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Get started with Power Apps

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The Power Apps home page offers you various options for creating your own apps, opening apps that you or others have created, and performing related tasks. These tasks range from the most simple, such as identifying the license or licenses that give you access, to more advanced capabilities like creating custom connections to specific data sources.

Navigation.

Legend:

  1. Left navigation pane
  2. Search
  3. Environment information and settings
  4. Build apps
  5. Get help from a virtual agent

1 – Left navigation pane

Find what you need with the new left navigation pane. If this is the first time, you're signing in to the Power Apps home page the left navigation pane will show the following menu items:

Power Apps left navigation pane.

Legend:

  1. Home: Takes you to the Power Apps home page.
  2. Create: Create apps as such as canvas apps, model-driven apps, chatbots, and AI models.
  3. Learn: The learn hub lets you explore documents, training material, get help from the Power Apps community, and other resources that will help you to create and build Power Apps.
  4. Apps: If you've created an app or someone else has created one and shared it with you, you can play or edit it. You can also filter the list of apps based on criteria such as whether you opened it recently.
  5. Your most used pages such as Tables, Connections, Flows: When you first sign in to the new navigation experience the top three pages that you use most are pinned to the left navigation pane. Use the More option to unpin any of these pages and pin something else.
  6. More: Pin your most used items to the left navigation such as tables, flows, and more.
  7. Power Platform: Explore other Power Platform products or service.

Pin and unpin

Pin your most used pages in the navigation pane so you can quickly access features that you use frequently. Links to other pages are available through the More link. When you pin an item, it appears in the middle section above More.

When you sign in to the new navigation experience, the system will automatically pin your most and recently used pages on the left navigation pane. However, you can pin and unpin pages and customize it to your preference.

First time sign in dialog box.

To pin or unpin a page from the left navigation pane, select More and then select the Pin button. pin or Unpin button. unpin button.

Pin or unpin an item.

You can also unpin and item by selecting the more button and then select Unpin.

Unpin a page.

Discover all

To see all your your Power Apps, from the left navigation pane, select More > Discover all.

Discover all your Power Apps.

When you select Discover all you'll see the Discover page on the left navigation pane. To keep in pinned, select the Pin button. pin button.

Move up or move down

When you have a few pages pinned in the navigation pane you can start moving them up or down.

To move a page up or down, select the more button next to the page that you want to move, and then select Move up or Move down.

Move up or down.

Power Platform

From the left navigation pane, select Power Platform to access Power Platform services such as Power Platform Admin Center, Power BI, and Power Automate.

Access Power Platform services.

2 – Search

Use the Search to find apps, create apps, or find help documentation.

To find your app, start typing one or more characters in the search bar. When you find the app you want, select the banner icon to play or edit the app.

3 – Environment information and settings

View your environment information and settings.

Choose an environment

For best results, start by ensuring that the home page is set to the right environment. More information Choose an environment.

Environment switcher.

Notifications

Select the bell icon to see notifications. Notifications are stored in the notification center until you dismiss them or when they expire.

Settings

Select the gear icon to perform tasks such as connecting to data sources, identifying your Power Apps license or licenses, and opening the page where you can perform administrative tasks.

  • Admin center: Opens another windows and goes to the Power Platform admin center.

  • Plans(s): View your licenses. More information: Licensing overview

  • Advanced settings: Manage your admin settings. More information: Manage Microsoft Dataverse settings.

  • Session details: View your Power Apps session details such as session ID, tenant ID, environment ID and more.

  • Developer resources: Access developer resources.

  • Power Apps settings: View or update your language and time settings, notifications, or access directories.

  • Themes: From the list of themes, select a theme for your organization.

  • Password: Change your password.

  • Contact preferences: Update your contact information.

    Power Apps settings

Help

In the header, select the question mark icon to find more information about either canvas apps or model-driven apps.

List of model-driven apps with an ellipsis menu open.

You'll find links to documentation, Power Apps training on Microsoft Learn, the Power Apps Community (where you can share information with users in other organizations), and the Power Apps blog (where the newest features are announced).

4 – Build apps

Start building apps, which provide rich business logic and workflow capabilities to transform your manual business operations into digital, automated processes.

In Power Apps, you can create and run these types of apps:

  • Canvas apps support designing custom UI and connecting to data from various sources.
  • Model-driven apps have a standard UI and connect to data only in Dataverse. However, you can more easily create other elements such as views, dashboards, and different types of business logic.
  • Cards (preview) are micro-apps with enterprise data and workflows and interactive, lightweight UI elements that other applications can use as content.

In addition, Power Apps also allows you to create Power Pages websites. More information: What is Power Pages.

If you choose an environment that has a Dataverse database, you can build canvas or model-driven apps from the same Home page.

From the Home page, you can create apps, websites, chatbots, and AI models:

5 – Ask a virtual agent

Get contextual help while building your app using the Power Platform virtual agent. More information: Get help building your app from a virtual agent