The Gap Between the Tool You Have and the Tool You Need

Most businesses reach a point where a spreadsheet is no longer the right tool for the job, but commissioning a custom application from a development team isn’t justified by the budget or the timeline. The problem might be a manual inventory check that requires three people to coordinate over email. An approval process that lives in someone’s inbox. A data collection workflow that requires people to be at their desks to access the right spreadsheet. A team directory that’s out of date because nobody wants to maintain a shared document.

These are operational problems with straightforward solutions that don’t require professional developers to build. Microsoft Power Apps exists precisely for this gap. It is a low-code development platform that allows business users, people with no programming background to build functional, mobile-accessible business applications using a drag-and-drop interface, connected to their existing Microsoft 365 data.

If you are part of an organization running Microsoft 365, Power Apps is almost certainly included in your subscription. This guide walks you through exactly how to build your first Power App: a simple internal data collection and review tool that demonstrates the core mechanics and gives you a working application by the time you finish.

What Power Apps Actually Is (And What It’s For)

Power Apps is not a website builder. It is not a replacement for complex enterprise software. It is a tool for building internal business applications, tools your team uses to interact with company data without writing traditional code.

The applications most appropriate for Power Apps are:

• Data collection tools — forms that capture information from field teams, salespeople, or operational staff and store it in SharePoint or Excel
• Approval workflows — applications where submissions route through a review and approval chain before being acted on
• Dashboards and viewers — interfaces that surface data from SharePoint lists, Excel tables, or databases in a clean, filtered, role-appropriate view
• Process guides — step-by-step checklists and structured workflows that guide teams through complex or compliance-sensitive procedures
• Inventory and asset trackers — mobile-accessible tools that allow teams to update records from anywhere

Power Apps applications work on desktop browsers, iOS, and Android, through the free Power Apps mobile app, which means the tools you build are accessible to field teams, remote staff, and anyone who needs them without being tied to a specific device or location.

The Core Building Blocks

Before opening Power Apps, understanding these four concepts removes most of the initial confusion:

Data Source: Where your app stores and retrieves data. For first-time builders, use a SharePoint list as your data source, it’s the most natural pairing with Power Apps and requires no database knowledge. An Excel table stored in OneDrive or SharePoint is the second most common beginner option.

Screen: A screen is a page within your app. Most simple apps have 3–5 screens: a home screen, a form screen, a gallery/list screen, and sometimes a detail screen. Each screen is built independently.

Control: A control is any element on a screen, a text input field, a dropdown menu, a button, a gallery (list view), a label, an image. Controls are added by drag-and-drop and configured via a properties panel.

Formula: Power Apps uses Excel-like formulas to make things happen, to submit data, to navigate between screens, to filter a list, to show or hide elements. Most formulas you’ll use are simple. The most common ones are covered in the walkthrough below.

Your First Power App: A Team Equipment Request Tool

This walkthrough builds a functional internal application where team members can submit equipment requests, and a manager can view all pending requests in a list. It is simple enough to build in under an hour and demonstrates every core mechanic you’ll use in more complex apps.

Step 1: Create Your SharePoint List

Before opening Power Apps, create the data store.

1. Go to your SharePoint site and click New → List
2. Name it “Equipment Requests”
3. Add the following columns (in addition to the default “Title” column which will hold the item name):
   • Requester — Person column
   • Department — Choice column (add your department names as choices)
   • Reason — Multiple lines of text column
   • Priority — Choice column (Low, Medium, High)
   • Status — Choice column (Pending, Approved, Rejected) set default value to “Pending”

Save the list. It is now your app’s database.

Step 2: Open Power Apps and Create a New App

1. Go to make.powerapps.com (sign in with your Microsoft 365 account)
2. Click Create in the left navigation
3. Select Canvas app from blank
4. Name your app “Equipment Requests,” select Tablet format (easier to build on initially), and click Create
5. The Power Apps Studio opens a canvas on the left, a controls panel on the right, and a formula bar at the top

Step 3: Connect Your SharePoint List as a Data Source

1. In the left panel, click the Data icon (cylinder shape)
2. Click Add data
3. Search for and select SharePoint
4. Enter your SharePoint site URL and select the Equipment Requests list you created
5. The list now appears under Data sources and its columns are accessible throughout your app

Step 4: Build the Request Submission Screen

Your app opens with a blank default screen. This will be your submission form.

