Set up mobile offline (classic)

Article
02/08/2023

Set up mobile offline synchronization to allow users to work in offline mode on their mobile device. Mobile offline allows users to use Power Apps in offline mode and interact with their data without an internet connection.

The mobile app provides a rich offline experience that helps users stay productive. You can use basic commands such as create, read, update, and delete when you're offline. Once you're back online, the changes that you made on the mobile app are automatically synchronized with Microsoft Dataverse.

Step 1: Enable tables for mobile offline synchronization

One of the first things you need to do is enable tables that will be available to mobile users when they're using the mobile app in offline mode. You can disable or enable any of the supported tables for offline mode.

To enable a table for mobile offline synchronization, follow the steps below.

Sign in to Power Apps.
In the navigation pane, select Tables. If the item isn’t in the side panel pane, select …More and then select the item you want.
Select the row for the table that you want to enable for mobile offline, such as Account.
On the command bar, select Properties.
On the Edit table pane, expand Advanced options.
Under Rows in this table, make sure the Can be taken offline check box is selected, and then select Save.
Note

Keep in mind that the amount of data you make available to users while they’re offline can affect data sync times, device performance, and can affect the data usage rates for devices on a cellular network. The amount of data that gets downloaded to the device depends on:
- The number of tables that you enable for mobile offline.
- The filters you set while creating mobile offline profiles.

Step 2: Create a mobile offline profile to determine what data will be available while offline

Create a mobile offline profile to enable users for offline and configure filters that will determine how much data will be available to the user when they're working in offline mode.

To create a profile, follow the steps below.

Go to Power Platform Admin center, https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com and sign-in as an admin.
In the navigation pane, select Environments.
Choose an environment and then select Settings.
Expand Users + permissions, and then select Mobile configuration.
Select New Profile to create a new profile for mobile offline. If you already have a profile that you want to edit, select it from the list.
Enter a name and description for your mobile offline profile. Select Create to create the mobile offline profile.
After the profile is created, select it to open the profile so you can continue editing it.
In the Data available offline area, select Add table to add a table to the profile.
Select a table from the list of tables shown. Only tables that can be enabled for mobile offline appear in the list. Select Next.

Select a filter based on the ownership type for the table. Table ownership is decided when you create a table. For more information, see Types of tables.

Table ownership type	Available Data Download Filter options
User or Team	Download Related rows only - Make related data for this table available offline. If you don’t set any relationships, no rows for this table will be available. All rows - Make all rows for this table available offline. Other data filter - Make only the specified rows for this table available offline and then choose from the following: Download user rows - Make only your rows available offline. Download team rows - Make your team’s rows available offline. Download my business unit’s rows - Make your business unit’s rows available offline.
Organization	Download related rows only - Make related data for this table available offline. If you don’t set any relationships, no rows for this table will be available. All rows - Make all rows for this table available offline.
Business	Download related data only - Make related data for this table available offline. If you don’t set any relationships, no rows for this table will be available. All rows - Make all rows for this table available offline. Other rows - Make only the specified rows for this table available offline and choose from the following: Download my business unit’s rows - Make your business unit’s rows available offline.
None	Download related rows only. Make related data for this table available offline. If you don’t set any relationships, no rows for this table will be available.

If Custom is selected, admins can define a custom filter based on the following rules. Admins can create filters up to three levels.


equal	not equal	gt – greater than
ge – greater than or equal to	le – less than or equal to	lt – less than
like	not-like	in
not-in	null	not-null
eq-userid	ne-userid	eq-userteams
eq-useroruserteams	eq-useroruserhierarchy	eq-useroruserhierarchyandteams
eq-businessid	ne-businessid	eq-userlanguage
begins-with	not-begin-with	ends-with
not-end-with

In the Include [table name] rows related to these tables area, select the related table relationships. You need to have added the table you want to create the relationship with. For example, if you want to add a relationship between the Account and Contact tables, then you need to add both tables to the mobile offline profile.

