u/MR_Datenanalyse

Hi everyone,

I’m currently studying for my PL-900 certification exam and looking for some realistic career/learning advice from this community.

A bit of context about me: I don't come from a traditional IT background. I’m a Citizen Developer who spent the last few years automating tasks at my plant/factory using Excel and VBA. Right now, I’m focused on modernizing workflows, lifting old VBA code into the cloud, and building solutions with SharePoint, Power Apps, and Power Automate.

However, I operate under a few constraints:

• No admin rights (standard corporate environment restrictions).
• No internal Copilot integration within the Power Platform (we only have access to the free web version, nothing embedded in the studios).
• I only have access to Dataverse for Teams, when I build an App
• I feel like my practical experience is still somewhat limited/MVP-driven.

With Microsoft changing its certification paths recently and heavily pushing AI/Copilot everywhere, I’m feeling a bit lost. If my company doesn't leverage embedded AI features due to governance/licensing, does it even make sense to pursue the next certifications after PL-900?

My goal is to professionalize my skills. I want to learn clean architecture, proper data structures (handling the 5k SharePoint limit correctly, etc.), and systematic software design. I eventually want to bridge the gap toward a Senior Developer/Architect mindset over the next couple of years.

My questions for you guys:

1. Is it worth continuing the official Microsoft cert paths (like PL-100 or PL-200) if a lot of the new material focuses heavily on AI features I can't use at work?
2. What are the best alternative paths or resources to learn "clean code" and enterprise-ready architecture within the Power Platform boundaries (especially when stuck with SharePoint as a backend)?
3. For those who transitioned from VBA/Excel automation to advanced Cloud Developers, what was your breakthrough learning step?

Looking forward to your insights and advice! Thanks in advance!

PS. AI helped me to put my thoughts into English

Hey everyone,

I’m facing a major delegation roadblock with a SharePoint Online backend.

The Setup: I have a Canvas App with a Gallery filtered by a Search/Text input. The target column in SharePoint is a Person Column (complex type).

The Problem: I want users to be able to type a name and find the record, regardless of whether they type the First Name or the Last Name.

• Search() is completely out because it doesn't support Person columns.
• Using StartsWith(PersonColumn.DisplayName, TextInput.Text) works only if the input matches the beginning of the DisplayName (e.g., if SharePoint stores it as "Lastname, Firstname", typing the Firstname yields 0 results).
• Trying to use || (OR) to check multiple properties or combine StartsWith logic immediately triggers a Delegation Warning.

My Goal: A delegation-safe way to search past the 2000-row limit in a Person column by both First and Last name.

Has anyone solved this? I’m open to architectural workarounds. Should I use a SharePoint Power Automate Flow / Power Apps trigger to return a collection, or sync the Person's text data into a hidden single-line text column via Flow whenever a record is created?

Thanks in advance for any insights!

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding best practices for managing formulas in Power Apps. How do you usually handle your app logic?

• Do you write your formulas directly into the individual visuals/controls (like Visible or DisplayMode), meaning you have to adjust them there whenever something changes?
• Or do you use App.Formulas to define your logic globally and just reference the named formulas/variables within your controls?

As a beginner, I’m currently using the second approach (writing everything in App.Formulas). It helps me keep track of things because I always know exactly where to go when I need to tweak my app's logic.

Or is there a completely different, even better approach that I'm missing?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and how you structure your apps!

Hallo zusammen,
Ich bin in der Power Platform ein Anfänger. Für die Grundlagen mache ich gerade die MS Learn für die PL-900.
Dabei kam, das SharePoint Listen ab 100 Einträgen zu Ladefehlern führen können.

Wie schnell erreicht man sowas? Ist diese Limitierung merkbar oder halb so wild?

Wie umgeht man das?

Hi everyone,
I’m running into a problem and I hope someone here has experience with this.

I was asked by another department to automate one of their workflows in Excel. So far so good. I didn’t want to use VBA because our company is slowly phasing it out, so I took this as an opportunity to gain experience with Office Scripts.

The script itself is finished. It can be triggered via a button and it works as intended.
However, I realized that I don’t want the script to live in my personal OneDrive “Documents/Office Scripts” folder. I want to hand it over to the department so they can use it independently.

My idea was to create a subfolder called “Scripts” next to the Excel file and store the scripts there.
But here’s the problem: I have no idea how to reference or trigger those scripts from Excel. Excel seems to only recognize scripts stored in the personal Documents folder. Even if I manually place the script there (tested with a separate account), Excel still doesn’t detect it.

So I thought about triggering the script through Power Automate instead. Surprisingly, that works well — and PA doesn’t care where the script file is stored.
BUT now I have a new issue: How do I link the flow back to the Excel file?

Ideally, I want a button inside Excel that starts the flow. The users of this file are not technical at all, so it needs to be as simple as possible.

I couldn’t find any way to connect a button in Excel to a Power Automate flow — except by using Office Scripts again, which would put me back in the same situation where the script must be stored in my personal OneDrive… which defeats the whole purpose.

Has anyone dealt with this before?
How do you hand over Office Scripts or trigger flows in a clean, future‑proof way so everything keeps working even if you’re no longer around?

Thanks a lot for your help!

PS. This text was translated and optimized with AI

Hi everyone,
I’m running into a problem and I hope someone here has experience with this.

I was asked by another department to automate one of their workflows in Excel. So far so good. I didn’t want to use VBA because our company is slowly phasing it out, so I took this as an opportunity to gain experience with Office Scripts.

The script itself is finished. It can be triggered via a button and it works as intended.
However, I realized that I don’t want the script to live in my personal OneDrive “Documents/Office Scripts” folder. I want to hand it over to the department so they can use it independently.

My idea was to create a subfolder called “Scripts” next to the Excel file and store the scripts there.
But here’s the problem: I have no idea how to reference or trigger those scripts from Excel. Excel seems to only recognize scripts stored in the personal Documents folder. Even if I manually place the script there (tested with a separate account), Excel still doesn’t detect it.

So I thought about triggering the script through Power Automate instead. Surprisingly, that works well — and PA doesn’t care where the script file is stored.
BUT now I have a new issue: How do I link the flow back to the Excel file?

Ideally, I want a button inside Excel that starts the flow. The users of this file are not technical at all, so it needs to be as simple as possible.

I couldn’t find any way to connect a button in Excel to a Power Automate flow — except by using Office Scripts again, which would put me back in the same situation where the script must be stored in my personal OneDrive… which defeats the whole purpose.

Has anyone dealt with this before?
How do you hand over Office Scripts or trigger flows in a clean, future‑proof way so everything keeps working even if you’re no longer around?

Thanks a lot for your help!

PS. This text was translated and optimized with AI