Canvas app to capture and save handwritten ipad notes

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Posted on by Hilda Steyn

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We have a huge model driven app to manage our clients and their investments.

Lots of documents associated with each client is saved through the app on SharePoint.

I now have a request from the CEO who frequently visits big clients. She wants an app on her tablet, to capture her handwritten tablet notes, and save it to the client's folder in SharePoint.

I know I can create a new document through the model driven app, for instance Word, and it will open up Word in the browser, then she can add a 'drawing' for the handwritten notes, and it will be stored in SharePoint. But this is a bit too fidgety for her.

Is there a way that I can create a canvas app where she only has to select the client, and it will open a 'page' for her to write on with a stylus, and then it is saved to our document repository when she is done? There must be a way, but I just can't think of it now.

Any suggestions?

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Building Power Apps

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Anujjain 20 on at

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Yes, you can create a streamlined Canvas App for the CEO using the Pen Input control in PowerApps to capture handwritten notes and save them directly to the client’s folder in SharePoint.

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timl 36,558 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi Hilda Steyn

As Anujjain correctly says, the Pen Input control captures handwritten notes.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/canvas-apps/controls/control-pen-input

The easiest way to use this control is to connect it to an image column in a SharePoint list.

If you want to the save the image to a folder in SharePoint, you'll need to create a Power Automate flow. The high level steps would be to convert the Pen Input image to a base64 string by calling the JSON function.

Set(varPenInputImage, JSON(PenInput1.Image, JSONFormat.IncludeBinaryData))

From within your flow, you would use the 'Ask in PowerApps' action to get the base64 image string, and use a Compose action to convert it to binary.

base64ToBinary(triggerBody()['base64Image'])

You can then call the 'Create file' action from the SharePoint connector, and specify your SharePoint site, folder, and target file name.

This should hopefully be enough to get you started.

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Hilda Steyn 271 on at

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I found the meeting notes app from RezaDorrani. I am going to try and smooth out the few problems as I with that, as it is perfectly suited and so much more than what I wanted. Thanks.

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