Cloud Wars
  • Home
  • Top 10
  • CW Minute
  • CW Podcast
  • Categories
    • AI and Copilots
    • Innovation & Leadership
    • Cybersecurity
    • Data
  • Member Resources
    • Cloud Wars AI Agent
    • Digital Summits
    • Guidebooks
    • Reports
  • About Us
    • Our Story
    • Tech Analysts
    • Marketing Services
  • Summit NA
  • Dynamics Communities
  • Ask Copilot
Twitter Instagram
  • Summit NA
  • Dynamics Communities
  • AI Copilot Summit NA
  • Ask Cloud Wars
Twitter LinkedIn
Cloud Wars
  • Home
  • Top 10
  • CW Minute
  • CW Podcast
  • Categories
    • AI and CopilotsWelcome to the Acceleration Economy AI Index, a weekly segment where we cover the most important recent news in AI innovation, funding, and solutions in under 10 minutes. Our goal is to get you up to speed – the same speed AI innovation is taking place nowadays – and prepare you for that upcoming customer call, board meeting, or conversation with your colleague.
    • Innovation & Leadership
    • CybersecurityThe practice of defending computers, servers, mobile devices, electronic systems, networks, and data from malicious attacks.
    • Data
  • Member Resources
    • Cloud Wars AI Agent
    • Digital Summits
    • Guidebooks
    • Reports
  • About Us
    • Our Story
    • Tech Analysts
    • Marketing Services
    • Login / Register
Cloud Wars
    • Login / Register
Home » Building Canvas Apps with Standard Guidelines and Best Practices
Business Apps

Building Canvas Apps with Standard Guidelines and Best Practices

Ted PattisonBy Ted PattisonJanuary 16, 2021Updated:June 18, 20212 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email

While the Internet contains an infinite supply of blogs and youtube videos focused on PowerApps, there’s not much content that answers the essential question. How do I ensure that I’m building my canvas app correctly? It’s up to you to learn how to organize and structure your canvas app so it is more maintainable and easier to extend over time.

Two weeks from now I will be in Amsterdam at Power Platform Summit presenting a preconference workshop titled Building Business Solutions with PowerApps and Flow. I have designed this workshop for technical specialists and citizen developers that need to learn how to build canvas apps and flows using standard guidelines and best practices. This workshop includes several hours of hands-on lab exercises in which attendees learn the following.

  • Using standard naming conventions for screens, controls, variables and collections
  • Nesting controls within groups for better organization and maintainability
  • Delegating filtering and sorting work to the backend data source
  • Tracking application state using variables and collections
  • Implementing a canvas app with a shopping cart

Why should you learn to use standard naming conventions for the screens and controls you add in your canvas apps? The screen names you pick are important because they are read out loud by screen readers for people that are visually impaired. Therefore, you should create screen names that are readable such as Browse Customers Screen and Add Customer Screen. It’s also important to use a standard naming convention for the controls you add to your screens. This makes your canvas apps much easier to understand and to maintain over time.

Naming screens and controls using a standard naming convention

There’s a very helpful whitepaper titled PowerApps canvas app coding standards and guidelines written by fellow MVP Todd Baginski and Pat Dunn from Microsoft. I really like this whitepaper because it spells out how to name controls using prefixes for greater readability. For example, a button should be named with a prefix of btn resulting in button controls names such as btnAddNewCustomer and btnNavigateToBrowseCustomers.

I highly recommend reading this whitepaper to anyone that’s building canvas apps because it defines standard naming conventions for all control types as well as naming conventions for global variables, context variables and collections. The whitepaper also examines best practices such as grouping controls, tracking application state with collections and global variables and using delegation to optimize backend data access.

Power Platform
Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email
Ted Pattison

Ted Pattison is a member of the Power BI CAT team at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, Ted was awarded as a Microsoft MVP for 15 consecutive years for his educational work with Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate and SharePoint Framework and has long been recognized as an industry-leading expert on developing with Power BI embedding.

Related Posts

AI Agent Interoperability: Community Project Details MCP Vulnerabilities, Enterprise Security Measures

June 5, 2025

AI Agent & Copilot Podcast: Security, Microsoft Copilot Partnership Insights from Zenity’s Michael Bargury

June 4, 2025

SAP vs. Salesforce: In AI Era, Battle Shifts to Data Cloud + Agents

June 2, 2025

Marc Benioff Is Transforming World’s Largest Apps Vendor into AI-Data Powerhouse

May 29, 2025
Add A Comment

Comments are closed.

Recent Posts
  • Slow-Walking AI Hazardous to CEO Health, Warns OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
  • OpenAI’s Sam Altman: CEOs Must Move Fast to Win in the AI Era
  • Snowflake Powers LA28 Olympics as Official Data Collaboration Provider, Showcasing AI-Driven Innovation on a Global Stage
  • Accenture and SAP Launch Tailored AI-Powered Solutions for High-Growth Companies
  • Snowflake Follows 34% RPO Spike with AI Data Cloud New-Product Blitz

  • Ask Cloud Wars AI Agent
  • Tech Guidebooks
  • Industry Reports
  • Newsletters

Join Today

Most Popular Guidebooks

Accelerating GenAI Impact: From POC to Production Success

November 1, 2024

ExFlow from SignUp Software: Streamlining Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations and Business Central with AP Automation

September 10, 2024

Delivering on the Promise of Multicloud | How to Realize Multicloud’s Full Potential While Addressing Challenges

July 19, 2024

Zero Trust Network Access | A CISO Guidebook

February 1, 2024

Advertisement
Cloud Wars
Twitter LinkedIn
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Get In Touch
  • Marketing Services
  • Do not sell my information
© 2025 Cloud Wars.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

  • Login
Forgot Password?
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.