Access Web Apps E-Book

ACCESS WEB APPS
BUILDING SOLUTIONS FOR SHAREPOINT AND OFFICE 365
PRESENTED BY: JULIAN KIRKNESS
KIRKNESS ASSOCIATES SOFTWARE
VERSION 1.0
APRIL 10, 2016

4/10/2016 Access Web Apps 1
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 – Introduction...............................................................................................................................3
Who am I?.................................................................................................................................................3
Access 2013 Web Apps... ..........................................................................................................................4
What can you do as a beginner?...............................................................................................................4
Chapter 2 – Editing Views, Automating with Macros.................................................................................11
Editing the Views ....................................................................................................................................11
Creating a Settings Table ........................................................................................................................15
Now let’s use Macros to make use of this setting..................................................................................15
Summary.................................................................................................................................................18
Chapter 3 – Capturing User Information, Sending Reminders / Email Alerting .........................................19
Create the Users Table............................................................................................................................19
Discovering the ‘Current User’................................................................................................................20
Sending an Email to Alert a User about an Activity ................................................................................23
Chapter 4 – Formatting EMAILS, USING Viewer.aspx to provide alternative User Interfaces ...................27
Improving our Alert Email.......................................................................................................................27
Adding the Completed Field ...................................................................................................................31
Building the Task Manager .....................................................................................................................32
Setting the View up for use outside the app ..........................................................................................35
The Competed View in a Browser...........................................................................................................37
Chapter 5 – Managing and Deploying Access Web App Solutions .............................................................38
Saving your App as an app package........................................................................................................38
Save as Snapshot.................................................................................................................................38
Save as New App.................................................................................................................................39
Save for Deployment ..........................................................................................................................39
On Deploy Macros – Macros which only run on deployment ................................................................40
Deploying your APP.................................................................................................................................43
Deploying via the App Catalogue............................................................................................................43
Preparing an app for sale in the App Store.............................................................................................44
Pricing Options for AWAs on the App Store ...........................................................................................46
Chapter 6 – Making our App Mobile with PowerApps ...............................................................................49
What is PowerApps?...............................................................................................................................49
Preparing our AWA Database for External Access..................................................................................50

Creating Your First PowerApp.................................................................................................................51
Step 1: Creating a Connection ............................................................................................................51
Step 2: Your First App – Using Start from your data...........................................................................53
Sorting and Filtering................................................................................................................................56
What to do next......................................................................................................................................58

CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION
WHO AM I?
My Name is Julian Kirkness and I have been an Access user since version 1 (released in 1992) at
which time I was looking for suitable technology to build an HR System for sale to clients. I
finally released a product (and company) in 1996 - based on Access 95. The business grew over
the years and I finally sold it in 2010.
Recently, I found myself in a similar situation - looking around for technology to build another
product and business. Of course any new software product needs to be web based (or mobile)
these days, as well as being easy to host in the cloud.
To my surprise I found myself considering Access 2013 and the newly introduced Web Apps. In
the end, I was the first person to publish Access Web App based solutions for sale in the
Sharepoint App Store. I became an Access MVP in July 2014.

ACCESS 2013 WEB APPS...
I am not a Sharepoint expert by any means, but with the platform forming the foundation of
many user’s IT strategy, a relatively straightforward means of producing database applications
in this environment has long been overdue.
Access 2010 introduced rudimentary features for building web database applications but these
were limited to connecting to data in Sharepoint Lists and provided limited functionality.
However, with the 2013 release, Microsoft has provided the ability to build web databases
connected to SQL Server / SQL Azure and host them in Sharepoint. This is huge because it
allows for robust storage of data - and yet users need know nothing of the complexities of SQL
Server in order to create applications!
So the main reasons I chose to use Access Web Apps to build my new apps (and business) can
be summarised as follows:
 Very fast development
 Robust deployment and security with Sharepoint Online and SQL Azure
 Opportunity to distribute and sell through the Sharepoint App Store
 Simple management of updates and fixes via the app store
At the moment, I believe that Access Web App (AWA) technology is the only platform for
building web applications which fulfils all these criteria and I am still delighted with the decision
to use the technology.
WHAT CAN YOU DO AS A BEGINNER?
As you can see in the above screenshot, you can create databases either from scratch or you
can use one of the templates shipped with the product - the latter is probably a good place to
start - if nothing else to let you play with the tools and see some examples of what you can
achieve. However, I'm going to walk you through the process of creating a simple app to record
your contacts and their related activities (emails, calls etc).
First click on Custom Web App in Access 2013 or 2016 (you can also create a new app from
within the Site Contents page in your Sharepoint site).

