Understanding Data Loading Events in Power Apps Canvas Apps

When building Power Apps Canvas Apps, managing when and how data is loaded is key to creating efficient, responsive applications.

Power Apps provides several events that can be used to control when data is fetched from data sources, making it available for use in your app. In this blog, we’ll explore the key events you can use to load data in Canvas Apps.

1. App OnStart Event

The OnStart event is triggered when the app is first launched. This is the best place to load data that you need throughout the app, such as data that is used on multiple screens or global variables.

Example:

OnStart = ClearCollect(colData, YourDataSource)

In this example, we load data from YourDataSource into the colData collection when the app starts. The data is then available across all screens.

2. Screen OnVisible Event

The OnVisible event is triggered whenever a screen becomes visible to the user. This event is useful for loading or refreshing data specific to that screen without affecting other screens in your app.

Example:

OnVisible = ClearCollect(colScreenData, YourScreenSpecificDataSource)