Power Apps StartScreen, OnStart, and Deep Linking fix 

Thanks, Shane! Great video as always. Side note, kudos for one of the clearest explanations of imperative vs declarative programming I've heard

Hi Shane! Thanks for your videos Sir. Just want to say I appreciated this on Deep Linking and when I saw that screen of the images of Chewy my heart broke a bit for you brother. I know per your other video that he has passed and just wanted to express my condolences. It's evident to all who watch you how important he was to you and I hope you are as well as can be here a few weeks later. Not sure how much random youtube followers comments mean but you were in my thoughts then when I saw it and now again seeing this. Keep doing what you're doing. Jordan

My organization spent $1500 on my training for PowerApps and I have to tell them I learned more from a playlist of free RU-vid videos.

Nice tutorial Shane, as always.. 🙂 Many Thanks!!!

Hi Shane, thanks for a great explanation of this new functionality. What I'm trying to accomplish is related to the deeplinking part. When the Parameter 'ProjectID' is not empty, I want to navigate to the project details screen. That is the easy part. When the users land on the details screen, I want to select a project record from a collection in PowerApps to show the project information. So I want to set the variable varRecord to a record from a PowerApps collection. Can I use Lookup to accomplish that?

Thank you Shane!! This helped finalize a couple of apps I was working. 🤗

Hey Shane. Thanks for the videos. They are very clear and easy to follow. For whatever reason my deeplinking is NOT working. I have followed all the steps you provided. I have enabled the Navigate function in App.Onstart, but still it won't work. The page that I am trying to show is a printpage that is generated every time a Non-conformance report is issued. Print Page with Form Viewers. I am stuck and do not know what do here?

Thank you, Shane ! help to solve the issue fast. Keep it up, love to watch your video :)

Legend pal. This has been a great help to me! Thanks.

Hi Shane, found some interesting stuff to deeplink to an (employee-)ID that is working without enabling navigate function in retired features in settings. Using startscreen to navigate to the screen as shown in your vid, and then, on detail page, adding some code to item: if param id = X then show sharepoint-list-item with id X. else show the selected item in gallery.

Well done!!!! Thx so much!!! It works pretty good and is so helpfull!!! Greetings from Germany ... Christoph

Great video as usual! I am trying to do deep linking from a SharePoint list and pass a variable for the selected item. I try to assign a variable like you do in this video but the variable does not get set unless I put that assignment in the loading of the form. Does the App OnStart get skipped when you are deep linking from a SharePoint list?

Hi Shane, Just wondered if you had done any kind of investigation work around using the SharePoint Integration feature and this new StartScreen capability? When you use the SharePoint Integration, you get options around making things happen specifically in the New, View and Edit etc and I've often wondered about the overall order & priority and how that operates alongside the OnStart event. If the StartScreen is now available as well it seems there might be three places to alter 'starting' actions so which comes first and how does all of that work? Any thoughts or experience in this regards would be very good to hear. Thanks a lot. Alan C.

I usually create a user variable that stores several pieces of information like what permissions someone has for a given app (I have a data source with a permission name and a person field and then I look up the current user to see if they have any particular permissions, like are they a director, or the payroll manager, or HR business partner, etc...). This often drives whether or not they are allowed to see data (did they create it, are they the manager of who created it, do they have a roll that allows them to see it) and what they can do to the record (view it only or edit). With this new feature, especially for deep linking, I have to declare a start screen first before I know what record they want to see, if they are allowed to see it in the first place, and if they can edit it or only view it. I'm pretty sure I need to enable the retired feature for this (I can come close but not quite all the way without the old feature), but do you see a fix for any of this soon? Or do you know of any ways to handle this without the retired feature enabled? (a form's default mode which is leveraging global variables that haven't been set when the App.OnStart property is run is giving me particular headache. Would ditching the form help with this? Why have a form feature if there are so many benefits to not having a form....?)