I am going to create an App called Contacts App for Blog – and you will eventually be presented
with the Access designer in the Add Table option:
Tables can be created from a template or from scratch - here's an example of a Contacts table
I've created myself:

Saving the table causes Access to automatically create a new form and menu option, as follows:

So within a few minutes you can quickly have a fully functioning (if rather simple) web
application which is potentially available to everyone in your organisation!
In a few more minutes, I created another table (Activities) in which I record notes of
conversations, emails etc. with my contacts – the key here is that when creating the Activities
Table, we simply create a Lookup field to connect it to Contacts:
Here I have shown the table design along with details of the Contact lookup field – notice that
I’ve selected “Delete corresponding records…” – this sets up a Cascade Delete in the resulting
SQL database so that Activities are deleted when their associated Contacts are deleted.
As soon as the new table is saved, Access will again create the new views and menu options –
and because the tables are linked it has also created something called a ‘Related Items Control’
on the Contacts view:

As you can see, we now have a list of activities relating to each contact and the ability to edit
them (simply clicking on them) or creating new ones (Add Activities) - using a pop up screen as
below:

Everything we have done so far has been automatically set up for us by Access – but we still
have a fully functioning App capable of recording dealings with our customers. We are going to
leave it there for this first chapter – but if you want to follow along, why not create your own
copy of this app for yourself.
In the next chapter, we will be looking at how to customise the screens that Access has
provided for us and how to build some automation with macros.
It is quite possible to build fully featured applications with AWAs and over the next few
chapters I hope to show you how. To give you an idea of what is possible though here is an
example screen from our KasCur PRO CRM app:

CHAPTER 2 – EDITING VIEWS, AUTOMATING WITH MACROS
So far we have built a simple database in Access 2013 / 2016 Web Apps (AWA) to record details
of our customers with a related table holding Activities associated with them. In this article, we
are going to edit the standard Views (forms) produced by Access and create a couple of Macros
to automate things.
EDITING THE VIEWS
Up until now, we let Access create it’s standard views for each table for simplicity. Now it’s time
to tidy these up. The Contacts view looked like this:
In order to edit this, you need to open the app in Access 2013 or 2016 (for example by clicking
Customise in Access from the tools charm on the top right of the browser window) and then
select edit for the Contacts List view:

Here you are able to change the layout using simple drag and drop techniques. We can also
change fonts, label text, add headings etc. Here is an example of how you may want to improve
this particular view:

This change took about two minutes to do and looks as follows in the browser:
Notice that I have added some section headings - but that they are not very clear. Ideally, I
would like to give these a background colour – but unfortunately there isn’t an option for this in
the screen designer (the BackColor ‘property’ is only available to be set through a macro). This
is the first place where you can use a Macro to achieve some simple UI changes automatically.
Each View has two Actions which can trigger Macros – On Load and On Current. In this case I
will create an On Load Macro for the View to change the background colour of the headers in
question…

Note that we’re using the SetProperty Macro Action for each of 3 labels. This macro will run
every time the View is loaded setting the colours accordingly. Here’s what the screen looks like
now:

I think you’ll agree that this layout is more pleasing than the default and was achieved in just a
few minutes. In our commercial apps on the app store, we allow our customers to choose the
colour of these dividers to tie in with their Sharepoint style. This is then stored in the system
and applied to each View as it’s loaded. Let’s see how to do this…
CREATING A SETTINGS TABLE
The first step is to create a table to hold this (and any other) system wide setting – we’ll call it
Settings – click on New Table and then ‘add a new blank table’ and then add a single field:
Save this new table as Settings – Access will create a new table and associated views as before.
Now save and run the app and enter a (Hex) colour code in the first empty record in the
Settings table:
We are only ever going to hold one record in this table so it makes sense to make sure that
others can’t be added – this would be achieved by removing (in design view) any ability to add a
new record – or delete the existing one. To do this you can delete the add and delete Action Bar
buttons by selecting them and pressing delete.
NOW LET’S USE MACROS TO MAKE USE OF THIS SETTING
In itself, this won’t change the colour of the headings on the screen – to do this we need
something to look up this value in the database. This type of work is handled by Data Macros –
these are similar to ordinary Macros but give you the ability to access and manipulate data.
Technically, they are converted into SQL Stored Procedures and are processed on the database

server. Here’s a data Macro (created from Advanced/Data Macro) which will look up this value
and return the colour code:
Again this is very simple – but to actually use this value we also need to modify the View’s On
Open Macro to apply this value:

Now, using this macro, the colour of the screen headers will be set to whatever colour the user
wishes, for example:
Gives us a screen looking like this:

SUMMARY
Although this chapter has only touched upon a relatively simple use of Macros and Data
Macros, I think we have shown, in principle, how these are used to access data and use the
results to achieve something useful. Hopefully you will have some of your own ideas and will do
some experimenting.
In the next chapter, I will show how we can use Macros in more sophisticated fashion to send
emails to users to remind them of tasks that need doing. This will involve creating a ‘Users’
table, linking this to Activities and then creating the macros required to send out required
reminders.

CHAPTER 3 – CAPTURING USER INFORMATION, SENDING REMINDERS / EMAIL
ALERTING
In the previous two chapters, we built a simple database in Access 2013 Web Apps (AWA) to
record details of our customers with a related table holding Activities associated with them. In
this chapter, I will show how we can use Macros in more sophisticated fashion to send emails to
users to alert them of tasks that need attention. This will involve creating a ‘Users’ table, linking
this to Activities, and then creating the macros required to send out required emails.
CREATE THE USERS TABLE
This new table will hold the names and login emails (passed from Office 365) of all users. We
are assuming in this article that you are using an Office 365 account rather than a Sharepoint
Online account because the latter cannot pass an email address to us. If you are on Sharepoint
online, then you can use the Sharepoint ‘Display Name’ in the macros to identify the user – feel
free to contact me for advice about this.
As before, create a new blank table and add fields as follows:
After saving the table as ‘Users’, the next step is to update the Activities table to include a
Lookup to Users:

Then complete the details of the lookup as follows:
You are now able to link each Activity to a User (as well as a Contact), as follows:
DISCOVERING THE ‘CURRENT USER’
When a user logs into an Access Web App from Office 365, you are able to create a macro to
access their login email address using the UserEmailAdress() macro function. What we are
going to do now is create an ‘On Start Macro’ (a special macro which runs when the system
loads) which will call a Data Macro. In the macros we are going to do the following:
1. Get the user’s email address in On Start and pass it to the Data Macro.
2. Look for a matching record in the users table and if found set a variable called
CurrentUserID – this will be the value of the ID field in their user record.

