Power Apps: Smart Calendar Edit Events

Key insights

• Smart Calendar / CRUD: The video finishes a Power Apps smart calendar with full Create, Read, Update, Delete support, undo for edits, and fixes for collection refresh issues.
  It walks through adding, viewing, editing, deleting events and ensuring the app shows changes immediately.
• Gallery-based layout: The calendar uses nested galleries arranged as a 42-day grid to keep weeks aligned and show multiple events per day.
  Navigation controls and event-detail areas let users move between months and open items for details.
• Data source integration: The app connects to external sources (for example, SharePoint or Outlook) so events persist, sync, and support multi-user scenarios.
  Data flows from forms into the data source and back to the app for real-time updates.
• Insert operations / forms: Clicking a date opens a form to capture title, times, description, attendees, location and color coding.
  Submitting the form writes the event to the data source and refreshes the calendar to show the new item.
• Edit, delete, and undo: Selecting an event opens an edit form pre-filled with current values; the app uses Patch or SubmitForm patterns to save changes.
  Delete actions include confirmation and the tutorial adds an undo mechanism so users can revert accidental edits.
• Collection refresh and best practices: The video shows how to reload collections after CRUD (use Refresh plus re-Collect patterns) to avoid stale UI data.
  Test for concurrent edits, minimize large queries, and refresh only affected collections to keep performance smooth.

Introduction

In a recent tutorial video, Alireza Aliabadi walks viewers through finishing a Smart Calendar built in Power Apps, focusing on full CRUD capabilities, undo support, and fixes for collection refresh issues. The video serves as the third part of a series and assumes viewers have followed Parts 1 and 2, which laid out the basic calendar structure and navigation. As a result, this final installment concentrates on practical data operations and reliability enhancements that make the calendar ready for real use.

Architecture and Data Integration

The author reiterates that the calendar uses a gallery-based layout and nested galleries to display days and multiple events per day, which supports a familiar month-grid view. Moreover, the design relies on a data connection to external sources such as SharePoint - Lists or Outlook calendars so that events persist and synchronize across users. Consequently, the app balances client-side collections for responsive UI updates with server-side data for persistence, which improves perceived speed while keeping data consistent.

Additionally, Aliabadi demonstrates the use of collections to represent a 42-cell monthly grid and to manage event sets for each day, and he explains how this model eases rendering and event grouping. However, he also points out that relying heavily on collections introduces challenges with synchronization and refresh logic when multiple users or external changes are involved. Therefore, the architecture pairs local collections with targeted refresh calls and careful Patch operations to reduce conflicts and stale displays.

Insert, Update, and Delete: Core CRUD Features

To add events, the video shows a date click opening a form where users enter title, time, description, and attendees before submitting to the connected data source. After submission, the app updates the local collection so the new item appears immediately in the calendar, improving responsiveness and user feedback. For updates, the author uses pre-populated forms and Patch logic to write edits back to the data source, then refreshes affected collections so the calendar reflects changes.

Deleting an event follows a guarded approach: the interface provides clear controls and confirmation to prevent accidental data loss, and the delete operation removes the item both from the remote data source and from the local collection for instant visual feedback. Importantly, Aliabadi shows how to coordinate these operations to avoid race conditions, and he demonstrates simple UI cues that help users confirm the successful completion of each action. Thus, the CRUD flow becomes intuitive while keeping data integrity in mind.

Undo and Collection Refresh: Reliability Enhancements

One notable feature covered is the implementation of an undo capability for edits, which provides a safety net when users change their minds or make mistakes. The video explains how to keep a temporary copy of the original record, restore it if the user cancels, and only commit changes after confirmation; this approach reduces accidental data loss and enhances user confidence. In addition, the tutorial addresses the common problem where collections do not reflect the latest server state and shows practical refresh patterns to correct that behavior.

Specifically, Aliabadi demonstrates selective refresh techniques that avoid reloading all app data unnecessarily, which helps maintain performance while ensuring accuracy. He advocates refreshing only the affected collections after a Create, Update, or Delete operation and using server-returned values when possible to prevent mismatches. Consequently, this balance reduces load time and keeps the calendar responsive, though it increases implementation complexity compared with a full reload.

Tradeoffs and Practical Challenges

Balancing immediacy and correctness presents tradeoffs, and the tutorial highlights several such decisions developers must make when building a calendar app. For example, updating the local collection instantly provides fast feedback but can lead to temporary inconsistencies if the server operation fails, so designers must add error handling and rollback paths. Likewise, choosing between SharePoint - Lists and Outlook as a data source affects delegation limits, permissions, and offline behavior, which in turn influences the app's scalability and user experience.

Furthermore, nested galleries and multiple events per cell improve readability but increase UI complexity and may challenge mobile screens, so the author suggests simplifying event displays on smaller devices or providing quick-expand actions. Finally, concurrency in multi-user scenarios requires careful conflict resolution strategies because simultaneous edits can overwrite recent changes; therefore, developers should consider versioning, timestamps, or optimistic locking to mitigate collisions. These considerations demonstrate that a complete solution involves tradeoffs among performance, complexity, and reliability.

Conclusion

Alireza Aliabadi’s Part 3 tutorial offers a pragmatic wrap-up for anyone building a Smart Calendar in Power Apps, with concrete patterns for Create, Read, Update, Delete operations, undo support, and collection refresh fixes. In short, the video balances hands-on formulas and UX guidance, while also reminding viewers that real-world use demands attention to synchronization and error handling. Therefore, developers can adopt these techniques to make calendars that feel fast, remain accurate, and handle the complexities of shared data.

Related resources

• Power Apps
• SharePoint - Lists
• Outlook
• Power Automate
• Power BI

Keywords

Power Apps smart calendar, Power Apps calendar tutorial, Power Apps insert delete update, Power Apps CRUD calendar, Build calendar in Power Apps, Power Platform calendar app, Power Apps edit events, Power Apps calendar component