PL-100 Microsoft Power Platform App Maker – Create model-driven apps – charts, dashboards, card forms and business rules.

1. Create model-driven charts

Now, in this video we’re going to create charts from our data and there’s not much functionality in here, so we can create charts by going to the relevant table and going to charts. Or in the app designer we can click on charts and go to create new. So either way we’ll get to this page and it doesn’t give you a lot, lot of functionality. Firstly, what chart are you wanting to create? So in other systems this might be add a chart. No, here we have one chart and you get to say what that one chart is going to be. So we’ve got, for instance, a column chart with three different variants, a stacked chart where each of the series are shown on top of each other, a column chart which is where they’re shown to the side of each other, and a 100% stack chart where all of the bars go up to the top.

So really that’s good for showing ratios as opposed to absolute values. Bar charts, exactly the same thing, except it goes from the left instead of column charts which go from the bottom. We’ve also got area charts, very similar to column charts except they’re more connected. So that’s quite useful for instance, for having dates. If your categories going across word dates, then you could have the difference between 20, 25, 20, 26, 20, 27, so forth, all joined together. Line charts, again, very similar to area charts, pie charts. These I would only use if you’ve got say, six or fewer categories, so they’re not really useful for a huge number and then funnel, that’s useful why you have categories going down in quantity and so that could be useful.

For instance, how many people do we telephone, how many people do we telephone a second time? How many sales do we get from those people? We’ve then got tags so you can see that extracts words and then donuts. So that is similar to a pie and a tag. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to create a simple column chart and that column chart, the series is the value. So I am going to select the expense value and we can have the sum, the min, the max, the average, or could just count, count where there are values and count where there are values or where they are blank. So that’s the series, that’s the values. So what’s going on across the bottom? Well, maybe we’re going to have the account or if that gets a bit too busy, maybe we’ll simplify it and have a city.

Now, this is a preview and you can say what view you want to use for the chart preview. So obviously this chart gets saved with the table. So you can use the same chart with multiple views. So you can see the difference between this view, which is active expenses. There are six columns and this one where there are only four.

Because I have filtered some out. Additionally, we can show just the top x or the bottom x. So if I go back to the active expenses where we can see all of them and you can see some really small values, I’m going to just have the top three items so that results in just those three. Or you could have the top five items or you can specify the number of items that you want. Similarly, you can have the bottom three items.

For instance, we can also clear the rules. Now here this series, we have two icons on the right hand side which just duplicates the functionality here. So we can change the chart and we can change whether we use the top, the bottom or we clear the rules, which is what I’m going to do. We can add additional series that’s additional values and we can add additional categories so that’s these running across the bottom. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to save this. So you can see at the bottom left this chart is saved. So I’m going to now save and close. Let’s go back into here, refresh. And now we have this new chart. So, expense value by address one.

So we’ve got very few options, all we can do is delete it or we can look at it. But now in the app designer, if I refresh this and click on charts, we now have this chart. Similarly here, if I refresh this, nothing happens. I have to republish this app for that chart to be available. However, I can make a new chart inside here for SoLost and we get exactly back to the same location. But that is very useful if you are creating a view and you want to create a chart on the fly, if you just want to create it right now. So what I’m going to do with charts, I’m just going to select that one, I’m going to save, I’m going to publish it and then I’m going to play.

So you can see that this app designer is largely there for the site map and to restrict the forms, views, charts and dashboards that you can use. So now when I play, I go to the expenses. So this is the different area I go to shortchart and there is my chart expense value by city. And that’s largely all you need to know about charts. In the background you may wish to know that there are personal charts and system charts and there are organization and user owned charts.

So this is a system chart, it’s also an organization chart. Organization charts are available across the organization and you need system administrator or customizer role to create these. Meanwhile, a user owned visualization you can do by just clicking on the new and this will be your own chart, your user chart. So for instance, if I create this chart and so this is my chart and I select the count of the IDs by the account. So I can do that, click save, close, it probably have to refresh and after a while I now have access to my user owned Visualization at a refresh a few times.

But that Visualization my chart is not one of the charts which is included with the table. So in other words, this is a user owned Visualization as opposed to an organization chart. So charts fairly simple to set up, we don’t have too many options. You can select from column, bar, area, line, pi, funnel, tag and donut. You can select the top or bottom values and that’s it.

So you notice no color configuration, for instance, no font size configuration. It’s just very straightforward, but fairly limited as well in terms of the things you can do. However, they are very useful for setting next to a view as you can see here or as we’ll find out in the next video in a dashboard.

