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Model-Driven: Calendar/Scheduling

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Posted on by criley

Hitting a road block here... What solutions are available to use/view/display a calendar in model-driven apps? Need to be able to schedule/view projects and timelines...

Will this have to be a custom solution?

I saw mention of a "calendar entity" in the CDS Developer Documentation (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/common-data-service/calendar-entities). Is this a restricted entity (i did not see it in the list)?

Thank you for any advice/suggestions!

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Building Power Apps

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WarrenBelz 156,545 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @criley ,
Firstly, the information /opinion below only relates to the way that Power Apps / SharePoint is used in our company, however I offer you the following.
Our user base for the area I work in is about 10 times what you mention (however the company is a significant international corporation) and are mostly field based, but a significant amount of the user activity comes from office based staff. As a far as volume, there are currently about 40 apps. The lists can be as big as 10,000 items with Libraries approaching 30,000. The data storage currently is just under a TB. All of this is done in SharePoint with Canvas apps and standard "out of the box" connectors in both Power Apps and Power Automate.
To cover the calendar issue, the Office365Outlook.Calendarxxxx() options should do most of what you want in a canvas app. This post from Todd Baginski is probably a good start. This is my opinion only (although I have seen it shared), but any outcome you can achieve in a model driven app should be possible in a canvas app, with an enormous amount of additional control over the user interface.

Please click Accept as solution if my post helped you solve your issue. This will help others find it more readily. It also closes the item. If the content was useful in other ways, please consider giving it Thumbs Up.
EricRegnier 8,720 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @criley,
The only 2 entities in the link you mentioned are "Appointment" and "Reoccurring Appointment" which comes out-of-the-box with CDS. The other ones, you'll need Customer Service or Field Service app that sits on top of CDS.
Any standard or custom CDS entity can be viewed in a calendar control. Here are the quick steps to achieve this using a custom entity:
Open your solution in Maker portal (make.powerapps.com), then click on "Switch to classic" in top menu.
In the Solution explorer, select the entity (click on the name) you want
Go to the Control tab, "Add control", pick the calendar control and bind the fields.
When you navigate to that entity from the sitemap (left menu) you'll now see a calendar.
You can always switch back and forth from the list view to calendar view with the "Show As" button:
For more info, here's the official documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/marketing/customize-marketing-calendars. Note it says Marketing Calendar, but the generic one is called "Calendar Control". The main difference is that the "Calendar Control" is read-only, but the steps are the same.
Hope this helps!
criley 16 on at

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I appreciate it @EricRegnier !

I did eventually stumble across the calendar control while digging through the platform:
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/Calendar-for-Model-Driven-App/m-p/518082#M158163

That doc you provided is definitely helpful and I am not sure how I missed it. I have spent, what feels like, an absurd amount of time researching this, all part of the learning process though. Anyways, this might be due to some ignorance on my part which touches on a comment you made in your post.

You mentioned, "you'll need Customer Service or Field Service app that sits on top of CDS." We currently do not use Dynamics 365, well, other than CDS for the "potential" MDA that I am attempting to build. So, will we need to purchase a license for D365 or add a subscription for one of the apps you mentioned?

Since we do not use D365, I have not been digging into those docs too much when it comes to finding solutions for the MDA I am working on. Am I shooting myself in the foot here?

Next, with the Web Client being deprecated and the transition to UI, how much of the functionality of the "Classic" Solutions Manager will be carried over? For example, I was trying to work with a filtered Look Up Field recently, pretty straight forward in the Classic SM but not available in UI. (Coincidentally, https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/lookup-filtering-enhancements-in-unified-interface/ was posted that day or the day after. I still have not figured out how to actually work with the filter in UI).

Anyways, I have been reluctant to use the Classic SM as I anticipate there will be at least a "few" functions that Microsoft, for what ever reason, will "decide not to make available at this time."

My apologies, I am still relatively new to PowerApps (specifically MDAs, I have not made it to the Canvas Apps yet, but will need a couple in the near future) and attempting to wrap my brain around the "complexity" (to put it nicely) of the D365/PowerApps/PowerAutomate/PowerBI/Power Platform "beast."

I appreciate your time!