3. If there is no record for them, create a new User record populating it with their Email
address and Sharepoint Display Name (using the function UserDisplayName()). Once the
record is saved set the CurrentUserID.
To do this we will have to use a Data Macro (called by the On Start Macro) to lookup a record,
create the new record if required and, once it is saved, look it up again to find out what the ID
field value is (because the ID field is only populated by Access on saving a record). We need to
start with the Data Macro:
The first section of the macro tries to find the user and if found returns a value to the calling
macro (On Start) of the user’s ID. Note the user of a Parameter for the macro called UserEmail:
This totally caters for the situation where the User already exists in the Users table and will
return UserID to the calling macro (Stop Macro). The next section will create a new record if
not:

So, there we have our data macro (if you’re following this then save it as FindorCreateUser).
In order for this to work, we now need to call the data macro from the On Start Macro (which is
a special macro which can be edited from the Advanced section on the Ribbon) – here is what is
needed:
Now when a user logs onto the app, a User record will be created for them (if none existed) and
they will be available to be used in the User field on Activities.

SENDING AN EMAIL TO ALERT A USER ABOUT AN ACTIVITY
In this book we are only going to look at a simple scenario for sending emails when a button is
clicked to send details of an Activity to a user. Once again, it is a Data Macro which will do the
heavy lifting. Let us provide a feature so that the system will email details of an Activity when
someone clicks a button on the Activities View. A scenario here may be that someone creates
an activity and assigns it to someone else.
We are going to create a Data Macro which will build the text of the email from the fields from
the activity and then sends it:
The next section of the Data Macro now looks up the email address to send the alert to and
then sends the email:

Finally, to make this work, we need to add a button to the Activities screen and call the data
macro (SendActivityAlert):
Note that I have tidied up the View and also user the background colour setting technique
shown last time to colour the heading.
The On Click macro for the button is as follows:

So there we have it – this is what the final Activities View (Activities List) looks like:
And here is an example of the email sent from this record:

Note that this email is not very attractive to look at yet – I propose to look at how we can
enhance this in the next chapter. I will also be covering how we can use alerts to remind users
of multiple incomplete Activities and look at ways to user the CurrentUserID we have learnt
how to find above.
As an exercise, can you spot the mistake(s) in the above email – and can you spot the cause in
the Data Macro?

CHAPTER 4 – FORMATTING EMAILS, USING VIEWER.ASPX TO PROVIDE
ALTERNATIVE USER INTERFACES
So far we have built a simple database in Access 2013 Web Apps (AWA) to record details of our
customers with a related table holding Activities associated with them (a VERY simple CRM).
In this chapter, I will show how we improve the email we created in the last article. Then we
will look at how you can build views for users to whom you don’t want to give full access to the
application.
IMPROVING OUR ALERT EMAIL
Some readers may have noticed that the email we sent in the previous chapter wasn’t really
complete – for example, the second Activity ‘field’ simply shows a ‘1’ rather that the name of
the activity. Also, full marks to those who spotted the deliberate (?) mistake, this field’s caption
should have had the caption ‘Contact’:
The reason for the contents showing a ‘1’ is that we passed the SendActivityAlert macro the
contents of the control [ContactAutoComplete], which contains the ID of the Contact (although
it displays the Name):

The second ‘mistake’ with the Contact is that the parameter in the SendActivityAlert macro was
created as a ‘Short Text’ value when it should have been ‘Number (No Decimal)’ – so here is
what the corrected data macro would look like:

And the resulting email:
So, that’s tidied up that process up nicely. However, the activities part of the app is not that
useful – there is no way to indicate whether an activity has been completed for example. In the
next section, we are going to add a ‘Completed’ field and then add this to the activities view.
Finally, in this chapter, we are going to build a task list app which a user can load directly into
their browser (separately from the main app).

