Power Platform Governance: Power Apps Code Review Tool

The Power Apps Code Review Tool is a solution built by Microsoft's Power CAT team to efficiently conduct Power App reviews. The solution uses the Power Apps Language Library to process canvas apps and extract insightful information that can be leveraged during an app review.

When a user opens the Power Apps Code Review app, they can view existing app review or create a new review.

When creating a new review, the user titles the review, specifies the team, and selects the app from the gallery. If the user doesn't have access to the app via the gallery, they can also upload the .msapp file for the application. Optionally, the user can also upload a file from a Power Apps monitor session to get more data about app performance.

The review takes a few minutes to complete. Once finished, the user can view the results.

The Checklist screen shows how the app scored against the pre-defined review patterns. These review patterns assess how the app holds up to best practices for performance, maintainability, security, data, accessibility, coding standards, UX, supportability, usage, and design.

In the top-left corner, you can edit the existing review patterns or add a new one.

For example, I can edit the "Delegation" review pattern by doing things like changing the weight, severity, associated reference resources, etc. When I change the weight, it impacts how much that pattern matters in the overall review score. The lower the weight, the less it matters overall.

On the App Checker screen, we can see the results for any "checks" that we missed. This data is also displayed in the Power Apps studio when you are building your app.

For example, my app has four media resources (uploaded photos) that aren't actually being used in the app. To increase the performance of my app and reduce it's overall size, I should go delete those unused resources.

The App Analysis screen shows us the app settings, screen information, media files, and network trace (if applicable) for our app. The Screens Info section shows the number of controls per screen: this helps us ensure that the control count is under the recommended maximum of 300 controls per screen.

The Code Viewer screen lists screens, controls, and properties within your app. You can filter by screen/data source or use the search to find a specific item.

If you find code defects, you can select the plus sign next to the code and link it to a corresponding review pattern.

The final screen is the Statistics screen, where you can capture a summary of the app review.

From the app review, you can select the email icon in the top-right to have the report emailed to yourself. You can then take that email and forward it onto other appropriate individuals.

Within the "Power Apps Review Solution" under the Solutions tab, there are two workflows that can be turned on to manage automatic app reviews: "Automatic Review On App Publish" and "Review Completion Email".

The first workflow can be configured to automatically create app reviews for certain apps whenever they are published. The review is created and once finished, the second workflow picks it up, calls the child flow "Generate Report" to format the review into HTML for the email, and then automatically emails the results of the app review: no need to even open the Power Apps Code Review app.

Download this app from GitHub here and import as a solution in one of your Power Platform environments.

To see this tool in action, check out the Power CAT Live video where they discuss the Power Apps Code Review Tool.