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PowerApps Canvas App Coding Standards and Guidelines

Headshot of article author Pat Dunn

Today we are happy to announce the release of the PowerApps canvas app coding standards and guidelines white paper!

Why did we create the white paper?

Creating a simple canvas PowerApp is easy. But as the complexity of your app increases, care must be taken to keep your apps maintainable and performant. Across the web there is such great information available about PowerApps, both from within Microsoft as well as a vibrant maker community, yet it’s hard to make sense of it all. How do you ensure that you’re building your canvas PowerApps correctly?

We brought our own PowerApps experience and knowledge, and spoke with expert PowerApps makers across the world to collect their standards and best practices and bring them together in this document. Our makers are a diverse group, representing small and medium businesses, multi-national corporations, non-profit organizations, government and municipal enterprises, ISV and consulting companies, Microsoft MVPs, and Microsoft internal product and IT teams.

Purpose of this white paper

Once you understand how to build a simple canvas PowerApp, this white paper will help you take it to the next level. The standards and guidelines are targeted at the enterprise application maker (developer) who is responsible for designing, building, testing, deploying, and maintaining PowerApps apps in a small business, corporate, or government environment. We feel that adherence to these guidelines will help developers in these areas:

  • Simplicity
  • Readability
  • Supportability
  • Ease of deployment and administration
  • Performance
  • Accessibility

As we mention in the white paper, these coding standards and guidelines are flexible and serve as a starting point for organizations to develop their own standards. This white paper is intended to be a living document. As Microsoft Power platform capabilities and industry standards change, so will this white paper.

Thank you!

We’d like to specifically thank the following people who shared their knowledge and time as they contributed to the white paper.

Mehdi Slaoui Andaloussi, Alex Belikov, Casey Burke, Ian Davis, Brian Dang, Rémi Delarboulas, Aniket J. Gaud, Nick Gill, Audrie Gordon, Erik Orum Hansen, Eric Mckinney, Santhosh Sudhakaran, Hubert Sui, Vanessa Welgemoed, and Keith Whatling.

– Todd Baginski and Pat Dunn

Where do I get the whitepaper?

Download the PowerApps canvas app coding standards and guidelines whitepaper today!