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Introducing the new WYSIWYG model-driven form designer

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Microsoft recently announce their new WYSIWYG model-driven form designer.  See here for more details.

Initially looking at this, this designer seems pretty amazing and will resolve a lot of the pain points identified with using the classic Dynamics 365 form designer, such as:

  • Allowing makers to see how the form would look to end users as they configure
  • Enhanced fields pane with searching and filtering capabilities on the left
  • An always available properties pane allowing makers to configure components of the form without having pop-ups appear
  • A tree view to quickly navigate forms fields and controls
  • The ability to switch between form factors / sizes to see how the form will look on different devices
  • Save and publish via a single button


To use the new form designer, you must click on either Edit form (preview) or Add Form -> Main form (preview) from PowerApps.

Note that this is currently out only in public preview, and therefore consider this a very early version of something exciting to come.  I was able to play around with it a bit, and ran into a few challenges.


First off, the designer seemed a bit sluggish (slower to load and navigate around the UI elements). Also, I wasn't able to drag / drop a field onto the form, which you can with the classic designer. I had to click on the form where I wanted to add my elements first, then click the field, or tab, or section I wanted to add.  Additionally, I couldn't see how to add things such as sub-grids, spacers, quick view forms, IFRAME's, web resources, etc.

I'm sure as this feature matures, Microsoft will work on making it more reliable.  Regardless, it's pretty awesome to see where the public preview currently is with allowing makers the ability to change properties directly within a sticky pane without drowning in a sea of pop-ups.

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