ADDING THE COMPLETED FIELD
The first step is simple to add the field to the Activities table:
Note that I have chosen to add this as a Yes/No field and, by default, Access will use a checkbox
control to display this information. Here is the modified screen design:
Note that the quickest way to place the new field on the View is simply to drag it from the Field
List to the right.
We now have the data structure we need to create a simple task list app which, in this case, I
am going to show you how to create ‘externally’ to the main app. In this case this is not really
necessary – but in many apps you will find that you need some users able to access all data,
administer the app etc., and others with more limited functionality – this is an approach you
can use for this…

BUILDING THE TASK MANAGER
First create a new ‘Blank View’ from the Advanced section on the Ribbon and set it’s Record
Source to Users:
Now populate the View with Fields, a Heading label and a Related Items Control (RIC) as
follows:
Note that the ID field is only required to link the RIC to the parent record and therefore can be
Hidden (in the properties of the control). Close the view and save it as ‘TaskListView’.
In the RIC, we are going to create two tabs, one for incomplete tasks (a ToDo list) and one for
completed tasks. The best way to do this is to create two queries:

qryIncompleteActivities:
To create this query (our first in this app), go to the advanced section of the Ribbon and choose
new Query. Now add the Activities Table to the query and, when added double click first on the
‘*’ in the list of field names – this chooses all the fields in the query and they will all be in the
result – and then double click on the Complete field. So that this field is NOT included in the
result (it’s already there once) remove the tick in the Show tickbox and enter the Criteria No as
shown below. Then close and save the query as ‘qryIncompleteActivities’.
qryCompleteActivities:
This is essentially exactly the same process except that you should use a Criteria Yes in the
Complete column:

Now let’s go back to our TaskListView and ‘connect up’ the RIC – here’s the first tab setup
process (we’ll call in ToDo List):
Now let’s set its properties:

Note that to select the popup view ‘Activities List’ you will need to have clicked the ‘show all
views’ tickbox (not shown above) first. I have purposely left the second column blank to allow
more space for the text in the Activity field.
Now create the second tab ‘Completed Tasks’ for yourself – here I suggest you sort the RIC by
Activity Date Descending and tick ‘Hide Add Link’.
SETTING THE VIEW UP FOR USE OUTSIDE THE APP
As I mentioned at the beginning, we are going to design this feature so that it loads into it’s
own web page rather than being part of the main app. One of the downsides of doing this is
that the On Start Macro we created won’t run – this means that we will have to duplicate some
of this functionality in the On Load event of our form. Specifically, we will need it to:
 Work out who the user is
 Filter the data so that it only shows their data
 Set the Colour of the Header
We can copy the code from the On Start Macro, and the On Load event from another View for
the Colour setting – here is the Macro we need:

So now we have completed the page – so how do we go about loading it independently of the
rest of the application…
Here is a typical URL for the contacts app:
https://kirknessassociates-
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.sharepoint.com/contacts%20app%20for%20blog/default.aspx#Tile=Contacts&View=Con
tacts%20List
In order to change this to display our page, it should be changed to:
https://kirknessassociates-
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.sharepoint.com/contacts%20app%20for%20blog/viewer.aspx?page=TaskListView

I have highlighted what should be replaced and by what.
THE COMPETED VIEW IN A BROWSER
We have now completed a somewhat simple app with two user interfaces, some basic alerting,
etc. In the next chapter we are going to look at how to deploy and manage Access Web App
solutions, including the option of releasing them on the App Store.

CHAPTER 5 – MANAGING AND DEPLOYING ACCESS WEB APP SOLUTIONS
So far, this book has focussed on actually building an AWA based solution. In this chapter, we
are going to look at the options available to you for deploying these apps either internally or to
the wider world including a brief introduction to selling apps on the Sharepoint App Store.
SAVING YOUR APP AS AN APP PACKAGE
An ‘app package’ is a file which contains a deployable (can be loaded into Sharepoint) copy of
your app – and can optionally include your data. When saving an app (from File) there are 3
main options:
Let’s look at the three options and then we’ll consider their pros and cons in terms of deploying
your solution.
SAVE AS SNAPSHOT
This option is basically backing up your app. The app is saved with all data and the same App ID
as the original app. This can be re-installed in a different team site if you wish. I would
recommend periodically saving a snapshot of your apps during development.

