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For Power Apps

The two apps: Parsware Studio and Parsware

Parsware for Power Apps installs two model-driven apps. Parsware Studio is where makers draw reports and screens, and it only exists in development. Parsware is what every environment gets, and it starts almost empty on purpose, because the reports and screens your users open belong in your own apps.

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The Parsware Studio app in Power Apps, showing the Active Parsware Designs view with reports, apps and queries listed by name and kind, next to the title "The two apps"

With the solutions installed and the licence in place, open the apps list in the maker portal. You'll find two new model-driven apps, one for each kind of person:

App Comes with For Where it exists
Parsware Studio Parsware Studio (the designer solution) Makers, who draw reports and screens Development only
Parsware Parsware Runtime Whoever manages the licence Every environment

If you imported the samples, there's a third, Parsware Samples. It's the subject of the next article.

The split is deliberate. Designing is a development activity, so the tool for it stays in development. What reaches test and production is what you published, inside your own solutions, and the runtime that shows it.

Parsware Studio, for makers

Parsware Studio opens on Designs: every report, Studio app and saved query in the environment, one row each.

The Parsware Studio app on its Designs page. The navigation has Author (Designs, Designer, Queries), Browse (All reports, All apps) and Settings (Licence), and the Active Parsware Designs view lists eleven designs with their kind: App, Report or Query

Its navigation has three groups:

Group Page What it's for
Author Designs The list of designs. New here is how a design starts: give it a name and a kind
Designer The canvas, where you draw a report or a screen
Queries Saved queries, for the totals and groupings a view can't express. Build one, or write FetchXML, and see its rows before you save it
Browse All reports Every report in the environment, running beside the list
All apps The same, for Studio apps
Settings Licence The licence row from the previous article

Designer opens on a list of the designs you can open, with a search box above it. Choose one, press Open, and the canvas takes the whole page.

The Designer page in Parsware Studio: Open a design, a search box, and a list of designs such as Claims with a cover (report), Currency field (app) and Expenses by status (query), each with an Open button

All reports is the quickest way to see what a report looks like with real rows, without opening the designer at all:

All reports in Parsware Studio: a searchable list of three reports on the left, and Claims with a cover running on the right, its cover page reading Expense Claims, 50 claims, £9,083.14, with page controls above it

One thing to know about both browsers: they show drafts. They read the design rows and compile what's been saved, published or not. That's right for a maker checking their work, and it's why Parsware Studio doesn't go to your users.

Parsware, for everybody else

Open Parsware and you'll find very little: one group, Setup, with one page, Licence.

The Parsware app: its navigation holds only Setup, Licence, and the Active Parsware Licences view shows one licence row named Professional

That isn't unfinished. Parsware for Power Apps is a capability, not a set of reports: it renders whichever design an app names. We don't know which reports your users need or what order they'd want them in, so the app we ship has none of ours in it.

Where your users open reports and screens

In your own model-driven apps, alongside everything else those users already work with. There are three ways in:

  • A page in the app's navigation. A navigation item pointing at /WebResources/par_designer/run.html?data=<design name> opens that one published design as a whole page. The Parsware Samples app is built exactly this way, one item per report.
  • A section on a form, showing a report for the record that's open, or a drawn Studio screen.
  • A control on a column, where a drawn screen reads and writes that column.

The last two have their own articles later in this series.

A design is named by its name, not by an id, so the same navigation item works in development, test and production once the design has moved with your solution. And only published designs open this way. A draft that has only been saved says so, rather than appearing to your users.

Who gets which app

Share the apps the way you share any model-driven app, through security roles:

  • Parsware Studio to your makers, in development.
  • Parsware to whoever looks after the licence in each environment.
  • Your own apps to your users, as you do now. They open the reports and screens you placed in them, and they never need either of ours.

Next

The samples, and sample data: a finished set of reports and apps, and the one button that fills their tables. The whole series is in the reading list.