Try out the Power Apps October 2021 Release Wave 2 updates today!

By Evan Chaki

August 2, 2021

The Power Apps October release wave 2 makes discovering data much easier and comes with enhanced UI experiences that are modern; take advantage of these now for your Model-driven apps.

Start by opting your environment into the October release wave 2, learn how ( https://docs.microsoft.com/power-platform/admin/opt-in-early-access-updates ).

We have a list of the Power Apps early access features ( https://docs.microsoft.com/power-platform-release-plan/2021wave2/features-ready-early-access ) and Dynamics 365 apps early access features ( https://docs.microsoft.com/dynamics365-release-plan/2021wave2/features-ready-early-access ).

Discovering Data

Finding data in Power Apps continues to get easier with every major release. From global search and discovery to finding and filter records in a grid to advanced lookup capabilities at the form level Power Apps allows you to complete your tasks quicker.

New global search
Global search is moved to a prominent place in the header, and it can be found easily on any page in all model-driven apps, consistently. It is powered by Relevance Search, which is now enabled by default for all production environments. The new search is fast, more accurate and more intelligent than ever. It enhances productivity, makes information discovery easier and is an essential part of how you can navigate through model-driven Power Apps.

As an extension of new search, customizable quick actions help you find and act on your information with ease and without losing context of your work.

Advanced Lookup

Lookups are a core component of model-driven apps, as they help bring underlying data relationships in Microsoft Dataverse to life. With 2021 release wave 2, model apps have advanced lookup – a set of usability enhancements to help you explore and find that data easily, so you are more productive with data entry tasks.

The key to looking up a record quickly is context. This context is expressed by Power Apps Makers configuring a lookup field with the right filters. With advanced lookup, you can apply all the available filters easily to search for, explore and select records to populate a lookup field.

Power Apps grid

Model-driven apps are first to feature the new Power Apps grid, a new read-only grid control, both inside the view page and inside forms (sub-grids). The new grid control is in compliance with Microsoft Accessibility Standard.

In addition to improved performance the new control supports:

Remembering grid view settings across the session.
Ability to resize columns.
Ability to reorder columns (via column options UI)

The grid view page in Model-driven apps now features column options settings that let app users customize which columns are shown in the grid.

With this feature, users can:

Add new columns, from current or related tables.
Remove columns.
Change the order of columns in the grid

Usability Improvements

Our mission is to empower every person to achieve more. We have been working to make sure our experiences enable everyone to use our software to complete their tasks as fast as possible. We have several accessibility and functional updates to speed up processes.

Accessibility updates

With this release, several accessibility compliance updates have been done for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, including core shell and page support for zoom up to 400%, improved progressive collapse, and keyboard support access.

To be more effective with narrow viewports, the site map and side panes will move into a collapsed mode initially, and then move into an app menu in the header.

As part of improving visual consistency with other Microsoft products, we’re updating the styling for scroll bars and the message bar. Scroll bars use a thin, rounded styling that’s consistent with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams. This works with browsers supporting scroll bar styling, such as Microsoft Edge (Chromium) and Chrome. The app and form message bars have an updated coloring for information and warnings background, in addition to the call to action button.

Sharing Records

Users will experience a new and streamlined Unified Interface experience when sharing rows with other users and teams in a model-driven app. This provides a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 accessible experience by using modern dialogs and controls.

Bulk Edit

Users can now edit multiple rows quickly by using the Unified Interface dialog experience, which meets all WCAG 2.1 requirements and supports reflow across all viewport sizes. The new experience lets users choose the form most familiar to them or easily switch between forms if needed to edit fields on a record. It’s also supports mobile experiences.

App-level Panes

Model-driven apps now support the ability to have multiple app-level side panes This new feature creates a collection of tabs, each with a different pane. Omnichannel for Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Customer Service products have a similar experience of multiple tabs within the single pane. That experience is moving into the app side pane and allowing additional panes to be added.

Modern Experiences

Makers and end users can leverage the best of Power Apps with some of the modern experiences that are now available while using the latest browser technology.

Custom pages
Custom pages in a model-driven app provide flexibility and ease of authoring which are difficult to accomplish within existing model pages. App creation in Power Apps is no longer an upfront decision between the canvas and model. When you start with the model-driven app you can easily add custom pages to take advantage of the power of canvas authoring.

App Designer

It is now easier and faster than ever to get started and build model-driven apps. With just a few clicks, you can get robust, powerful grids and forms on top of Dataverse, and preview your app changes directly in the authoring experience.

Modern Browsers

Power Apps is supporting the latest browsers so you can experience and create apps with the speed you expect in these modern times. We recommend you check out Microsoft Edge if you are running a legacy browser. The legacy custom app is now removed so end users do not get confused when selecting their Model-driven app.