SAVE AS NEW APP
Save as New App is similar to the above in that it saves a regular ‘Unlocked’ copy of your app –
but this time saving the data is optional. In this case, the saved app is given a new App ID and so
could be re-installed alongside the original app if you wanted to.
SAVE FOR DEPLOYMENT
For my work, this is the key option. Save for Deployment creates a ‘Locked’ version of your app
(which means that, once re-installed, users cannot “Customise in Access” or change the app in
any way).
Locked apps produced in this way are generally cleared of all data and ID fields are reset. The
exception to this is that the developer is able to ‘Lock’ some tables in their design which will
then be exported with data – and users will not be able to edit the contents. This means that
you can keep control of key look up tables in your design. Tables are locked from their
properties which are accessible by right clicking the table:
The really key advantage to apps produced this way is that they can be upgraded easily – and
will automatically apply any schema or other changes by simply taking the Upgrade option and
applying a new copy of the file (which must have a ‘higher’ version number).

On the surface, this seems the perfect option for managing Development, Test and
Deployment. However, there is a significant downside at the moment. This is that Locked apps
distributed in this way cannot be connected to by external applications (such as Power BI etc).
This is because the facilities to open connections to the database are only available in the
Access client and the app cannot be opened in Access (because it is locked).
This means that if external connections are required your options are really limited to working
on your live system.
Finally, I would point out that this is the only usable option if you want to protect your design
and / or need to be able to upgrade your solution at many installations. For my work, selling
apps on the app store, this is the only option that makes sense.
ON DEPLOY MACROS – MACROS WHICH ONLY RUN ON DEPLOYMENT
If you make changes to your schema which require data to be moved, then there is an option
for that called an On Deploy Macro. This is a special type of Data Macro which only runs when
the app is installed for the first time or upgraded (and is most appropriate when using Locked
apps produced using Save for Deployment).
On Deploy macros can call other macros and in my published apps I use this technique on a
regular basis and my On Deploy process is slowly growing (because you cannot force updates
on users, the Macro may therefore have to deal with several versions worth of changes at
once). Here is an example:

This is a fairly complex example in my HR application which has been on sale now for about 18
months and has had 30+ updates since launch. Most updates do not require an On Deploy
macro but on occasion this is needed. For example, one update included a change where
Emergency Contacts for employees were moved from a field on the employee record to a
separate table – here is the On Deploy Macro which did the work (and is called from the
above):

This demonstrates a useful technique. The ‘Look Up A Record’ action determines whether the
new Employee Contacts table contains any records and if so aborts the macro – this ensures
that the macro will only run if required.

DEPLOYING YOUR APP
Once you have your .app package you are able to install it in other sites. To do this you simply
go to Site Contents, pick Add an App and then select Access App from ‘Apps you can add’:
From here you can browse to your .app package and load it into your site.
Assuming you are using Save for Deployment then you can also upgrade from Site Contents:
Again, browsing to the new (locked) app package will enable you to apply an update.
If your app is deployed via the App Store or your internal App Catalogue (more in a moment)
then you will see an indication in Site Contents that an upgrade is available and you simply need
to follow instructions to apply the upgrade.
DEPLOYING VIA THE APP CATALOGUE
Each Sharepoint installation will have an App Catalogue and you are able to load your app into
this to make it available for others to load (from the ‘From your Organisation’ option):

PREPARING AN APP FOR SALE IN THE APP STORE
Before you can post apps to the App Store, you need a Microsoft Seller Account. I am not going
to go into the process of getting this account in this book – I am just going to look at what is
required in order to make an .app file ready for submission.
The app file created directly by Save for Deployment would almost certainly be rejected by the
app store – but for only one reason which is the lack of an app specific Icon. The app package
needs to include a 96x96 Icon in .png format which needs to be the same image as that entered
into the submission page when you submit the app for approval.
You also need to make sure that if your app displays a version number on screen to the user
that this is the same as the version number you enter in the submission and also the same as
the number you entered when you created the app file.
So in order to change the app package (which is actually a re-named .zip file) you need to
rename it to YourAppName.zip (where YourAppName is the name of the file you exported) and
then expand it – you should end up with a folder like this:

