The PowerApps CLI exciting new features

Today we released new capabilities for several of our most popular feature requests in the PowerApps CLI! We are now providing PowerApps component framework developers the ability to not only see changes in the test harness as they are made but to also push components directly into an org using the CLI. These innovations will greatly speed up the development inner loop!

The push capability will make you more efficient because it bypasses the custom component versioning requirements and does not require you to build your solution in order to import into your development environment. The watch capability removes the need to reload your test harness after every change is made.

 

If you have not yet updated your PowerApps CLI to the latest version, this release is definitely the time to do it!  Please install the latest MSI by following the tooling documentation to get all the latest capabilities.

 

Once you have the latest version of the CLI you can always refer to the tooling documentation or get quickly started using the steps outlined below.

 

Enable Watch Mode in the Test Harness

The test harness can be set up to watch and recompile the source code of your PowerApps Component Framework projects. To enable watch mode, start the test harness using the command “npm start watch” from the command prompt. The watch capability will detect changes in index.ts, ControlManifest.Input.xml, other bundled .ts files, and all resources declared in the manifest, then rebuild your component and automatically update the test harness without having to restart it.

 

Push Component to your Org

To start pushing your custom component directly into an environment, there is a quick but essential step of setting up your authentication profile in the CLI. This setup is a one-time effort where your profile can be saved for future connections. Here is how to do it:

To start with, please create your authentication profile using the command:

“pac auth create –url”

Now that you have an authentication profile, you can start pushing your updated component by following two simple steps:

1. In your VS command prompt, go to the root directory of your custom component project
2. Run the command “pac pcf push –publisher-prefix”

 

Let us know what you think!

We hope you enjoy the newly added features and are excited to hear what you thinks about them. If you have questions or other feedback, please let us know on the PowerApps component framework forum. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

 

Thank you,
Peter Vaynerman