Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hi Team,

I would like to highlight four specific areas within Power Apps where targeted improvements would significantly enhance both user experience and developer productivity. These capabilities are critical for teams building operational dashboards, data-driven applications, and business‑facing interfaces.

Native Export to Excel/CSV from Galleries and Tables

In Power BI, users can export filtered data with a single click. Power Apps requires a far more complex process involving Power Automate flows, Excel templates, manual column mapping, storage management, and continuous maintenance.

For operational teams who often need to extract filtered results, the current approach is inefficient and difficult to scale.

Requested improvement:

Built-in “Export to Excel/CSV” for galleries and tables

Respects the user’s filters and current view

One‑click download

No flows, no templates, no external storage

This enhancement would bring Power Apps closer to Power BI’s intuitive export experience and reduce ongoing maintenance for makers.

Improved Reliability of Copilot for Power Fx Formulas

Although Copilot is designed to help makers by converting natural language into Power Fx, its output is often incomplete or incorrect. Currently, Copilot frequently returns non-functional formulas that:

Do not follow valid Power Fx structure

Reference properties or controls that do not exist

Ignore delegation rules

Fail when used with SharePoint

Require significant manual rewriting

Common scenarios where issues occur include complex filtering, delegation-safe SharePoint queries, collection transformations, multi‑list merging, and conditional logic.

Requested improvements:

Stronger understanding of Power Fx syntax and control model

Awareness of delegation limitations

Ability to ask clarifying questions before failing

Start with minimal working formulas and expand as needed

These enhancements would allow Copilot to function as a true development assistant rather than a syntax generator.

Power BI–Style Field Mapping for Charts

Power BI allows users to explicitly choose fields for each visual role—X-axis, Y-axis, legend, values, tooltips. Power Apps charts rely on automatic interpretation of data structure, which creates significant limitations.

Current challenges include:

No independent selection of X and Y fields

Difficulty switching category vs. measure

Need for reshaping data to fit chart expectations

Limited support for multi-series visuals and tooltips

Requested improvement:

Manual selection for X-axis, Y-axis, legend, and series

Support for multiple measures

Custom tooltip fields

Direct binding to SharePoint or collections without data transformation

This would dramatically improve the charting experience and reduce reliance on Power BI for lightweight analytics.

Layout Suggestion / Design Assistant for Canvas Apps

In presentation tools, layout suggestions help transform raw content into professional designs. Power Apps currently requires makers to manually align, space, and structure screens, which is time-consuming and particularly challenging for makers without UI design experience.

Today, makers must:

Manually align labels, galleries, and containers

Adjust spacing and hierarchy by trial and error

Rebuild screens for a clean UI

Look externally for design inspiration

Requested capability:

A layout assistant that analyzes controls on a screen and offers structured design variations. Example workflow:

Maker places raw controls

Selects “Suggest layout”

Power Apps provides organized options such as dashboard cards, KPI tile layouts, summaries with tables, or mobile‑optimized designs

The maker selects one, and the tool automatically updates spacing, containers, and typography

Expected features:

Automatic alignment and spacing

Consistent typography hierarchy

Responsive layout suggestions

Theme‑based color application

Ability to revert to original layout

Works on new and existing screens

This would enable makers—especially citizen developers—to produce polished, consistent, professional UI with far less effort.

Closing

Collectively, these enhancements would make Power Apps considerably more powerful, accessible, and aligned with the needs of operational and enterprise applications. They would reduce development time, improve user experience, and expand adoption across business teams.

Please let me know if further examples or supporting scenarios would be helpful.

Regards,
Rajamani Subramanian

Categories:

Building Power Apps