The Icon you create for your app needs to be copied into this folder as ‘accessappicon.png’:
Depending upon the geography in which you want to deploy your app, you may also need to
edit the appmanifest.xml file. For my apps, produced on a UK based installation, I add in
another ‘Locale’ to the file for the US. In Access Web Apps this only effects date formats but
having the two options means that users can choose between UK (and most of the rest of the
world’s) date formats and US formats:

Generally the rest of this file should be left as-is but is nonetheless interesting as it includes
version numbers, the type of app (AccessLocked) etc.
Once you have your Icon and (if required) edited the app manifest then you should create a
new .zip file from the contents of this folder and rename it to YouAppName.app – it is then
ready to be submitted to the store.
PRICING OPTIONS FOR AWAS ON THE APP STORE
The screenshot below shows some of the options available to you for pricing apps on the
Sharepoint Store:

In addition to the options shown in this example, you can charge on a monthly per-user
subscription basis (this is not shown in this shot because they don’t allow you to change a one-
time purchase into a subscription).
So, you are able to offer per user pricing, subscription pricing and trial periods – right? Yes and
No – with Access Web Apps you are able to configure these options for your store entry but
beware – your app WILL NOT ENFORCE ANY LICENCE OPTIONS.
This means that if you offer your app for a trial period that it will continue to work forever – you
have given your app away. Similarly, subscription pricing is not enforced nor is the count of the
number of users.
For this reason, for my main HR app I have built licencing into the app itself and provide it free
on the app store with a 14 day trial period (again this in managed by the app). This approach is
quite straightforward to implement (in a Locked app) but does remove one of the great
advantages of selling through a store which is that of customer billing and VAT / Sales Tax
handling.
I would therefore recommend that careful consideration is given to this before deciding to
develop an App for commercial sale on the store (unless Microsoft resolve these issues).

Hopefully you have found this chapter interesting and useful. In the next (and final) chapter in
this book I am going to look at how we can make our app mobile with Microsoft’s new
PowerApps platform, an ideal companion product to AWA.

CHAPTER 6 – MAKING OUR APP MOBILE WITH POWERAPPS
So far we have focussed on actually building an AWA based solution. In this chapter, now that
we have our basic application, we are going to look at the options available to you for making
your Apps mobile with the new Microsoft PowerApps.
PowerApps is currently available as a Public Beta – by invitation. Request your invitation at:
https://powerapps.microsoft.com
WHAT IS POWERAPPS?
PowerApps is a tool designed for Power Users and developers to build mobile apps from your corporate
data fast. The tool uses a model similar to Excel to build expressions and formulae and so should feel
familiar to many:
Apps created in PowerApps run inside the PowerApps clients on Windows, iOS and Android.

PREPARING OUR AWA DATABASE FOR EXTERNAL ACCESS
As we discussed in the previous chapter, AWA applications can be either Locked (distributed
using Save for Deployment) or unlocked. It is only possible (at the moment) to open the
database up to external access in Unlocked apps and this is handled in the Access client. This is
how it’s done:
Click on Manage Connections:

From here you can click on Enable Read-Write Connection and either From My Location or
From Any Location, as required. Once this is done, you can click View Read-Write Connection
Information”
I have redacted some of this information – but this can be then used to create a Connection
String which can then be entered into PowerApps to connect it to your database:
Server=tcp:XXXXXXXXyw6.database.windows.net;Database=db_XXXXXXX_51e9_4bc9_8575_8e
36ebaade20;User
ID=db_XXXXXXXX_51e9_4bc9_8575_8e36ebaade20_ExternalWriter@yqaqwyeyw6.database.wi
ndows.net;Password=-XXXXXX^/dD-Rm;Trusted_Connection=False;Encrypt=True;
At this point you should use Notepad to take the connection information for your copy of the
app and create a Connection String.
CREATING YOUR FIRST POWERAPP
STEP 1: CREATING A CONNECTION
The first thing you need to do to connect PowerApps to your AWA database is to create a
Connection:

Choosing SQL Azure from the list of available connections, enter your connection string and
then click Connect:

Unfortunately, at the moment, you don’t seem to be able to name your connection so you may
end up with several called SQL Azure which could become confusing!
STEP 2: YOUR FIRST APP – USING START FROM YOUR DATA
PowerApps gives you the choice to build an app from scratch, build it automatically from a Data
Source or build from a template. As we are talking about making mobile apps to extend the
scope of your AWA application, we’re going to choose Start from your data:

Having clicked, you can then choose which data you want to connect to:
The next step, having chosen SQL Azure, is to choose the Dataset – click Default and then select
a Table:

In this example we’re going to select [Access].[Contacts] which is the name AWA gives to our
Contacts table from within our Web App. Note that at this point it doesn’t seem possible to
connect to queries in the database – just Tables.
PowerApps now goes away and creates a default 3 page app based upon this single table with
Browse, Detail and Edit screens:
So, we now have a mobile app connected to the Contacts table from our AWA – you can run it
right here in the PowerApps client by clicking the play Icon at the top of the screen.

This app can be customised and improved from here in the PowerApps designer – there are
many improvements you may want to make – for example changing which fields are shown in
the Browse screen, changing the sorting of the records, etc…
SORTING AND FILTERING
If we select the ‘Gallery’ in the browse page (the control which display the grouped fields) we
can see it has an Items property which includes an expression:
Here’s the expression:
Sort(If(IsBlank(TextSearchBox1.Text), '[Access].[Contacts]', Filter('[Access].[Contacts]',
TextSearchBox1.Text in Text(Address))), Address, If(SortDescending1, Descending, Ascending))
The syntax of the Sort expression is:
Sort( Table, Formula [, SortOrder ] )
So, looking at the expression from our app, we can see that the screen will present data from
the Contacts table if there is no entry in the Search box and Filtered records if there is.

However, the search and sort are both referring to the Address field and I would prefer to use
Contact Name for this – here’s what we need to change:
Sort(If(IsBlank(TextSearchBox1.Text), '[Access].[Contacts]', Filter('[Access].[Contacts]',
TextSearchBox1.Text in Text('Contact Name'))), 'Contact Name', If(SortDescending1,
Descending, Ascending))
If you make this change you will see, even in design view, that the order will change straight
away.
Another interesting part of this expression is that the Sort is either Ascending or Descending
depending upon the value of a ‘Context Variable’ called SortDescending1. This variable is set by
clicking the ‘⇵’ button on the top bar in the app. Selecting this button reveals how this variable
is updated:
We have the following expression in the OnSelect property of the image:
UpdateContext({SortDescending1: !SortDescending1})
Again, looking at the syntax:
UpdateContext( { ContextVariable1: Value1 [, ContextVariable2: Value2 [, ... ] ] } )

We can see that variable SortDescending1 is reassigned a value !SortDEscending1. The “!”
symbol represents a logical NOT and therefor this expression is toggling the value of the
variable from 0 to 1 and back – and this controls the sort with no further code.
WHAT TO DO NEXT
If you would like to give PowerApps a try, then you need to apply for an invitation to try it out
as mentioned at the beginning of this article. In addition to this brief introduction, you will also
find the help for PowerApps pretty good – it is available directly by clicking the ? on the
PowerApps designer and here:
https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-gb/tutorials/
I hope you have found this brief introduction a useful extension to this book and hope you
enjoy PowerApps.

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