For example, if you select Contact | Field name: Primary contact this means for every contact, the system will also download the account related to it.
(Optional) Select Sync interval and choose how often you want the table's data to automatically sync to users's devices. You can select a short interval such as Every 5 minutes or choose a less frequent interval to optimize the sync performance and user experience. Make the selection based on your business requirements and how often users make updates to the table. Typically, the more static the data is, the less need for a frequent sync interval.

Note

Even if the value for Sync interval is set to be less frequent than, Every 1 hour, data will currently still be synched every hour.

A sync is only initiated when there is connectivity and when the app is actively running on the user’s mobile device. For Android devices, once the sync is initiated it can be completed even in background.

Dependencies, based on selected relationships and custom filters that includes related tables are analyzed at each sync request. This might result in a sync being triggered also for related tables.
Select Save to add the table to your profile so you can continue editing it.

Step 2.1: Add users or team to a mobile offline profile

After you've created a mobile offline profile, you can start adding users to the profile. This will make the profile available to the users so that they can get the mobile offline experience that you've set up.

A user can only be added to one offline profile at a time. If a user is added to another offline profile, then you will get a warning stating that the user is already added to another offline profile. If you continue with the change, the user will be moved to the new profile. This may disrupt users, so it's recommended that you notify them when you move them to a different profile.

Note

To use a mobile device in offline mode, a user must have a security role that has read permissions to the table that was added to the mobile offline profile.

If it’s not already open, select the profile name to open the mobile offline profile you want to add users to.
In the Users with offline access area, select Add users.
Choose the users that you want to add to the mobile offline profile. The actual users added based on teams are displayed under each team. User's that are added individually are displayed under individual users.
When you’re done adding people, select Save.

Note

If you made any changes to an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) group team, you must remove and add the team back to the mobile offline profile for the changes to take effect.

Step 2.2: Publish a mobile offline profile

The profile that was set up in the previous step is still in draft mode, until you publish it. In order to deploy your changes to a user's device, the draft profile needs to be published.

When you publish the profile, it will be available to your users and they will get the mobile offline experience that you have defined in the profile.

Following these steps to publish the profile:

If it’s not already open, open the mobile offline profile that you want to publish.
When you’re done adding people and making any other changes to the mobile offline profile, select Publish so the data you specified can start syncing with your users’ mobile devices.

It's not required to republish a mobile profile after users or team have been added.

Tip

Solution export and import

When exporting a solution that includes a mobile offline profile, always select the Include table metadata check box for each table you export.

After importing the solution into the target organization, publish all mobile offline profiles.

Step 2.3: Set conflict detection for mobile offline

Go to Power Platform Admin center, https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com and sign-in as an admin.
In the navigation pane, select Environments.
Select an environment and then select Settings.
Expand Users + permissions, and then select Mobile configuration.
Select Go to legacy on the command bar.
Select Mobile Offline Settings.
When there is a mismatch of data between client and server, conflict errors occur. To resolve the issue, choose one of the following settings:
- Select No - Conflict detection for mobile offline is turned off, so whatever changes are made by a user in offline mode are automatically synced to the server when the user is back online, and client wins over server.
- Select Yes - Server wins over client.

Step 3: Enable the app module for offline

Enable mobile offline for a specific app.

Sign in to Power Apps.
In the left navigation pane, select Apps and then select the app that you want open.
On the command bar, select Edit. This will open the app in the App Designer.
In the command bar, select the elipses (...) icon, and then select Switch to classic.
Select the Properties tab and scroll down to select the Enable Mobile Offline check box. Then select the drop-down menu and choose a mobile offline profile.

Note

You can add more than one profile for an app module.
When you're done, at the top choose Save and then Publish.

Configure mobile offline profiles for images and files

For information on how to work with file and image columns in offline modeo , see Configure mobile offline profiles for images and files.

Mobile offline capabilities and limitations

For information on capabilities and limitations of mobile offline, see Mobile offline capabilities and limitations.