Understanding Types Of Controls In PowerApps

Introduction

Controls are the basic building block of PowerApps Canvas application. Controls are something that will be used to display some information to the end user or can be used to collect information from end users. All these controls will be added to the Screens of the PowerApps. Based on the types of information displayed or types of data collected from end user, we have several categories of controls available in PowerApps. In this article, we will be walking through each control and its basic usage.

Categories of Controls

The categories are

1. Input
2. Display
3. Layout
4. Media
5. Icons
6. Shapes
7. Charts
8. AI Builder
9. Mixed Reality

Now let’s see these categories in detail and understand what controls are available within these categories.

Input

As the name suggests, this will contain the controls to take input from end user. The controls available in this category are

Button

Using button control, end user can submit data to the PowerApps or else navigate between the apps.

Text Input

This is actually a text box control. This will be used to take input from the end users. This control can collect alphanumerical data from the end user, for example, name, email, address, pin code etc.

Pen Input

This control allows you to write any information using your hand or digital pen. This will give you a canvas area where you can write anything. This is mostly used to collect the signature from the users. For example, when you receive any parcel from online shopping site, the delivery guy always takes your signature on his device. In such cases, we can use Pen Input.

It looks like,

You can use your figure to write into this area or else you can use digital pen too.

Dropdown

This control is also used to take input from the user, but this is used when we want the user must enter some specific value only. For example, Gender. If we need to collect gender data then we know that it can be Male, or Female or Others. It cannot contain unlimited values. Whenever we have specific set of data out of which we want our user to select any one, we use Drop down control to take the input. Because drop-down control does not give free hand to type anything user can only choose values.

Combo box

This is same as drop down control but with some additional functionalities. Combo boxes allow user to select more than one value from the available options. This control is used when we have large choice sets such as City, state, country, etc. In this control, user can also select the value by start typing the value.

Date picker

As the name suggests this control is used to allow user to pick a date. Note that, it allows only to pick date, not time.

List box

This contains a list of items that can be selected by the end user. Here end user can select one or multiple items from the list box.

Check box

This is used when we have a limited number of choices and user is allowed to select multiple options. For example, an end user can select multiple hobbies.

Radio

This is used when we have a limited number of choices and user is allowed to select only single option. For example, user can select Yes or No for some question.

Toggle

This control allows the user to switch the selection to Yes/No

Slider

Slider allows the user to select the value by sliding the bar horizontally or vertically.

Rating

Rating control is used to take ratings from the user. Ratings can be submitted by Star.

Timer

Timer control is used to display clock, or we can say display time taken by apps to load the data. We just need to use it wisely to display this information.

Edit Forms

Edit Forms are used to take data from users for specific data source such as SharePoint list data.

Display Forms

Display Forms are used to display data from users for specific data source such as SharePoint list data.

Rich text editor

This is used to take formatted text input from the user. This control will allow user to type the values in Bold, Italic etc.

Display Category

Controls in this category are used to display the data on the screen, this controls cannot take input from the user. User can only see the data displayed in these controls.

Text Label

This control displays the text/string data into the PowerApps.

HTML Text

This control displays the text in formatted format. If any formatting is applied to the data or it contains HTML tags, then this control with parse those HTML and formatting and display the final formatted text data to the screen.

Layout Category

In this, gallery control is used. Gallery control is capable of handling and displaying information in a formatted, grouping way. For example, if we have 10 items, then the gallery has the capability of showing 10 items at a time in rows format.

There are several types of layouts available. All the layouts are self-explanatory.

1. Vertical gallery
2. Horizontal gallery
3. Flexible height gallery
4. Blank vertical gallery
5. Blank horizontal gallery
6. Blank flexible height gallery

The only difference between Vertical and Blank vertical is, in Vertical gallery, few sample controls will be pre-loaded, while in blank vertical gallery, we have to add the controls as per our need.

Vertical Gallery Sample

Blank Vertical Gallery Sample

Media Category

This category is related to display media to the canvas app. Media can be an Image, Video, 3D art, etc.

Image

This is used to display image to the canvas app.

3D Object

This control is used to display 3D objects to the Canvas app. 3D objects look like

Camera

Sometimes it is required that we need input from the user’s device camera. In that case we can make use of Camera control. This will take input from user’s camera. To use this, our app should be allowed to access the device camera.

Barcode scanner

As the name suggests, this control will be used to scan the barcode from your barcode scanner device. To use this feature, our app should be connected to some scanning device.

Video

This control is used to display video to the PowerApps canvas application

Microsoft Stream

This control is used to display the video from your Microsoft Stream account directly into the PowerApps canvas application’s screen.

Audio

This is used to embed and play audio in your PowerApps canvas application.

Add picture

This control is used to display image in your PowerApps canvas application’s screen.

Icon Category

Here we have several icons available pre-defined by PowerApps that we can use in our PowerApps application. There are a lot of icons available in icon gallery and you can make use of them.

Shape Category

Here we have several shapes available pre-defined by PowerApps that we can use in our PowerApps application. There are a lot of shapes available in shape gallery and you can make use of them.

Charts Category

We can display charts also in our PowerApps canvas application’s screen. There are mainly 4 types charts available to display on PowerApps screen.

1. Pie charts
2. Line charts
3. Column charts
4. Power BI tile. This is special integration of Power BI to PowerApps, in this integration user can display Power BI report visuals in our PowerApps canvas application’s screen.

AI Builder Category

As the name suggests, this contains the controls regarding AI Builder categories. There are several AI based services already available in PowerApps which make them fun to use and are

1. Business card processor: This can process the business card by creating models and save data to some data sources.
2. Receipt processor: This can be used to process invoices or receipts and save data to some data sources.
3. Form processor: This can be used when we need to analyze specific scanned form data.
4. Object detector: This is generally used to identify the given object by matching it to the models available in AI builder models.
5. Text recognizer: This can be used to read handwritten notes and convert those and save to SharePoint list

Mixed Reality Category

This tool helps when we are working with Mixed Reality such as View in MR, Measure in MR, Place a Cube, Markup in MR controls, where MR stands for Mixed Reality. We can cover each of the controls as a separate topic.

Summary

In this article, we have seen all the possible available controls into the PowerApps that we will be using in our PowerApps canvas application.

Either we are making an app for Mobile or Tablet, controls will be the same. If you have any questions or suggestion related to this article or any previous articles, you can submit those into the comment section.