Hey Shane! How I used to dynamically choose a screen on start is through a timer. App OnStart I set a variable to true to start the time Timer OnStart I set the variable to false. Timer OnEnd I set all the variables I need and navigate the user dynamically (works with URI)

Thank you, Chewy and Shane! 😉

Thanks Shane This is really good.

Always great video !

great video Shane, can you tell me where you changed the "getting data screen" at 14:34?

Thanks Shane. Your videos are very beneficial and informative. I have a question! How do you collect fields before navigating to the screen in Powerapps, when using SharePoint as a source?

As always my hero. Thanks!!

Hi Shane, I love watching your powerapp videos. Thank you for your great work and sharing. I would like to ask you one question for using wmic with powerapps. In your opinion, can we use wmic together with powerapps for collecting software inventory from the computer? What do you think about this? Is it possible? Thanks in advance Ayhan

Thanks again, I found what I was looking for.

Shane, great video. Let me know if I'm on the right track with this idea, watched a couple of your videos...I could hypothetically create a Deeplink URL to a specific "User Profile" where they could click "ClockIn" or "ClockOut". In addition to this URL, I could write it to a NFC tag where upon scan would open directly into this User specific App screen based on the assigned URL UserName ID?

Hi Shane, thanks for the really useful explanation of this feature amd I understand the need for speeding up the loading of an app when a user needs a new screen or to look at an existing record, but not being able to use a variable/condition to decide which screen to open really is rather limiting. Further to Eric Kirkpatrick's point below, oftentimes you want to display a record in a particular screen (such an Approval screen or a protected 'Published' screen or similar) which depends on a 'Status' value from within the record itself. And it's not always possible to get that set as a 'Param' within the URL which can be used in the StartScreen event. So how can this thinking work in this kind of circumstance? I'd hate for this to be one of those situations where one problem is fixed at a significant cost to a whole bunch of other previosuly standard (working) ways of doing things. Any thoughts about the 'conditional/variable' situation would be really helpful.

Shane. I've followed your example covered in this video. There's a strange thing. The correct screen is shown when I'm in the studio running the app. But when I go directly to the app via the url given in studion, it will only pop up the first screen in the tree. Any ideas?

Hey Shane, great video. I have an app that is used in an area without cell service and uses the LoadData function to determine the access level and start screen of a particular user. Being imperative logic, will it ever be possible with the StartScreen or will my apps always have to use the OnStart property? Thanks for your help!

Hi Shane! First off, I really appreciate your videos. Something I've thought about though, could you maybe put timestamps in your videos? That would help when navigating them and looking for a specific solution. Thanks!

Great video!! I’ve been trying to figure out why my app is suddenly broken. I used the deep linking method on one of my older apps (the way you showed us to retrieve a specific record) and now the deep link is broken, even tho the enable navigate function in App.Onstart is turned on in settings … how do I fix this so that the param takes the user to a specific screen and shows a specific record?

Hi, great video. I want to thank you for your dedication, I have a question, if I want, in a combobox show all the users of my office 365 and save it in a user type field of a sharepoint list, how can I achieve it, using patch? Thank you very much

Thanks for the video Shane. Question about StartScreen: does this mean that if I'm running rules OnStart to navigate to a screen based on a variable that this will no longer work?

HI Shane, great video. i have a quick question, one of our PowerApp developer has left and was an admin on one of the apps, how can i get access to the app to make the changes to the app?

Someone may have already mentioned this but another option for using the old deep linking method with one minor tweak that seems to be working for my app which I'm preparing to launch soon: 1) turn off the retired "Enabled Navigate function in App.OnStart" setting 2) the remove the Navigate step from OnStart formula 3) add an If statement to your StartScreen property: If(Value(Param("RequestID")) > 0, scrForm, scrWelcome) NOTE: Update this to the names of your screens and your parameter of course.)

