Power Platform Learn Academy
It’s hard to believe that I was co-host for the Power Platform Learn March 2021 live class. Especially as I only registered for Rory Neary’s Power Platform Learn Academy on 10th January this year. The Academy is so much a part of my life now, I feel like it has been there forever!
For anyone not familiar with it, the Power Platform Learn Academy is an initiative by Rory Neary. His aim is to teach as many people as possible how to create Power Apps. And with over 2000 registered users, it is going some way toward achieving that goal!
Rory produces short, snappy, educational videos to guide learners through the technical features of Power Apps. Focusing on canvas apps in particular, Rory also runs live classes. These cover some of the funkier features and non-functional considerations, such as design (UX/UI).
The mission
On Wednesday March 17th Rory was running a session on how to create an app containing ‘scrolling’ images. The app would be based on the recent Mars Rover expedition, and feature many of the amazing images captured in the rolling image gallery.
I’ve attended most of Rorys Power Apps classes and was absolutely delighted to be asked to ‘co-pilot’ on this occasion. My mission would be to help Rory pace the class so that if he were going a bit fast in places, or if there were something that did not seem obvious to a learner I could ask him to repeat it. Of course, I accepted immediately!
As it turned out, Rory paced the lesson perfectly so the only interaction needed from me was when Rory had to hop off for a second. This gave me the ideal opportunity to ‘wow’ the rest of the space travellers with some useless ‘Mars’ facts!
One small step for Power Appers
The real ‘wow’ factor came once Rory had completed the app … it was out of this world! I don’t want to overdo the space related metaphors, but Rory did show us how to create an absolutely stellar app! We used a combination of containers, timers, buttons, a form and a Dataverse for Teams datasource. The culmination was an app that automatically scrolled through user submitted images, fading each image in and out. The app also displayed a user submitted comment alongside each image. The full video of how this was achieved can be found on Rory’s YouTube channel, under Power Platform Learn March 2021. I would also definitely recommend having a look at, and registering for the Power Platform Learn Academy if you haven’t yet done so.