PL-7001: Create and Manage Canvas Apps with Power Apps

Get oriented to Microsoft Power Apps and the low-code app-building discipline. You'll learn what canvas apps are and how they differ from model-driven apps, where they fit in the Microsoft Power Platform, how canvas apps reach their data through connectors (Excel, SharePoint, Dataverse, SQL, REST), and how Copilot in Power Apps changes the maker experience. You'll finish able to explain the Power Platform architecture to a colleague, choose the right data source for a business scenario, and describe the Ridgefield Property Services app you'll build across this course.

Learn Microsoft Dataverse — Microsoft's business-database platform underneath the Power Platform. You will understand what a Dataverse table is, how columns and choices and lookups work, when to reach for a relationship, and how row-level security through security roles lets Ridgefield give each field tech only their own work orders. By the end of this lesson you will be able to design a small Dataverse data model on paper and explain the tradeoffs against Excel and SharePoint.

Learn the anatomy of a canvas app — screens, controls, control properties, the tree view, and the Power Fx formula language that binds it all together. You will understand galleries, forms, buttons, labels, and how to move between screens with Navigate() and Back(). By the end of this lesson you will be able to describe the control tree of any canvas app and know which control belongs on which screen.

Learn how to make a canvas app look like a Ridgefield app rather than a generic Power Apps default. You'll understand theming through App.OnStart global-variable patterns, using icons and images (including SVGs and base64), personalizing labels with User() functions, and designing responsive layouts that work on phone and tablet form factors. By the end of this lesson you will be able to plan the branding pass for any canvas app you build.

Learn how canvas apps talk to data beyond Dataverse — SharePoint lists, SQL Server databases, and the wider connector ecosystem. You will understand the standard-vs-premium license split, how connections and connection references work, and the crucial concept of delegation: which Filter/Sort/LookUp calls Power Apps can push down to the source vs which run in-memory (breaking at scale). By the end of this lesson you will be able to add a SharePoint list and a SQL table to a canvas app and reason about whether your queries will still perform at 100,000 rows.

Learn how canvas-app forms turn tables into fillable interfaces — display forms, edit forms, view mode vs edit mode vs new mode, DataCard controls, field-level validation, and the SubmitForm-Success-Failure lifecycle. By the end of this lesson you will be able to design a form flow that gracefully handles new records, existing-record edits, validation failures, and unsaved-changes prompts — the core interaction pattern of every business app.

Learn how to ship a canvas app from your maker environment out to the actual people who will use it. You will understand Save vs Publish, the versions timeline, sharing scopes (user, group, everyone-in-tenant), solution packaging for dev→test→prod deployment, and the .msapp offline archive format. By the end of this lesson you will be able to hand a canvas app off to a real team and know how to update it without breaking their access.