Everyone keeps saying the first screen in the tree is the default. They say all you need to do is save and publish. But Its just not working for me. It keeps opening the original 1st screen even though its at the bottom. Thank you for the StartScreen step!

Thanks Shane! I have followed many of your you tube videos. I think I'm missing a step because I cannot get my deeplink that opens the specific record to also open the gallery of the repeating table for that record. Can you offer any input?

15:27 I'm looking for an example of how to shift from navigating in OnStart to using the StartScreen without turning on the legacy feature but still able to fetch the employee record while going to the employee detail screen. 😅 I'm testing with checking Param in both OnStart and StartScreen. In OnStart, if Param has an employee ID, then Set(varEmpRecord, Lookup(......)), and in StartScreen, if Param has an employee ID, then EmployeeDetailScreen. It seems to work, but i'm not sure if I'm missing any critical points.

Thanks for the video. If we use the new property to navigate to a screen does all the App.OnStart code still run? I do a lookup to a record in DV based on a Param Id set in the URL. Then set a global variable called varRecord with the record details. However, since this change this sometimes works, sometimes not. I either get a screen with a bunch of empty controls or the data gets loaded. Do u know if there are still bugs with this new property and it affecting what gets loaded with App.OnStart?

So if you use deep linking in the on start function with navigate command. Then move to new startscreen and replace navigate to screenname. Or just put code in button and on the onstart use select button. Maybe timer...

Shane, Can the Param function be nested like below? If(Param("ScreenLink")="Onboarding",DetailOnboardingScreen, If(Param("ScreenLink")="Offboarding",DetailOffboardingScreen, If(Param("ScreenLink")="FTEOffboarding",DetailFTEOffboardingScreen, If(Param("ScreenLink")="FTEOnboarding",DetailFTEOnboardingScreen, If(Param("ScreenLink")="NewRole",DetailNewRoleScreen))))) If I'm setting the record ID in OnStart. Will OnStart finish before StartScreen runs?

I'll submit that the performance issue Microsoft complains about is one that impacts their servers and not necessarily the user experience. However, it is important to point out that many applications use the ON START because they can do their lookups and calculations and store the results in variables so the data can be used in other places. What the StartScreen does, is force you to grab the data from a source twice in many cases. Once just for start screen and since this method cannot access variables, again as global or context variables if the values are needed elsewhere in the APP. So, explain to me how this is a performance boost if I am doing two data calls. I suppose the goal is to free up the system to load the screen and also do the ON START in parallel, but often the first screen needs values from variables so it may not display accurately when initially displayed.

Obrigado Shane

Great video, quite interesting. Unrelated to this video though, I want to view live ip camera feeds within powerapps, Microsoft stream only support content on its own platform and the video option does not seem to work when using the rtsp url for my hikvision camera. I'd like to hear any suggestions you might have on this.

Thanks Shane! I can make the deep link work; however, I've got issue with the launch screen, it won't load the main screen when ID (the parameter) is empty. What did I miss? Thanks!

Hi Shane, thanks for this. Have you ever known DeepLinking to take ages to load a record, but works totally fine when not deeplinked (i.e. just run the PowerApp as normal and select a record through the Gallery)? Mine has suddenty started to behave this way and unsure why!

Hi Shane! If you have a filter on a PowerApps screen with a gallery, is there a way to deep link a value into one of the search fields so when user clicks on the link with the parameter, the gallery will display based on the param value?

one question, I just added a powerapps inside a powerbi, and I have conditioned the startscreen depending on the value of the parameter that I get from powerbi to powerapps, in the app it works, but when I open the powerbi it doesn't, why can it be? thank you!

G'day Shane, I'm a little late to this party although would that setting also affect triggering onVisible of the start screeen? Just had some weird issues with an old app and stumbled on this video.

So Shane, if we have an old app but need to make some changes to the app, with the retired option turned on. The app will still work?? As I’ve an app where I have used set global variables with param for deep linking. Please advise?

