Allowing PowerApps to draw data from sharepoint without the user having access to the site

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Posted on by BradonK

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Hi all,

I'm struggling a bit with getting the right permissions for what I want.

I have a tablet with the PowerApps app on it logged into a Microsoft account.

The idea is, employees will use this tablet to use the app on it rather than each person having PowerApps on their phone and needing an account.

I'm using SharePoint to hold the data for the PowerApp. However, I use said SharePoint for multiple apps.

This means that data that may be confidential for one app is also visible if you log into the SharePoint site directly.

This is why I need to allow the data to be drawn from SharePoint into the app, but don't let anyone access the SharePoint site directly.

Is there a way to do this?

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Building Power Apps

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WarrenBelz 156,750 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @BradonK ,

This is not really possible as the user needs at least read access to view the data. You can however give the users a custom permission in SharePoint based on Contribute with View Application Pages unchecked and then they cannot navigate to any view in SharePoint. You can also "hide" the list on a subsite that they do not know the address of.

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BradonK 375 on at

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Hi @WarrenBelz,

I tried unchecking the "View application pages" option in my custom group that I use for power apps users.
The home page does say unavailable but the "Site Contents" and other lists are visible.

Thanks
WarrenBelz 156,750 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@BradonK ,

If the permissions are on the whole site (not just the list), it should work. Either that or put the list on a sub-site with those permissions if they need to see other lists.
BradonK 375 on at

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@WarrenBelz ,

The permission group contains the accounts that need access to the app.
Whenever I create a list or other item, it automatically adds the group as a viewer, which I don't want.
I can then remove the group and it wont show up in the site but then power apps doesn't have access to the data.
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WarrenBelz 156,750 Most Valuable Professional on at

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HI @BradonK ,

Sorry you lost me a bit here - I have been doing this for several years and I have a group (field users) with these permissions over the entire site. If one of them needs elevated permissions for the site, I simply add them to another group with the required permissions. I also base my custom permissions on Contribute with only View Application Pages removed.
BradonK 375 on at

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@WarrenBelz ,

Ok, well it worked.

I deleted my old group which was based off of View and made a new permission level copied from Contribute.
Unticked the View Application Pages option and added the permission to the group.

Somehow, just remaking it fixed it...

Thanks for the help.