Power Apps: Turn Spreadsheets Into Apps

Key insights

• Power Apps overview: The video introduces turning a testing spreadsheet into a functional app to replace fragile Excel workflows.
  It explains why spreadsheets limit collaboration and visibility and why an app improves control and tracking.
• SharePoint list design: The presenter shows how to structure lists for testers, test steps, notes, and approvals to support workflows and reporting.
  Well-designed lists enable clear assignment, status tracking, and easy automation later.
• Excel table to Canvas app steps: Prepare your spreadsheet as a table, upload it to cloud storage, then create a canvas app in Power Apps Studio.
  Power Apps imports the table and generates view, edit, create, and delete screens you can refine.
• Customize and deliver: Edit columns, controls, and layouts to fit your process, then save, publish, and share the app for mobile and web use.
  Modern forms, tabs, and color-coded progress help testers work faster and reduce errors.
• 2025 updates: Recent improvements simplify the Excel connector, improve data handling for larger datasets, and optimize apps for phones and tablets.
  These changes make initial setup faster and app behavior more reliable at scale.
• Benefits and next steps: The app approach speeds development, enables remote access, centralizes data, and supports automated approvals and PDF reports.
  The next video will build the main screen and connect testers with their assigned test steps.

Video Snapshot: What Steph Marshall Shows

In a concise first episode, Steph Marshall introduces a series that converts a testing spreadsheet into a working app with Power Apps. She reviews the original spreadsheet, highlights its limits, and sets clear requirements for the new tool. Moreover, she outlines how to design a SharePoint list that supports testers, test steps, notes, and approvals, which frames the rest of the series.

Importantly, the video promises practical outcomes such as color-coded progress tracking, modern tabbed forms, automated reporting and PDFs, and approval workflows. The episode prepares viewers for hands-on builds in later segments, beginning with the app’s main screen and connections to assigned test steps. Overall, the tone stays instructional and aimed at people who currently manage testing in spreadsheets.

From Spreadsheet to App: Key Steps Explained

Steph maps out a clear path for converting an Excel testing sheet into a functional app. First, she stresses formatting the spreadsheet as a Table so Power Apps recognizes the structure; next, she advises uploading the file to cloud storage such as OneDrive for Business to ensure connectivity. Then she shows how to start a canvas app in Power Apps Studio, import the table, and let the platform generate default screens for viewing, editing, creating, and deleting records.

After automatic generation, customization becomes essential, and the video walks through editing columns, controls, and layouts to match test workflows. Finally, Steph covers saving, publishing, and sharing the finished app so testers can access it on phones and tablets. These steps emphasize a no-code or low-code approach that lets teams move quickly from static sheets to interactive tools.

Design Choices: SharePoint Lists and Data Structure

Rather than keep everything in Excel, Steph recommends designing a proper SharePoint list to support multi-user testing, detailed steps, notes, and approvals. This approach improves concurrency, security, and integration with Microsoft 365 services, yet it also demands careful planning around fields, choice columns, and list relationships. Consequently, testers gain a more reliable single source of truth, but teams must invest time to model data and permissions correctly.

Moreover, using SharePoint enables built-in workflows and easier automation with Power Automate, which Steph highlights as part of the planned series. However, moving data from Excel to SharePoint introduces tradeoffs: Excel is quick to prototype and familiar, while SharePoint scales better but requires governance and structure. Thus, teams should weigh speed against long-term maintainability when choosing where to store their data.

Performance, Automation, and Usability Tradeoffs

The video also addresses recent platform improvements that affect how teams build apps. For example, simplified connectors and better support for larger datasets reduce friction when starting from cloud-stored Excel files, and cross-platform publishing helps phones and tablets get similar layouts. While these enhancements speed initial builds, they do not remove all challenges such as delegation limits, list view thresholds, and the need for performance tuning as data grows.

Automation adds power but also complexity: automated reporting and PDF generation can save time yet require extra configuration in Power Automate or custom components. Likewise, approval workflows improve traceability but create new failure points and permission needs that teams must test thoroughly. In short, automation and integrations make the app more useful, but they increase maintenance overhead and demand clearer governance.

Challenges to Expect and What Comes Next

Steph is realistic about hurdles: maintaining data integrity, handling concurrent edits, and optimizing performance for larger teams are practical concerns to plan for early. Additionally, offline use, version control, and user training often complicate deployments and should be part of the rollout plan. Therefore, project leads should mix quick wins with deliberate design work to avoid rework later.

Finally, the series will continue by building the app’s main screen and linking testers to their assigned steps, which promises hands-on guidance for the customizations introduced here. For teams that rely on spreadsheets for testing today, this sequence provides a practical path to a more robust, mobile-ready workflow while clearly showing the tradeoffs and operational challenges they will face. Overall, Steph Marshall’s video serves as a useful, beginner-friendly guide that balances rapid prototyping with considerations for scale and governance.

Keywords

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