powerapps-docstring

PowerApps-docstring is a console based, pipeline ready application that automatically generates user and technical documentation for PowerApps.

A first version of a Power Apps Documentation Guideline is available here: Power Apps Documentation Guideline

Purpose of this application

Documentation of Microsoft Power Apps is an important building block in the software lifecycle. As in the traditional software development process, the developed Power App should also be documented propperly to ensure further development/support and maintenance as well as onboarding of new developers.

Unfortunately, it is currently not possible to automatically create documentation for a Power App "out of the box" based on the App (code) itself. Resolving in either hours of manual documentation work or a lack of propper documentation at all.

This application shall solve this problem by providing a way to:

• create Power Apps documentation based on the code and docstrings provided inside the app development process itself
• integrate the documentation creation process into the ci/cd pipeline aswell as
• create documentation based on an exported app

Example

The example [Meeting Capture Demo-doc.md](example/Meeting Capture Demo-doc.md) is based on the template "Meeting Capture App" provided by Microsoft. The app has not been modified except docstrings have been added within the OnVisible propperties of each screen as well as OnStart. The source files are also available in the example folder.

Getting started

Windows based GUI

Download the pa-docstring.exe file from dist folder or release page and run it to start the GUI. You have to provide:

• source path (absolute or relative) to the source folder
• output path where the documentation shall be stored
• config file is optional if no file is provided, a standard file will be used

Windows based CLI

The .exe file can also be used as a CLI. In this case you need to provide at leas the parameter -s and -o (see python CLI) pa-docstring.exe -s example\src\meetingcapturedemo -o example

Working with python based CLI or integration into CI

1. clone repository git clone https://github.com/sebastian-muthwill/powerapps-docstring.git and change into directory cd powerapps-docstring
2. install requirements with pip install -r requirements.txt
3. run with python3 main.py --source example\src\meetingcapturedemo\ --output example\

Once the application finished successfully the documentation file is created in the specified folder in markdown format.

Known issues / optimizations

• mermaid graph looks wierd whe to many screens and is not displayed in github since github currently does not support mermaid
• currently not tested with modell driven apps

Feature ideas

If you would like to submit your idea, feel free to create an issue.

• screen descriptions from comments
• screenflow from navigations
• used functions (configurable)
• used connections
• output
  • user and technical documentation
  • markdown
  • html
  • pdf
• handle following formats:
  • zip
  • mssap
  • src
• usable via Azure DevOps CI-CD pipeline

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