matters”). Get Involved – Action Item: Please help us by posting best practices, and lessons learned, into these new forums to share what you know, but also to earn swag that I will be sending out to frequent contributors to the Best Practices section.

2. Support Knowledge Base

Simply type a concise description of your issue in the search box, and knowledge base articles on that topic will be returned in search results. We also are tracking common issues across all regions and will surface those directly in the “Top issues and questions” section (shown below).

3. Customer Support Services (CSS)

Customer Support Services differs from the options outlined above as they are primarily for issues that are related to service impacts or feature failures, rather than for ‘how-to’ questions. Here is a good checklist for why you would need a support request instead of posting a question or looking for a knowledge base article:

• Are you experiencing frequent session crashes on a single app?

• Are you offered a session “log” download during a crash?

• Are your consumers seeing error messages that are difficult to understand, and which are not related to your own Custom APIs?

• Is the service unavailable? (unable to run PowerApps in authoring or consumer experiences)

In these cases, you should create a support ticket with our CSS team who will respond to your issue and track it to resolution. To expedite your request, be sure to attach screen shots, session details, and/or log data with your ticket submission, and please let us know if the issue is impacting many users. You may raise a ticket with CSS using this link: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/support/pro/ticket .

Troubleshooting tips for typical issues: 

• In addition to sharing apps with others, make sure to give them access to any data required for the app to run. They may, or may not see, an error message like this one depending on the relevant data source(s):

• Always have users check their connections to ensure all passwords are current and the connection can be made to data sources. They may, or may not see, an error message like this one in that case: (see https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/add-manage-connections/ )

• Create a smokescreen scenario for testing Custom API dependencies before raising a support ticket.

Other helpful troubleshooting information (updating regularly): https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/common-issues-and-resolutions/

 

4. Opportunities to work directly with Microsoft Product Teams
…more on these coming in my blog post next week

• Forum Ideas
• Ask Microsoft Anything Events
• User Research Panels
• MVP & Insiders Programs
• User Group Partnerships
• Guest Webinars

Until the next blog, I want to thank you very much for being awesome supporters of PowerApps as we grow and extend our services. We will always appreciate your feedback and suggestions, as we continue to enable you with support options and clarifications! Get rewarded for getting involved and taking my action items! Earn PowerApps swag by sending me a direct message with links to 3 or more completed "Get Involved – Action Items" above.