Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hello! I am hoping PowerApps is the right solution for me but if not please recommend.

I support an online merchant community for a big box retailer. I also support/advocate a few of our vendor partners when it comes to navigating the internal processes of my company. With exception to minor changes/additions, our merchants have been using the same basic excel “vendor intake template” for at least the past 5 years. This excel workbook is used to collect all the inputs for a particular vendor who might be submitting new items to be set up, informing on new content/attributes, submitting for cost/price/promo updates, and a lot more. Once complete, the merchants approve the changes and then the workbook is passed around to the various teams whose tabs in the workbook are affected and need actioned on. This can be upwards of 10-12 teams that rely on the vendor inputs to be correct and complete, but also formatted in a way that does not create a cascade of #REF in the hundreds of hidden formulas. It’s clear to me this is a problem and one that I can’t solve. I don’t own the document or the process but I have found that the vendors Experience huge delays in speed to market and some challenging discussions with merchants for the simple fact that they forget to copy and paste their data into the spreadsheet in a format that does not disrupt the formulas (that they can’t view). The margin of error on the vendor side is high and creates unmeasurable delays internally and externally not to mention the relationship dynamics.

I do not want to create an app that will directly feed this massive ever-changing. That would be great and maybe someday but for me there are too many unknowns since I’m outside the process with limited influence and no ownership. However I do understand the rules around the data inputs and formatting requirements. I would like to use that knowledge to create a simple tool that could be shared (via Teams or web link) and used by external vendor partners to input the data. Vendor inputs would only be accepted when all required fields and parameters have been met. When the vendor submits, the merchant can collect the data and download it into a new excel file and then copy and paste wherever they need to with confidence that at least the vendor inputs are correct.

I’m a knowledge worker with way too much access to tools I have not been trained on and I have never built a PowerApp. But I have all the resources I need and a sufficient level of confidence that I understand the technology enough to get this done with minimal time effort if I just have a basic framework to guide me and am asking the right questions. I chose PowerApp as my desired solution because I would like this simple tool to be able to evolve and integrated with other Powersuite products as it’s adopted, but for now, my primary objective is an easy way to eliminate margin of error in just the obtaining of the needed vendor data.

Much appreciated for any assistance on some high level steps to follow and how to get started!

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Building Power Apps