Microsoft has announced the general availability of User Defined Types (UDTs) in Power Fx for Power Apps, bringing makers more flexibility when building scalable and maintainable applications. The update enables developers to structure records and tables more effectively, helping simplify complex formulas and improve app readability. With UDTs now production-ready, Power Fx continues evolving into a more powerful low-code programming language for enterprise app development.

Here’s what you need to know:

Records and Tables as Parameters and Return Values
User Defined Types help make formulas easier to read, write, and maintain by grouping related information into structured data types. This also reduces errors through strong typing, especially when working with JSON data. For example, details like a book title, author, page count, and publication year can all be grouped into a single typed structure using the Type function in the App object’s Formulas property.
UDTs and JSON
Working with JSON becomes more reliable with UDTs by validating and converting untyped text into typed Power Fx objects. Since JSON doesn’t support native date/time types and often stores them as ISO 8601 strings, UDTs help ensure values are correctly interpreted and handled correctly.
IsType and AsType
Need more control when converting values? IsType and AsType let you safely check and convert Dynamic values into strongly typed objects while helping avoid runtime errors.
RecordOf
RecordOf makes it easier to define functions that work with individual records from a table structure, helping you build cleaner, reusable, and scalable formulas.

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