Consuming custom common data model entity in powerapps

In the previous post we saw how we can create a new custom entity in common data model. In this post let's do a quick walkthrough of how we can consume it in powerApps and create/update data for that entity from powerapp. 

In the bottom left corner of the powerapp portal you will find the button to create a new app

Select if you want to use the powerapps studio for windows or the powerapps studio for web to create the new app. In this example I choose Powerapp studio for Web

Microsoft provides out of the box templates for creating apps. Let's create a simple phone layout app for connecting to CDM database via Common Data Service 

You will land on the connections page. Here we can see the CDM database we created in previous post. Once you select the CDM DB then you can see the desired entity . Notice we can see our custom "Approved vendors" entity

Click Connect

The app building service will run and take around a minute to build a default app for the selected entity

You will land in the designer window of the created app. The system created a basic 3 page app (based on the template we selected) to view and edit the data of the entity and also shows the data in the preview.  

We can navigate to different pages to see how it looks

Now let's save the app on the cloud, to do this go to  File -->  Save as --> Select the cloud option and give it a name and save it

Once this is finished you can access the app from other devices.

I installed powerApps on my Android phone and logged in. The new app was visible under My apps.

On opening the App I can view the data on my mobile phone.

Below are screenshots from my mobile

Notice that the vendor ID field shows the lookup by fetching the data from the CDM vendors entity

   Once the record is saved we can edit it again

We can go back to CDM database and view the data of the entity.  The new records we created from the App is visible here.

Users can build their own apps without writing a single line of code by leveraging the out of box available templates. Store them on Cloud and share with other users of their company.

This is a big game changer as smart users can now leverage all the tools and power from the cloud to be more productive and use the systems in much powerful and smarter ways.