This past Saturday (September 1) I had the great pleasure of presenting my new PowerApps Jumpstart session at SharePoint Saturday Stockholm. This was my first time in Sweden, and I’m really enjoying it! (I’m still here, staying for 6 days altogether.)
The speaker dinner on Friday evening was at Aifur, a Viking-themed restaurant in Gamla Stan (Stockholm’s Old Town), which featured large earthenware beer chalices, mead in fancy glasses, humorous guest announcements, and traditional musicians – and good food and even better company!
On Saturday, I walked the 20 minutes from my Airbnb in Gamla Stan to the SharePoint Saturday venue at the bright and airy World Trade Center. There was a nice speaker room, well-equipped with good wifi and lots of power points, and we each received a nice dark speaker polo shirt, and a Chromecast, which will really come in handy as I travel! After keynote talks by Sofia Edholm of the Modern Workplace team at Microsoft Sweden, and Wictor Wilén from Avanade, my session was in the first breakout slot.
My session was designed for people who hadn’t worked with PowerApps much yet (or at all), as a way of getting started and seeing why and how they might want to try it out. Based on a show of hands, the audience seemed to be right for the session – many had looked at PowerApps a bit, but not done much with it yet. I showed where you can create an app based on a template, and I demonstrated the basics of creating an app from a SharePoint custom list, and also customizing a SharePoint form using PowerApps. I used a PowerApp (which the attendees could download from the SPS Events site) to give a tour of the canvas, and to demonstrate various controls and formulas that are used most commonly. I also provided a list of good resources to get started quickly with PowerApps. My slides are available on SlideShare, and the demo app can be downloaded here. **See the footnote to this post.
After my session, I was able to relax and attend other sessions, so I mainly went to those of my friends who were presenting Microsoft Flow topics… Jon and Ahmad did a high-energy intro to Flow session (“Flowverload”), Serge (“Doctor Flow”) and Isabelle did a session on advanced Flow techniques for enterprise processes, and Daniel Laskewitz talked about using Flow, LogicApps, and Azure Functions to perform administrative functions. There was also a nice lunch (with Swedish beer), a panel discussion (again with beer), prize drawings, and SharePint (more beer) in the vendor exhibit area. In addition, I had the great pleasure of meeting my (until-now) virtual SharePoint friends Lise and Christina in real life, and being interviewed for the SPS Stockholm episode of their WitGirl podcast!
Thanks to Jens and David for putting on a very well-run and well-attended event, and to the sponsors and other speakers for making it possible! Now to go try some more Swedish beer… 
** NOTE: To open the demo PowerApp msapp file after you download it…
- Go to powerapps.Microsoft.com and sign in
- Go to Apps, and choose + Create an app
- On the next screen click Open, and then Browse to the msapp file where you saved it.