Exercise: Build a basic model-driven app

20 minutes

In this unit, you create a model-driven app by using one of the standard entities that are available in your Microsoft Power Apps environment.

Important

This hands-on lab assumes that you have a Dataverse instance that you can work with. If you don't have an instance you can work with, you can obtain a 30-day Power Apps trial plan here.

Important

If you sign up for a Power Apps trial using your company email address, and your company is already using Power Apps, your trial will be added to your organization's current tenant. If your current Microsoft account doesn't already have the necessary permissions, you may not be able to add tables to your trial. In these instances, you can sign up for a new trial account that doesn't use your work or school account. You can find instructions on how to do this here.

Create a model-driven app

Create a blank model-driven app

Sign in to Power Apps by using your organizational account.
Select the environment you want or go create a new one.
Using the navigation on the left, select + Create.
On the Create your app page, in the Start from section, select Blank App.
On the Create screen, select Blank app based on Dataverse, and click Create.
On the New model-driven app page, enter a name and description for the app. (For example, enter "My first app" for the name, and "My first model-driven application" for the description.)
After a few minutes, your new app will appear.

Add Account table to your app

You can add pages to your app by using the App Designer.

If necessary, using the navigation on the left, select the show or hide menu names button (looks like 3 horizontal lines) to show the menu names.
Select the Group1 text. On the right-hand side of the screen change the Title to Customers.
Using the command bar at the top, select the + Add Page button.
On the Add Page screen, select Table based view and form, then select the Next button.
On the Add table view and form pages screen, select Account then select the Add button.

Note

Your environment may not contain an account table. If that's the case, you'll need to create one. Use the navigation on the left and select Dataverse, expand, and select Tables On the top action bar, select New table. In the form that appears, add in Account in the Display name field and Save.

Screenshot of how to create an Account table.

Add forms and views to your app

Now that we added a table to our app, we're going to specify which Account forms and views should be used with the application.

Using the navigation on the left, select Pages.
Expand Account and select Account form.
On the right-hand side of the screen, select Add form.
From the list of Forms that appears, select Account.
Under Pages on the left, select Account view.
On the right-hand side of the screen, select Add view.
Select the My Active Accounts view.
Select Add view again.
Select Active Accounts.
Select Add view.
Select Inactive Accounts.
- My Active Accounts
- Active Accounts
- Inactive Accounts

Add Contact page to your app

Next, we're going to add another table to our application. In this case, we're going to add the Contacts table since a customer could be either an account or a contact.

On the command bar at the top, select the Add Page button.
On the Add page screen, choose table-based view and form, then select the Next button.
In the Search field, enter Contact, then select the Contact table.
Select the Add button.

Save and publish your app

Now that you successfully created your first model driven application, let’s get ready to use it.

Using the command bar at the top select the Save button.
Once your application is saved, select the Publish button.
To test your application, select the Play button.