What is Power Platform?

The Power Platform is set of three cloud services provided by Microsoft build on top of Azure  AD to provide secure and safe web applications development and data management.

1. Power Apps - to create  enterprise grade mobile/ web apps in no time

2. Power Automate - to perform automated tasks

3. Power BI -  to visualize and analyze your business data

Power Apps:

Power Apps is an application development platform which allows you (mainly "Citizen Developers") to create enterprise level mobile/ web applications easily and quickly. It is easy learn.

Click here to create  your own trail instance and try out with at your own pace.

Power Automate:

Power Automate is a powerful workflow service from Microsoft, that helps you to build automated workflows to get notifications, recurrent jobs and collecting data and etc.,

Power BI:

Power BI is a data and analytics reporting tool that helps to create interactive data visualizations with business intelligence

Communities - provide help with Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI are 

1. Power Apps Community

2. Power Automate Community

3. Power BI Community

Elements to know in Power Apps

Below are the elements to know before jumping-off to Power Apps.

• Power Apps Site

• Environment

• Power Apps Mobile

Power Apps Site: this is the starting point to start with Power Apps. A front end  - where you start creating and managing your web apps, data and solutions (a bucket - consists of your web application components)

Basically it is https://make.powerapps.com

Environment: A space, to store, manage your organization's data, web applications and users access. An environment may or may not contain Database.

For every organization a default environment gets created automatically at tenant level and shared by all the users in that tenant. 

For more details - visit Microsoft documentation here

Power Apps Mobile: Power Apps mobile is available on iOS and Android mobile and tablets with Windows 10. Irrespective of the platform (Operating System), this app allows you to execute your Power Apps seamlessly. Basically Power Apps mobile is OS independent. 

Here is the link to download

How to create a CASE record along with Customer Field (Polymorphic Lookup)

Since CUSTOMER Lookup is a combination of both Contact and Account entities, we cannot directly use it in Forms or Patch operations

This can be achieved in two ways (both require two different combo box controls on the form)

• Using Patch

• Using Form 

Using Patch: 

•  Create a canvas app

• Add Cases, Accounts and Contacts entities from Data Sources

• Add a From Control and map it to Case entity

• Add required Data Cards to it (Do not include Customer field)

• Add a Radio Button

• Add Two Combo Boxes and name them cmbAccounts and cmbContacts. Select cmbAccounts control and update its “ITEM” property with Accounts entity and for cmbContacts use “Contacts” against its Item property.

• Place the combo boxes on top of another (basically first cmbAccounts and on top of it cmbContacts)

• Select Radio button and go to “On Select” event and add below expression

If(Radio2.Selected.Value="Accounts",Set(varCMBAccounts, true);Set(varCMBContacts,false),If(Radio2.Selected.Value="Contacts",Set(varCMBAccounts, false);Set(varCMBContacts, true)))

• Select Accounts Combo box-> Visible -> varCMBAccounts

• Select Contacts Combo box -> Visible -> varCMBContacts

Now, on select of “Create Case” button – use the following expression to create a new Case Record

Patch (Cases, Defaults (Cases),{'Case Title':DataCardValue1.Text},Subject:DataCardValue2.Selected},{Customer:If(Radio2.Selected.Value = "Accounts", cmbAccounts.Selected, If(Radio2.Selected.Value = "Contacts",cmbContacts.Selected))}); ResetForm(Form1)

Using Form Control (Submit Form (<<Form Control Name>>)):

1. Create a canvas app

2. Add Cases, Accounts and Contacts entities from Data Sources

3. Add a From Control and map it to Case entity

4. Add required Data Cards to it and include Customer Data Card too

5. Hide the Customer Data Card (Visible -> false)

Please follow the same steps above from 6 to 10.  Now, select the “Customer” Data Card on the Form and go to “Update” property and add 

On “Create Case” button:SubmitForm(Form1); ResetForm(Form1)