The inspiration for this post is this post from Geetha -> https://svaghub.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/role-based-security-in-powerapps-using-spgroups/. The idea is to basically use Flow to check what kind of permission the current user has, so that some functionalities can either be lit up or hidden in the canvas app. In her post, Geetha was using SharePoint user group to get this information. Being from a CRM background, I want this to be retrieved from CDS + I am not a big fan of SharePoint.

Attempt 1: Use DataSourceInfo(‘Users’, DataSourceInfo.CreatePermission), to check if the current user can create Users, which means they are Sys Admin. But, there seems to be a limitation on DataSourceInfo, which means it does not return the correct permissions for CDS entities. It always returns true, which is not correct. So, this attempt was not successful. This would have so much easier if it had worked, as all the logic would be entirely in the canvas app.

Attempt 2: Flow magic. I didn’t want to head this route, but since DataSourceInfo did not work, I had to use Flow to solve the problem. Solution is one of the restricted CDS entities. Only certain roles have access to read this entity OOB. Below are those roles.

So, I am using this as the flag to show or hide canvas apps controls. Below is my Flow.

There are two parallel branches, one if there is an exception while retrieving Solution records, which means that the user cannot read “Solution” entity and another branch if they have read privilege on “Solution” entity. Depending on which branch the Flow takes, “canread” can be true or false. I can use the result to show or hide controls on the canvas app. The two branches have the appropriate “configure run after” set.

The clunky bit about this, which I don’t like is that fact that Flow will report that the execution has failed, when Flow takes the “Cannot read Solutions” branch.

In the programming world, handling an exception appropriately and continuing like nothing happened, is not considered a failure, but it looks like Flow has a different opinion on this.

Potential improvement to the design: Create a new CDS entity called “Canvas App Permission” and create attributes on this entity, to manage which areas in Canvas App should be shown or hidden. Create multiple records of this new entity and assign this to teams or individual users, depending on how you want the permissions to be applied in canvas apps. The Flow can then retrieve this entity, and PowerApps can use this result of the Flow to hide/show areas or functionality.

Hope this is useful. Credit to Geetha for coming up with the original idea.