A Complete Guide for Migration to Power Platform: Pre-Development Analysis – Part 2

This is a continuation post on the Pre Development analysis series, have a look at Part -1 of this post for a better understanding.

When it comes to migrating from existing technologies, a thorough study has to be done on the legacy tool starting from how the controls are used, what are the actions frequently used, things which are available in source and not available in the destination, etc. Solutions for these scenarios must be in handy for saving time while developing. Once the clock starts there will not be any time to do the POC for the requirement.

Following is the collection of out-of-the-box functionalities available in other tools like Infopath, Lotus Notus, Nintex. For which a working solution must be kept in the vault.

Repeating Control

This is one of the most common controls available in other products, it is nothing but an editable table where one can add, delete and update values in the rows. For this control, we have to create a roundabout solution that is built around Gallery control in Power Apps.

Approval Flows

Power Apps approval is good but it will get timed out in 30 days and no form can be attached along with the approval section. If the user wants to see the form data along with the approval section there is no such configuration available currently which most of the other BPM tools offer.

XML Form Library

This is a specific case anyone who worked in InfoPath might be familiar with this term. It is nothing but a SharePoint document library but the data will be stored in XML form itself. To convert it into PowerApps a series of steps should be followed to convert it into a SharePoint list and then we have to proceed with the form design and then the data migration from XML form.

User Profile data

Getting user profile data for a particular user is a common scenario in SharePoint-related forms, The Office365Users() function in power apps returns only limited values, In our case, we need the LAN ID of the users. To overcome this scenario we had to query from the User Information List.

Check Box group

SharePoint multi-select choice column has three ways to display data, one of them is checkbox grouping, Other BPM tools have out-of-the-box control, here we need to implement a roundabout solution to achieve this functionality.

Version history in Multiline of text

If the SharePoint list is version history enabled, there is an option in the Multiline of text column to show the previous data in a history kind of format, In PowerApps it will show the current value, we need to fetch and show the history data.

Time Control

InfoPath time control displays like a text box but when a number is entered it automatically formats into a long time format but power apps time control asks to put the data in drop-down format. So the users who already worked in InfoPath get used to it in this formatting type, yet it can be achieved with the user functions.

Form data representation

Tab form is common in any web application; it is merely a data representation technique to avoid scrolling in large forms or filling data in multiple sequences.

Accordion type of form is another way to expand and collapse the required view which they are filling.

Email Limitation

Power Apps send email action does not resolve SharePoint security group in the To field, Either we have to user “Send HTTP Request to Sharepoint” action to use SharePoint Rest API method or you have to query the users from the group and use them in the To field.

Following is a nice to have functionality and it depends on the client you are working with but it is good to know there are such things implemented.

Calendar Control

Power Apps calendar control occupies the whole screen and it is not user-friendly as it is available in the other BPM tools, So to overcome it we created a custom calendar control using PCF and implemented some additional functionalities related to the calendar, which saved us valuable time in the development phase.

This is part 2 of the Predevelopment analysis post, If you have not read the previous post please have a look at it.

Please leave your valuable comments and suggestions, Happy Building 🙂