1. Click Insert → Text input and drag it onto the canvas. In the properties panel on the right, set its Hint text to “Item name or description”
2. Insert a Dropdown control for Department. In the Items property in the formula bar, type: [“Finance”, “Operations”, “Sales”, “IT”, “HR”] (replace with your actual departments)
3. Insert a Text input for Reason (change the Mode property to Multiline in the properties panel)
4. Insert a Dropdown for Priority with Items: [“Low”, “Medium”, “High”]
5. Insert a Button control. Set its Text property to “Submit Request”
6. With the button selected, click on the OnSelect property in the formula bar and enter the following formula:

Patch(
    'Equipment Requests',
    Defaults('Equipment Requests'),
    {
        Title: TextInput1.Text,
        Department: Dropdown1.Selected.Value,
        Reason: TextInput2.Text,
        Priority: Dropdown2.Selected.Value,
        Requester: User()
    }
);
Reset(TextInput1);
Reset(TextInput2);
Notify("Request submitted successfully", NotificationType.Success)

   

This formula does three things when the button is clicked: it writes a new record to your SharePoint list using the values from each control; it resets the text fields to empty; and it displays a success notification. The User() function automatically captures the logged-in user’s name and email, no input required from the submitter.

Step 5: Build the Requests List Screen

1. Click the + icon in the screen panel on the left to add a new screen
2. Click Insert → Gallery → Vertical gallery
3. In the formula bar, set the gallery’s Items property to: ‘Equipment Requests’
4. The gallery now displays records from your SharePoint list. Click Edit fields in the properties panel to choose which columns display in each gallery card, select Title, Department, Priority, and Status
5. Add a Label at the top of the screen with the text “All Equipment Requests”
6. Add a Dropdown filter control above the gallery. Set its Items to [“All”, “Pending”, “Approved”, “Rejected”]. Then update the gallery’s Items formula to:

If(

    Dropdown3.Selected.Value = "All",

    'Equipment Requests',

    Filter('Equipment Requests', Status.Value = Dropdown3.Selected.Value)

)

This makes the gallery filter dynamically as the manager changes the dropdown selection.

Step 6: Add Navigation Between Screens

1. Go back to Screen 1 (the submission form). Add a Button at the top right with the text “View Requests”
2. Set its OnSelect property to: Navigate(Screen2, ScreenTransition.Fade)
3. On Screen 2, add a Back button with OnSelect: Navigate(Screen1, ScreenTransition.Fade)

Step 7: Test and Publish

1. Click the Play button (triangle icon) in the top right to enter preview mode
2. Submit a test request and confirm it appears in the SharePoint list (check your SharePoint site in a separate tab)
3. Navigate to Screen 2 and confirm the submitted request appears in the gallery
4. Test the filter dropdown
5. When satisfied, click File → Save then Publish
6. To share with your team: click File → Share and add the Microsoft 365 users or groups who need access. They’ll receive an email with a link and can also find the app in their Power Apps mobile app

What to Build Next

Once this first app is running, the natural progression includes adding an approval step using Power Automate (triggered when a new SharePoint list item is created), adding a detail screen that shows full request information when a gallery item is tapped, and adding edit functionality so managers can update the Status field directly from within the app.

Each of these builds directly on the mechanics covered here. The formula patterns stay the same; the complexity increases gradually.

At this point, you’ve moved beyond spreadsheets and email threads into something more structured. Instead of chasing updates across inboxes or managing disconnected files, your team now has a single, reliable system that captures requests, tracks status, and works across devices.

The barrier to getting here is lower than most teams expect. The app you just built is simple, but it replaces a real process and creates a foundation you can expand as your needs grow.

Build something your team will actually use. Watch how they interact with it. Refine it based on real feedback. Then build the next one.

If you’d rather skip the learning curve and get a solution tailored to your exact workflow, Maxify Global designs and builds custom solutions using Microsoft Power Apps from straightforward data collection tools to multi-screen applications connected to SharePoint, Excel, and other systems.

Contact support@maxifyglobal.com or visit www.maxifyglobal.com to get started.