Explore the user interface and logic in model-driven apps
The best way to understand the basic concept of UI in model-driven apps is to run a sample app. You'll also discover model-driven apps concepts that you can apply as you develop your own apps. To run a sample app, scroll to the bottom of the screen from your home page in Power Apps and select one of the apps where the Type is model-driven.
Before you start with modeling model-driven apps, you need to understand the approach for making model-driven apps. Model-driven apps have three design phases:
Model your business data
Define your business processes
Build the app
First you need to define the structure of the data stored in Common Data Service. We already explored the basic concept about Common Data Service, and creating and customizing entities. As a second step, you should define and enforce consistent business processes as a key aspect of model-driven app design. After modeling data and defining processes, you must build your app by selecting and setting up the components you need in the App Designer.
The App Designer
App Designer is the main tool for building model-driven apps. From App Designer you can easily navigate to Site map designer, Form designer and View designer as you need them for designing different components in model-driven apps.
To run an app designer and see how it looks, select Create and then select the Model-driven app from blank tile.
When you run it and finish assigning an app name, you will open App Designer. How you can use the app designer will be explained in more detail in the next unit.
Understand model-driven app components
First, you need to know these designer tools used for building the following components in a model-drive app:
| Designer | Description | Component |
|---|---|---|
| App designer | Determines the application fundamentals such as components, properties, client type, and URL for your app. | App |
| Site map designer | Specifies the navigation for your app. | Site map |
| Form designer | A set of data-entry fields for a given entity that matches the items that your organization tracks for the entity. For example, a set of data-entry fields that where user's input relevant information to track a customer's previous orders along with specific requested reorder dates. | Form |
| View designer | Views define how a list of records for a specific entity is displayed in your application. A view defines the columns to display, width of each column, sort behavior, and the default filters. | View |
Model-driven apps are not limited to these components only. For example, you can add visualization components, such as a chart, dashboard, and embedded components. For more advanced developing, you can use logic components, but these components are out of scope for this module. We will focus on the basic parts of building model-driven apps that integrate with Business Central.