creating a booking system for external users that greys out time slot taken

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Posted on by AB21

Hi All,

Was wondering if you amazing people can help! I want to see if something like this is even possible.

Scenario:

It is open evening, and we want parents to view an external form or calendar which allows them to book in a time slot and when it is booked the time goes grey so it cant be booked again.

Can this be done by using power apps?

Thanks in advance!!

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Building Power Apps

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Joel CustomerEffective 3,224 on at

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The first challenge is the external users part—do you know who all of the external users are and do you want to buy them licenses? Power apps can only be used by users who are licensed that you share the app with. If you want to have something that external people can use without having to share the app or buy them a license, a power apps portal would be the better choice.

next challenge is going to be the graying out time slots part. Power apps portals don’t support that kind of UX, but based on the wave 2 2020 release plan for power platform, power apps portals will soon support PCF Control’s. There is actually a trick you can use to make them work today as mentioned by @a33ik in this thread https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Apps-Pro-Dev-ISV/PCF-in-PowerApps-Portal/td-p/451736

to summarize, you could likely build something like this with a canvas app, but I think to get it to be a good experience you will need to use a PCF control. Pcf Control’s work in both canvas apps and portals, so the real question is how many external users and do you want to go through the pain of sharing canvas apps externally?

pcf controls are a developer component so they are not exactly low code https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/component-framework/create-custom-controls-using-pcf

also have you evaluated commercially available options, such as Microsoft Bookings which may be included in your office subscription?

@AB21 if this answers your question please give it a thumbs up or mark it as a solution

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AB21 on at

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Thank you so much for explaining this! @jlindstrom

So it'll be the parents of a year with over 250 students so quite a lot haha. But with the PCF controls being able to use Power canvas apps into portal will the external users (parents) still need licences and that wont be an option if so.

We have a A1 license, so would we get Microsoft bookings for free?

If Im to create a portal app, if you cant use it for apps whats its use? just website creation? Can calendars be shared on it?

Thanks in advance

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Joel CustomerEffective 3,224 on at

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portals are licensed based on the number of logins. users do not need licenses.

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AB21 on at

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Hi @jlindstrom ,

But as a portal is basically a website can calendars be added? and a form which is filled out that puts the details of the form into the calendar - keeping in mind double bookings some how?

also with Microsoft Bookings does it come free with an A1 license?

Thanks in advance

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Joel CustomerEffective 3,224 on at

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form in portals are model driven forms, so you can build a normal form for creation/editing of booking. Regarding calendar, go to pcf.gallery and search for calendar--you will see a bunch of calendar PCF controls--this is a great example of how you could use a PCF control for your calendar.

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