Grid Control and Grid Cell Renderer

All Out-of-the-box Altus views and form sub-grids have been transitioned to the new 'Power Apps Grid Control', which is now generally available. For more information, click here.

Benefits

The benefits of this new control include:

Infinite page length, with new records loading as you scroll down
Inline grid editing can now be enabled for any view or sub-grid (default is read-only)
Range selection (simply shift-click a second value)
Minor performance improvements overall

Grid customisation with icons and visual indicators is currently being achieved through methods that aren't officially supported and don't offer an optimal user experience.
The new grid control introduces an officially supported method for visually customising cells in a more efficient way.

We have added our own function to this feature called the 'Grid Cell Renderer', which allows for an unlimited number of customisations to be defined per entity via Configuration Settings.
This feature is designed for extensibility and aims to simplify the implementation process for the types of cell customisations that we anticipate will be popular with customers.

These Power Grids will eventually become the default experience for all users (although there is no ETA for this). However, we have taken the initiative to introduce these performance and UX enhancements to our customers early.

Configuration

The Grid Cell Renderer configuration setting is automatically setup with default configuration for the Altus grids:

This image displays the GridCellRenderer Config page

These entities have had column customisations applied by default, but all entities with the new grid applied are able to be added and customised in this configuration screen with no further configuration necessary.

The configuration is designed to accommodate many expected customisation scenarios. The configuration UI provides more detail about the available options, and the default configuration offers examples of both basic and advanced usage which can be copied and modified to suit customer needs.

Future communications will ensure that popular customisations are accessible and repeatable.

Configuration example:

This image displays the column entity config panel

Control Types

There are currently four control types included that can be rendered. All four are active on all default Project views:

This image displays the four main control types

Additional controls may be added in the future. There will be future communications regarding how consultants could go about developing and preparing a custom control for inclusion.

Note

The Percent Complete control can be bound to fields of type Number or Decimal. However, the value range for these fields must be from 0 to 100 (representing percentage completion) and not from 0 to 1.

Notes regarding the visibility of these features

This update comprises two parts: the new grid control and our new Grid Cell Renderer customisation method.
The way these changes will appear depends on existing customisations. We ask for your patience as we continue to improve and expand our communications in this area.
Any custom column work done for customers should continue to function as expected - please let us know if this isn't the case.
- The old 'unsupported' column customiser method still works with the new grid.
- If both the old and new methods are configured for the same column, the old method will take precedence.
The old and new grid are nearly identical in appearance.
- There is no urgent need to update custom grids; they look fine side-by-side. They will eventually change on their own (although Microsoft has not provided an ETA).
These changes have been applied to OOTB views and forms (sub-grids).
- Custom views with no column customisations will transition to the new grid and the new customiser method.
- Custom views with column customisations will transition to the new grid but will retain the old column customisations.
- OOTB Forms with additional custom sub-grids, or custom tabs containing sub-grids will display the old grid and old customiser method (only the custom sub-grids).