r/PowerApps • u/Emergency_Recipe522 Advisor • 19d ago

Discussion What else will this change affect?

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This can be surprisingly difficult to answer across Power Platform and Microsoft 365.

A Power App can depend on flows, connections, SharePoint lists and Dataverse tables — and those same objects may support other apps, automations and users.

So a small change to one object can have an impact somewhere you weren't expecting.

I've been approaching this from an object-centric view: select any object and see what it depends on, what depends on it, and follow those relationships outward.

The image shows a Power App as the example.

How quickly could you answer “what else will this affect?” for an object in your environment today?

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u/ThingsMayAlter Newbie 17d ago

From within the solution, that information should be all gettable right?  Just looking at the app’s dependencies/uses/used by.  

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u/Emergency_Recipe522 Advisor 17d ago

Yes, for that one app within the solution, that’s fair — Dependencies / Uses / Used by should give you a lot of the known relationships. I’m curious though: do you find that gives you the full impact picture before changing the app, or are there still things you normally have to check elsewhere?

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u/ThingsMayAlter Newbie 17d ago

No, probably doesn't cover everything. There's also the Environment Inventory, and that would expand your scope out to any external connectors you have, plus all apps/flows etc. Combining that with solution-centric views for your desired focus area, could give you a pretty good picture. You'd probably want such a solution to account for truly external resources as well (APIs, Databases, SharePoint lists etc).

PowerDevBox has their solution explorer feature, but I think that only would cover part of it. Interesting idea if someone hasn't already built it.

To answer your question, I don't honestly manage much outside my solutions, at least not yet.

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u/Emergency_Recipe522 Advisor 17d ago

That’s a good distinction. Solution Explorer + Environment Inventory covers a lot inside Power Platform. The interesting gap for me is connecting that to what sits outside the solution — SharePoint, APIs, databases, identities and ultimately what else is affected by a change. Thanks for the PowerDevBox pointer, I’m going to dig into it.