
Power Platform and Power Apps: 2024 updates and 2025 features preview
Content
Let’s take a look at a thriving small family business. The word about it is spreading, orders are increasing, and profits are multiplying. However, there’s a limit to how much a small business can handle. Sooner or later, growing demand might become more than it can handle, leading to delays and frustrated customers. This is where Microsoft Power Platform can become the first step in transforming the business. It’s a suite of tools that helps you analyze data, automate processes, build apps, and even create chatbots, all without advanced coding skills. For the small family business, this could mean automating its order management and other routine tasks.
The Power Platform includes four main tools: Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power Virtual Agents. In this article, we will focus on the technical aspects of the new features and recent updates of the Power Apps.
The improved OneGrid (Power Apps Grid) features
The first feature on today’s agenda is the Power Apps grid (also known as OneGrid). Simply put, it’s an enhanced editable grid with powerful new functions and a more user-friendly interface.
The grid has undergone several functional and stylistic changes that significantly improve the out-of-the-box experience for users. You can now view data and work with it in a more efficient way: group and aggregate data, reorder columns, set column width, and complete many other tasks with ease. Let’s take a closer look at these updates:
Grouping feature in OneGrid
When using the Power Apps grid control, you can group the data based on a single column. By default, groups are displayed as collapsed, but you can expand and re-collapse them. This functionality is available regardless of whether the grid is configured to be read-only or editable.

Note: Not all column types can be grouped, but those that can are available for grouping using this feature.
Aggregating feature in OneGrid
Apart from grouping, aggregation is also available in the Power Apps Grid. More specifically, it works for numeric columns. For each column, you can choose to see the sum, minimum value, maximum value, or average values from that column. In case grouping has been previously applied to the same set of columns, the aggregate value will also be displayed for each group.
By default, the listed features are enabled for entities configured to use the read-only grid component and the pipeline view. If you want to enable these features for other instances, you will need to configure them manually. To do so, simply turn on the Enable Grouping and Enable Aggregation settings.

The Allow Column Reordering property
The Allow Column Reordering property determines whether you can rearrange columns directly within the grid. If enabled, it allows you to reorder columns by either dragging and dropping the column headers or using the Move Left and Move Right options available in the column header dropdown menus.
In addition, the new update allows you to select the first value in the dropdown menu by pressing Enter instead of having to navigate to that item with your mouse.

Sorting support in the list mode
The updates have affected the list mode of the Power Apps grid control as well. It now aligns with Fluent styling, with changes to font weight and font size to differentiate the importance of each field in the list.
Moreover, a new header row at the top of the list now contains a Sort icon. By clicking this icon, you can open the Sort menu and select the desired sorting option or order:
- Planning Status
- Project No.
- Name
- Customer
- Project Type
- Effort (Hours)
- Contracting Unit
- Created On

Note: This option is not available if the grid doesn’t allow column sorting.
Command bar for nested grids
The next update resolves an issue in the Power Apps grid control where the incorrect command bar was displayed when selecting a row in a configured nested grid.

Adjustable column width
Another quality-of-life update is the possibility to set the column width to a specific pixel value. This feature is accessible through the column options.

Option to select all records with infinite scroll
The option to turn on the infinite scroll is now available. The option to select all records will be available on all modern grids by default. Keep in mind that when using this option with infinite scroll, you will be able to select a maximum of 1000 records.
In order to enable paging, you can simply turn the infinite scroll off.

Option sets colors
The ability to set specific colors to Option Sets might seem rather minor. However, being able to differentiate categories in the grid by color significantly improves user experience.

Lookup functionality within the grid
The editable grid not only allows you to update records by manually entering data. Now, it also has a built-in search functionality that allows you to look for specific records without leaving the grid.

Note: You can replace a subgrid on a form with the OneGrid component. For example, if it is an account form with several related cases, you can replace the standard subgrid with the Power Apps grid component to display the data.
Introducing role-based views
Let us picture a group of team leads or supervisors working with the case table and having different system view requirements compared to case service representatives. Standard views, such as My Cases and My Cases Closed Today, can create unnecessary clutter for them. As a result, multiple apps are being developed to offer a more efficient working space.
Currently, when accessing any kind of table form (such as an account form, for example), you will see a long list of system views you can choose from. However, this list can be overwhelming, as many of these views are simply irrelevant to your case. Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to select the views that are applicable to your target users.
This is exactly when Role-based views save the day, allowing admins to select the appropriate system views for their respective users based on their security roles.
Recycle bin for easy data restoration
The recycle bin is still in preview and will become generally available in January 2025.
A common source of frustration in data management is not being able to recover accidentally deleted data quickly. Before the introduction of the recycle bin in Power Apps, restoring data after any accidental deletion, no matter how minor, required reverting to a full backup. This process was often unreasonably time-consuming and inefficient.
Now, the recycle bin allows you to restore deleted Microsoft Dataverse single table records and even customize data recovery intervals for restoring data for up to 30 days.
To view the deleted records, go to Settings > Data management > View deleted records.

What are the limitations of the recycle bin?
- Not all types of tables are supported:
- Virtual tables (Azure SQL database, for example)
- Tables that store solution components
- Elastic tables
- Records that were deleted through automated, cascading behaviors can’t be restored independently. For example, if you delete a parent account that has several child accounts, the child accounts will also be deleted. If you wish to restore the child accounts separately, you won’t be able to; the parent account must be restored first.
- The records need to be restored in the order in which they were deleted.
Associating email activities with multiple related records
In the corporate world, email is the primary means of communication. The people, places, and other entities mentioned in these emails often correspond to accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities in our system. With the new feature, emails can now appear in the timeline of any associated activity participants, providing better visibility and context.

Note: The new Related field does not replace the old Regarding field. You can use both simultaneously. However, the Related field needs to be added manually, as it is not included by default.
Keep in mind that only the tables that have the Can have a contact email setting enabled can be used in the new Related field.
New Environment Settings App interface
The interface of the Environment Settings is now available in an updated design. The feature is currently in preview and will become fully available in January 2025.
Not all features from the old web client are available now. The new Settings App can be deactivated in the Power Platform admin center until this feature becomes generally available.
Old Web Client interface:

New Environment Settings App interface:

Creating relationships for virtual and native tables
The last but not the least feature that we are going to talk about today is creating relationships between different kinds of tables:
- Virtual tables are custom tables in Dataverse that contain data from external data sources, such as Azure SQL.
- Native tables are default tables (like accounts, contacts, etc.) and custom tables in Dataverse.
Now, you can connect Dataverse and virtual tables, as well as several virtual tables from the same provider. To build even more complex relationships, you can use lookups and filtering.
Conclusion
Microsoft Power Platform, and Power Apps in particular, continue to introduce new features that boost efficiency and elevate user experience. For a more visual overview, we invite you to visit the proMX YouTube channel and watch the recording of the UI/UX Improvements with OneGrid session from 2024 Dynamics Week.
If you have any questions regarding Power Platform and Power Apps, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. They’ll be delighted to assist you in your journey to build apps for Dynamics 365 or develop solutions tailored to your needs.