I’ve been tinkering with a Canvas-based Power App for over a year and have just now realised that I wish I kept a changelog. I’ve added loads of features and fixed loads of tricky little bugs and I wish I could read it all in one place. Also, I’m getting close to sharing it with the world, and so a changelog seems desirable.

Why did I not keep a change log? Well, Canvas-based Power Apps don’t readily lend themselves to “userspace” version control. You don’t have a “local” copy of the app/code. I am pretty sure you can switch on some background git repo if you have the enterprise licensing, but we do not. And while you can extract the Power Fx code for each screen, it’s not something you’d want to do often.

However, all is not completely lost! I don’t have any training in Agile software development but I do understand the fundamentals of Minimum Viable Product. And, because the app itself is an Outlook-integrated Task timer/tracker, I started using it straight away to track the work I was doing on the app. So, I do have dates for when I did what, which I can cross-reference against the version history provided in Power Apps Studio.

I might be able to cobble something together but I wish I’d just kept one from the start! With that said, I should go and start one now…