If you’ve been keeping up with the sweeping changes happening around the , you’re probably familiar with the term Power Fx. It’s mentioned throughout Microsoft’s more modern documentation, and you’ve likely seen some areas in your configuration components that accept custom Power Fx scripts.
What is Power Fx?
Put simply, Power Fx is a coding language. Don’t worry, this language is not nearly as complicated as JavaScript, C# or the like. It’s more like Excel formulas; in fact, excel formulas are exactly what Microsoft based this new language off of! Also, it’s considered a “low-code” language, which means there is less you need to learn to get started with it, albeit with less capability for complex functions.
An Approachable Language
In typical programming languages, there are a lot of steps to performing a piece of logic. Let’s say you want to add two numbers together to update a 3rd number, like this:
A + B = C
With other languages, you would need to:
- Define the 3 variables above
- Pass values to these variables, typically using an API (an entirely different set of code)
- Add “A” and “B” together, set the value of “C”
- Use an API call to Update a record with the value of “C”
Power Fx reduces this down to a single step! Editors within your app understand what values are being defined, because they are based on your table’s schema. This eliminates steps 1 and 2. This programming language also knows what column and row you want to update, ()