Great stuff as always! Question: can you use two parameters in the same app? I have an app that works with two SharePoint lists (Payment Request and New Vendor Request) to create requests. As of now, the email generated when a user submits a new Payment Request contains a link directly to the item in the Payment Request SP list on the edit/review screen. I haven't yet tackled how to do the same thing with a parameter for the New Vendor Request. Using the new StartScreen, can I put logic that would check for either parameter and navigate to the correct item in the correct list on the correct screen? Whew! This is giving me a headache.

Should I be able to reference App.StartScreen? Say I had a home button on every screen, and I wanted to duplicate the app quickly. Can the home buttons be set to OnSelect =Navigate(App.StartScreen, none) instead of specifying a screen? [This doesn't appear to be working for me.]

you are a genius

Thank you Shane, Actually, I tried to replicate what I am doing in-app on start property like declaring a variable then set a value in that variable using lookup and as a result of the variable value I use navigate switch to a specific screen but unfortunately ، I can't declare any variable there any idea pls

Nice video Shane. I have a scenario in which my app is a model driving app with custom pages. Is possible to implement Deep linking to a custom Page in this scenario?

Shouldn't it have landed in the Admin page @7"08"?

Hi Shane, I have lines on code on app.onstart. I have Navigation function at bottom of app.onstart. Now, When I moved navigation to app.startscreen then it navigates to the screen but some of the field values could not be set. Because app.onstart and app.startscreen start to run at the same time and do not wait for app.onstart code to complete execution. Could you please help on this?

Hey Shane! That's a very informative video. Any Idea how to remove deeplink parameters from url. Because once a user goes to a deeplinked url and then tries to view other item, it always loads the same item since deeplink parameter is present in the url

I have a deep linking app that is in production but it broke today in that the PowerApps URL is taking the user to the wrong default screen. If I set the App.StartScreen to the correct default screen will that break the complex logic that is in configured in App.OnStart? I have checked and the Retired feature Enable Navigation function in App.OnStart. Don't really want to test on this business critical app? Thanks Shane!

Just found this update Shane...thanks....is there a plan to update it further? I notice now that MS have removed the 'Enable Navigate' option in settings so you can't turn it back on anymore. Have you already done a session on Deep Linking at the Start Screen?

Is there any delegable way to deeplink to a record? I have deeplink set-up that work for the first 2000 records but after that the link doesn't work due to the 'LookUp' part of the formula.

The fix is not working for me! It only works the first time you use and open the app, after that if the approval gets a new email with link, it will navigate to the same page as the first link did. We didnt had this issue before this change. I m looking for a workaround that will do the same job with deep linking.

maybe you know this trick: I tend to develop stuff with "debugging" info/output in the code, but I want to hide it if run normally, if you in StartApp If(!IsBlank(Param("debug")),Set(varDebug,true),Set(varDebug,false)), then you can put a label on any screen and have it output stuff you need, no need to add a new label everytime, just change it's debug contents...

hi!! can u make a video to warning the users if there is another user who has the same screen open? like, if you hve an approval gallery and there are two approvers, I need a warning for me to know that someone else may be working on that!! thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Why deeplinks doesn't work when opening links within iPhone or iPad?

hi shane you have done power apps offline mode part 1 right can i know where is part 2

Legend

will the existing app just break and need fixing, or not until the next time i edit it?

u saved me

nice!

Have you been skiing Shane!? 😂

I have made two attempts to comment on this video with how I have experienced this change, but my comment has been deleted twice. Sorry if I do not understand what is objectionable in my comment.

I swear, Powerapps will be the death of me. Enable navigate OnStart is enabled, but I still get a 'Navigate is not allowed error.' I think I am going to look for a job working with animals.

similarly you can Set(appVersion,"Vx.y.z") in onStart and have use that value in every screen for your version info

Thanks Shane! So with the new App.StartScreen setting, How do we pass context variables to the navigating screen?