Power Platform + ChatGPT: A Game Changer for Building Power Apps

With ChatGPT being all the rave right now, I had to explore how this powerful AI model could be used to help me build Power Apps.

In order to showcase the capabilities of ChatGPT and the value it provides, let me paint a picture that may be familiar to my fellow Power Apps makers.

Someone in my organization has just accepted a new job at a different company. I've worked with Power Apps a few times, so my manager deems me the new owner of the Power App that my former teammate left behind. I open up the app and am immediately overwhelmed by the complexity of it and there's no documentation. Luckily for me, ChatGPT is here to help.

First, I find a gallery in the Power App that has some extensive logic on it:

I'm not quite sure what this code is doing. I can ask ChatGPT to explain the code to me:

Got it: this formula is filtering the data source based on four conditions and sorts by Category. However, I feel like the formula can be improved: it seems to be repetitive and I've noticed it can slow?down the app's performance. I can ask ChatGPT to improve this code:

Before I add this code to my app, I remember that my manager asked me to include an additional filter so that the gallery only shows line items where the status is "Active". ChatGPT can make those code additions for me:

Lastly, I remember that it's best practice to add comments into your code. It's easy ignore this step because it's time consuming, but ChatGPT can make this a quick process:

Now that the code has comments, whoever owns this app after me will be able to understand the code quicker and easier - a luxury I did not have!

This is just scratching the surface of leveraging ChatGPT with Power Apps and the larger Power Platform. Using ChatGPT in the Power Apps development process can provide many benefits, like lowering the barriers even further on low code development, helping improve application quality/performance, making app documentation easy, and helping users better understand app complexities.

All of these benefits ultimately lead to more empowered individuals, developing faster, while producing better apps.