The effort that Microsoft has put into the new branding of the “Power” family is remarkable. We have seen this platform continually evolve to bring customers user-friendly solutions that help accelerate their business. One of the recent changes we have seen is the modification of the customization tool, a tool that allows the administrator to fully customize the system. It has evolved a great deal and goes beyond simple visual changes, offering a range of new capabilities and functionalities. In order to grasp a better understanding of some of these modifications, we are going to show you how to customize a form on an out of the box entity such as Contacts.
The first change you’ll notice is that you can access the tool even without having access to the Environment. You simply need to log in via: www.make.powerapps.com.
This image is what the platform looked like prior to the change:
This is what the homepage of the platform looks like now:
1. From the left side bar, click on “Solutions” then on the Entity you want customized
2. Once on the required entity, select the “Forms” tab
From this screen you can: Add, Edit and Delete forms.
3. Select the desired form to be customized, in this example, we will customize a form that is already in the system so, on Contact entity we will select the Main forms called “Contact”
As previously mentioned, Microsoft has reorganized and added a bunch of buttons to make this platform more user friendly. Let us take you on a guide through this new tool starting with the expandable buttons in the bar on the left hand side:
Components: This section has been added to replace the “Insert” tab. It also has new visual controls that have been added in the latest releases.
Fields: This bar hasn’t changed significantly except it now appears on the left hand side, and there is a new search bar option available at the top.
Tree view: This is a new option that shows users an expandable bar hierarchy with all the components of the current form. It allows the option to customize the order of those items.
The right side bar now shows the details of the selected component of the form, allowing the admin to modify each component simply by highlighting it.
Here you can see details such as Label, Name and Formatting. These can now be managed without losing the visibility of the entire form.
Let’s now take a look at the top bar. As mentioned, Insert buttons were reordered on the left and right side bar. Meanwhile, the Home tab buttons “Save” and “Save as”, are merged together on a drop down menu next to “Publish” on the top right corner; “Remove” was renamed to “delete”; “Undo” and “Redo” stay in the same location and a few buttons have been added next to them, such as: “Add Field”, “Add Component”, “Cut”, “Paste” and “Paste Before”. All other buttons have been removed from the top bar and the function have been allocated under the sidebars.
Microsoft provides users the option to emulate the screen on different device types with a responsive interface on the bottom bar. There is also an option to zoom in to see small fields.
It‘s important to mention that Microsoft did not remove the drag and drop feature when they added new fields. They are simply adding the options to cut, paste, and/or paste before the fields on the form, or if just click on the field that you desire to add, it will appear inside of the form, below the currently highlighted field.
Overall this new platform has the potential to make Administrators lives easier when building the CRM system. However, it will certainly take time for people to get used to it and we don’t expect to see the “Switch to Classic” button removed anytime soon. Microsoft needs more time to fully migrate all their features to this platform, but the promise is there, and we are very excited for more improvements on this tool.
