Create virtual tables easily in Maker Portal

2023 Release Wave 1

Creating virtual tables in the Power Apps is an efficient way to access and manage data stored in external sources. Virtual tables allow you to connect to a data source, such as a database or an API, and create a table that is hosted within the Power Apps environment.

This makes it possible to work with the data as if it were stored in the Dataverse table, but without having to worry about duplicating the data or synchronizing changes.

Please follow below step-by-step guide on how to create virtual tables in the Power Apps Maker Portal:

Please navigate to the Power Apps Portal: https://make.powerapps.com/

Click on the “Tables” menu option from the left-side panel.

Click on the “New table from external data” button to create a new virtual table.

A popup allow us to select the source datasource. As of now, we can connect to SharePoint and SQL server but by using OData v4 data provider and custom data provider.

Click on “New Connection” option to use a new connection reference for the source data source.

This will navigate to the connection tab to create a new connection. Crate a new connection for SharePoint by passing the authentication process.

To apply the newly created connection references, please click refresh button

Now, select the SharePoint as the source data source and click Next button

Enter or select the SharePoint URL

Select the existing list page to create connection and click Next button

The wizard will show the schema details from source and destination datasource. We can change the field names and table schema details of the Dataverse datasource

Once we are happy with the mapping details, we can click Next to review the details

Click on Finish button and create the virtual entity for the source data source

Adding this entity in the Canvas App to perform any CRUD (Create Read Update & Delete) options.

How to embed Canvas app in Model driven app

Model driven app cannot conenct with any other datasource except Dataverse unless we use any Power Automate in the middle to store the data in the Dataverse. In such scenario, we may need to develop a Canvas app to connect directly with the connectors and use them to embed in the MDA.

Please follow the below steps in the video to embed the app in MDA

Find records with date range in Model driven app using Advance Find

When you work in Model driven app – especially around date field, you may need to search record based on certain conditions.

Some of the options are shown in below image

The most often used filter criterias are “On”, “On or after” and “On or before”.

If we want to search records based on two date fields such as by using between operator, we need to use Advance search.

Before that, let see how “On or after” and “On or before” filter works. This is required to build our between filteration criteria.

On or after :

Consider the below records and see the published date in these records.

To get records after 1st of Aug 2021, the filteration shows three records

On or before:

To get records on or before 1st of Aug 2021, the filteration shows only one record

If we need to get record between 1st Aug to 7th Aug 2021, we need to use advanced search or using advance filteration.

Advance Search:

Click on the advance search icon on the right hand corner . By using both “On or after” and “One or before”, we can achieve the between date range functionality.