Tag: components

Welcome to the fourth article in the model-driven app series! Today we will look at the Components in a model-driven app. This series includes six articles that will help you to get to know and use model-driven apps and PowerApps:

If you haven’t already familiarized yourself with the Site Map and how it works, take a moment to read the blog here. After you have created your Site Map, the next step is to add and define the various components on the App Designer.

Components are displayed on the right-hand side of the App Designer:

The Site Map is your foundation and the components are the building blocks you layer on top to build your App. Components are comprised of:

1. Artifacts: Entities, Dashboards and Business Processes Flows
2. Entity Assets: Forms, Views, Charts and Dashboards

• Entities: In most scenarios, the Artifacts will populated based on what you have selected in the Site Map.
• Dashboards: Select the system dashboards that should be included in the app.
• Business Process Flows: Select any business process flows to add to your app. Any active, published business process flows

Once you start adding entity assets to your App, you can really work on streamlining and enhancing your end user experience! Always keep in mind who your audience is for this App. What are the only pieces needed for this group of users to do their job? The minimum amount here is key. Give them only what they need in order to successfully do their job and eliminate all of the other noise. This is my favorite part about model-driven apps and Dynamics 365. This sort of thing used to require custom code – and now I can use simple configuration to accomplish the same thing.

• Forms: Define which forms should display for each entity. At least one form must be selected for each entity.
• Views: Select only the necessary views to be included in this App. At least one view must be selected for each entity.
• Charts: Select any system charts for the entity.
• Dashboards: Select dashboards for the entity.

Now that you have created a Site Map for your app and added all components to is (both artifacts and entity assets), your model-driven app is really starting to look good! The final two parts of this series will cover properties you can set and why this is important to your end users.