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Question about single screen state machine App structure

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Posted on by GlenRosenblatt Microsoft Employee

Hello all,

I am new to PowerApps and am working on my first project. All of my users will be using the app via web browser on a laptop that I know the specs of. I have designed an app structure where the "Home" screen drives 99% of the user views via a few variables that are functioning as a state machine for the view and subview (and sub-subviews...).

I am developing in a "Developer" environment and my datasource is SharePoint (currently our only option) and I noticed that user experience is very good but sometimes performance can be sluggish. How much performance can be gained going from a developer to a prod environment, if any? I also understand that my own app can surely be optimized as well and need to consider it.

Also, are there any recommendations to an app that is designed like this long term versus a more traditional app that spans views across screens? Basically, is this weird? Am I setting myself up for disaster?

Some things I have noticed: When you are working with many layers of nested containers the view in PowerApps Studio often becomes corrupted, and it requires you to toggle FlexibleWidth on a container to get it to snap back into place. There is also the matter of requiring the need to manually navigate through the app or develop a debug view to assist with getting to screens to modify them in the Studio as well. These aren't deal breakers for me so far.

I appreciate any response or guidance in general from anyone a bit more experienced in this area. Thank you!

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BCBuizer 22,833 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @GlenRosenblatt ,

What may help is is using Monitor which performs debugging for you. More information on how to use Monitor can be found here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/monitor-canvasapps

This will give you some insights into what may be impacting the performance of your app. Specific things to look at are these Common canvas apps performance issues and resolutions - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn.

Moving from a development to a production to a production environment will not bring you any performance improvements, but it is worth noting that running your app in Power Apps studio will make the app behave a little bit different from when a user uses the published app.

Regarding the point on nested containers, I have not (yet) had these issue. However, it seems you have a workaround already.

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GlenRosenblatt Microsoft Employee on at

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I really appreciate the redirect back to some documentation. That's always helpful and made me re-evaluate some things in my application settings which I now have a better understanding of and it has increased performance considerably!

As far as nested containers I'm just curious how deep is too deep? Can that distinction exist? I attached a screenshot of an area of my tree where it is particularly complex to show what I mean. In this example the Containers inside of "HomeBodyTraining"'s visible formula looks like: Switch(HomeBodyState, "Training", true, false). With the same pattern followed for the containers then contained within that top level. Is this considered good practice in PowerApps as long as I don't get confused while developing my own application.

I'm sure this is basic PowerApps user 101 stuff but as I am a complete noob any guidance from an experienced dev would be appreciated.

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