It is fairly common for customers to have already decided they want to use Power Apps to automate a business process before we engage with them in a meaningful way. But what isn’t so common is understanding what type of Power App they will need. We routinely encounter scenarios in which a customer’s needs are best met by building a SharePoint custom list form in Power Apps instead of a Canvas App, two of the options available for building these apps. Setting aside the pros and cons of such a decision, the reason it matters is that Application Lifecycle Management differs based on this decision.
Since most organizations do not have Development, Staging/QA and Production (I’ll refer to these as D/S/P collectively) Microsoft 365 tenants, Power Platform Application Lifecycle Management ranges from using D/S/P Power Platform Environments to create clear delineations of applications, workflows and connectors (Power Platform objects) to the more common practice of creating and renaming D/S/P copies of each application and workflow. While using separate Power Platform Environments is a best practice we encourage, creating and renaming D/S/P copies of Power Platform objects is a workable strategy. The D/S/P Power Platform Environments method will not work for SharePoint custom list form Power Apps since these apps are tightly integrated into the SharePoint list and are not objects created in a Power Platform Environment.
So, how do we implement Lifecycle Management on these types of solutions? We create D/S/P versions of the SharePoint site collections that the custom list form Power App lives in, similar to the strategy of creating and renaming D/S/P copies of apps and workflows. We develop the solution in the Development site collection, then we promote it to the identical list in the Staging site collection, then Production site collection (easier said than done). Our team has created a standard methodology for SharePoint custom list form Lifecycle Management based on our experience of delivering 100’s of Power Apps, and guided by great blog posts by Microsoft MVPs Tomasz Poszytek and Alex Terentiev.
Interested in discussing Power Apps Lifecycle Management for your organization? We can help. Please see more on our Business Applications expertise, or reach out directly to Cathy Ashbaugh, cashbaugh@compass365.com to arrange for a complimentary consultation with one of our Solutions Architects.