2. 65. Creating model-driven dashboards

In this video, we’re going to create dashboards. So dashboards allow you largely to get charts and sometimes views and other things on the one page. Now, there are three different types of dashboards. There are single stream dashboards. They allow you to have a view of a particular table. Then there are are multistream, multifocused real time data dashboards, also known as interactive dashboards. And there are standard dashboards, also known as classic dashboards.

So what we’re going to do is create one of each of them. We may create two of the expense dashboards and we can see how they vary. So first of all, we’re going to create a single stream table dashboard. And so I’m going to go to my expense table and I’m going to go to dashboard and I’m going to add a dashboard. And you can see how many columns do we need? Do we need two columns, three columns or four columns? And then if you want three columns, do we want it so that it is of an equal size, or do we want it so that one is a fair bit bigger than the other? So I’m going to go for this varied width, so you can see how much bigger it is.

So now in this classic interface, so I need to call it, so I’m going to call it expense dashboard one. And so what I’m going to have in the center is I’m going to have a view based on the active expenses. We’re going to have a graph based on that view, and I’m going to create that chart so that’s a chart based on the active expenses. Now either side, I’m going to have a view created on the my view and on the inactive expenses. So it’s exactly the same chart. This one has no data, but you can see that we’ve got these various charts there. Down at the bottom we’ve got things called streams.

What streams are basically our views. So I’m going to have the active expenses, the inactive expenses, and the my view at the bottom. Now, if I want to modify any of these, like for instance, I want a different chart, my advice is to click on the chart and click on delete, and then you can just create a new chart. So I’ll go back to creating one on the active expenses. It’s difficult to overwrite it. You might be able to, but it seems difficult.

So just delete it, come back in again. So you can see, you can filter by a time period as well. So you can set this up as well. So let’s save and close this and refresh. So there is our dashboard expense. I’m going to create another one, a two column one. And so you can see it’s. Just got the two column for the visual photos. So two column. So I’ll do this on my view, and I’ll insert a Nova chart there of the same kind. We will then add some streams at the bottom.

So active. And my view, we’re not going to put inactive on this. So just save and close. So now we have two table dashboards. So they’re single stream by single stream. They’re looking at a single table. You can’t actually edit the table in this. Next I’m going to go into my app designer and I’m going to create a new classic dashboard. So here we’ve got quite a number of varieties and you can see the sort of thing that this will come out as. So I’m going to have a three column regular dashboard.

So I will create that. And you’ll notice we’ve got a few more choices in this. So I’m going to call this my classic dashboard. So firstly we can add charts. So here we can select which entity we’re looking at. We don’t just have to have the one entity. So if I wanted one relating to accounts, then absolutely fine. So I think I’ve got all accounts and new accounts by month or something like that. Then we’ve got a list, we can insert a list. So I’m going to insert a list based on the expenses. I’m going to have my view.

Other things we can do, we can add assistance, we can add iframes, and we can add web resources. However, we don’t need to go into what all of these actually are. I’m just going to just insert for this particular purpose, just lots of different graphs. So we can just see that the process for making a dashboard works. So say we don’t need to go into web resources, so I can save it and close it. And there we have the classic dashboard in my list of dashboards.

Now we can also create an interactive dashboard. Now these can be multistreamed or single streamed. Now, if I look at the multistream first, you should note that when I say multistream, so that means they can have multiple tables. That doesn’t apply to the graphs at the top. The graphs at the top, the charts need to be of a specific entity. So if I create one, so I’ll just create a random one here and then I change the entity, then it’s going to say, can’t do this. This action will delete any streams, charts or tiles already on there. So the multistream is only for the bottom bit.

The top bit has to be of a particular entity, a particular table. So I’m going to create just four images of the same, four versions of the same chart. And then at the bottom I can have streams, which are views and queues. We don’t look at queues in this particular course. And it can be from one table or from multiple tables. So I’m going to have all accounts there.

So this example of multistream where the charts are all from the one table, but the streams themselves can be quite different. And then finally I’m just save and close that I can create an interactive dashboard that is a single stream. And when I do this, you’ll notice that we have quite a lot here. So I’m going to create this based on the expense entity.

So this is an interactive single stream. So here is the stream. So I’m going to create my view these charts again from this particular table, like all of them are going to be. And then on the right hand side, we have got tiles. These tiles are views. Again, not going to look at the queues here. So I’m going to say active expenses and my view and inactive expenses as well. So I’m going to now save that and close.