Link Share is a Power App that I made specifically for Dataverse for Microsoft Teams. I had been wanting to build a Power App for a while and wanted something simple that was also broadly applicable for many teams. I mean, who doesn’t want/need to share web links with their colleagues? It is free to use with any Microsoft Teams licence without any additional Power Apps licensing required. The concept of the app is simple: share your important and relevant web links with your team in one place that is easy to access and use. This saves you from posting links into channel chat directly and having the chat message disappear into the post history over time. Each user can share, vote and bookmark links that have been posted.
Below is
the main Link Share interface:
Each link has information about who posted the link, a thumbs up button for up-voting the link, a vote counter for the number of up-votes, a bookmark option and a link button for opening the link in a browser window. The filter combo box allows you to see links from that day, week, month or forever. The sort combo box allows you to order the links by votes or post date.
In the Filter combo there is an option to show the Top Contributors which is ordered by votes. The top 3 contributors get gold, silver and bronze medal highlights around their photo so you know they’re awesome. The medals are also shown back on the main screen behind the user photo.
If you select Bookmarks from the filter combo box you will see all of the links that you have bookmarked on the main page.
The app also has the ability to also post to the Teams Channel that it is deployed in if you turn on this capability in the settings dialog:
Link Share will post a message to the Teams Channel when you add a new link:
Download the Power App
Download the Link Share Power App from Github here:
How to Install the App
Step 1: In the Microsoft Teams client click
on the left rail ellipses. Open the Power Apps application:
Step 2: In the Power Apps application in the Build tab and select the team name on the left side and then click the “Import your solution” link.
Note: I have selected a team here that already has it's Power Apps backend and storage set up (I know this because it appears already in the list on the left). If the team you are wanting to add the app to is not already listed, you need to first use the Create button and choose to add a new app to the team. This will then create all the backend Power Apps components (storage, etc) for that team. Procedure: Click "Create" link in the bottom left > Select the Team you want to add Link Share to > You will then be taken to the App Design experience > Click the Build Tab to get back to this screen and you will now see the team in the left list.
Step 8: You may need to open the Apps tab on the right to refresh the screen and see the Link Share app. Click on the app to open it:
Step 9: The app needs access to Office 365 user data (for access to images) and Microsoft Teams to post Links to Channels (if you have this configuration setting enabled):
Congratulations! The app is installed. Now you can start using it.
Using Link Share
Step 1: Go to the Channel that you added
the app to and click on the Link Share tab:
Step 2: The Link Share app will now be displayed and you can Add a new link by clicking the Add/Edit Link button:
Step 4: Type in a Title, Description, Link and
then click the Tick button:
The Wrap Up
There is my
first ever Power App open sourced for your usage and tweaking. It may not be
much, but it’s mine. Let me know if you have any feedback, features, comments,
etc. Till next time, may the Power be with you.