Microsoft Power Apps
What is it?
PowerApps is a Microsoft’s service to develop customized business solutions that connect with existing data, it is a set of Microsoft applications and data platform, available in Office 365, that allows creating custom applications to solve specific business needs and works as much as in web platform and mobile devices. Without falling into the expenses and development time of a personalized software. Microsoft’s “Do It Yourself” tool that will allow you to create custom apps for your business
This service is aimed at companies so that they can create all kinds of customized applications tailored to business needs, automating processes with services offered by the Microsoft family. It allows the collection of data sources such as Dynamics, SQL Server, Dropbox, One Drive, Access, SharePoint Lists, Excel, among others.
These applications provide rich business logic and workflow capabilities to transform manual business processes to digital and automated processes. In addition, the applications can be run without difficulties both on browsers and on portable devices (mobile or tablet).
One of the most representative features of PowerApps is its application creation process, a simple and intuitive process, which allows users to create applications with business utility without the need to write code. However, PowerApps also provides an extensible platform that provides the ability to programmatically interact with data and metadata, apply business logic, create custom connectors, and integrate with external data.
The PowerApps set of applications and technologies shows us a variety of technologies such as:
- https://web.powerapps.com: Run, manage, develop, design and share applications created with the company.
- PowerApps Studio: Design, develop, manage and share applications.
- PowerApps Mobile: Run applications on platforms such as Android, IOS, Windows Phone.
Purpose
The purpose of PowerApps is to automate all kinds of tasks that can be as simple as making queries or complicated so that we are able to design and develop. As we have commented, the most important thing is that they can be created without “writing a single line of code” so that those employees from areas with computer knowledge can “design, develop and share them”.
Data is the foundation of most applications, and data resides in different data sources, so accessing it requires creating connections. For this, PowerApps offers connectors for many of the most widely used local data sources and services, such as SQL Server, Salesforce, Office 365, SharePoint, and even Twitter.
These connectors provide access to tables or actions through which data can be displayed or edited in applications.
What is it for?
Low-code software development is on the rise, and Microsoft is well positioned to capitalize on the trend with PowerApps, enabling companies of all sizes to easily build custom business applications that span productivity and business data.
Unlike many other low-code software development platforms that are currently available on the market, PowerApps really delivers on its promises and amazes with its extensive capabilities. In the market for low-code development platforms, where PowerApps belongs, you can choose products such as Salesforce Platform, WaveMaker, Progress Kinvey, MATS, GeneXus 16 or Skuid Spark, just to give some examples.
With PowerApps we can develop in three models:
- Canvas (Canvas Applications)
- Model-driven (Model-driven applications, Common Data Model)
- Portals (Applications for Common Data Services)
Canvas Apps
Canvas apps, as understood by their name, are fully customizable. If we are going to create a new application, we will see that what opens up is a blank screen where we can fully design the interface.
What are we going to use these types of applications for?
- Create a completely custom interface, thought about the user experience
- Use multiple data sources in a single application
- Be used in multiple types of devices with a single development.
- Provide a very simple and flexible development application.
- When designing a canvas PowerApps, before we start, we must decide if we are going to develop it for mobile view or for tablet and computer. This is because the size of the canvas changes based on the device it is targeting.
In addition, the data sources or databases must be previously created before we start developing the application and depending on these sources our licensing costs may be different. In other words, certain data sources involve additional licensing not included in our Office 365 licenses.
Model-driven Apps
The focus of these applications is on quickly adding components, including forms, charts, dashboards, and views.
Model-Driven Apps or model-based applications are one of the great unknown. However, they are the core of Dynamics 365 itself. This means that we will not find them in our Office 365 license and we will require additional licensing. In this type of PowerApps it allows us to make applications from very simple to very complex, unlike Canvas Apps, we cannot develop the entire user interface. Adding new buttons is more complex than Canvas Apps and requires understanding how it is configured and developed in the Dynamics 365 environment.
The data here will have a single origin that will be the Common Data Model (CDM) and in this case the entities and the data structure will be generated while the App is being built. When creating the entity it will ask us to add the fields we require, the design of the form, the one of the records views, etc.
When are we going to use these applications?
We will use these applications in the following cases:
- When we want an application based on processes since it allows us to generate a very visual process flow that the user can follow.
- To have a series of related records.
- When we want an application with complex security roles.
- To have dashboards about the information in the application’s records and also integrate our Power BI dashboards in the interface itself.
- In addition, Model-Driven apps have a unified interface that allows us to view the application from any device and it is no longer necessary to think previously about which device it will be executed.
In order to customize the user interface, the possibility of adding canvas applications within the Model-Driven Apps forms themselves has been incorporated.
How can we connect to other data sources in this case?
We will do it through data flows with Power Query (which we will delve further in another article), just as we do with Power BI, which means that this data will be loaded into CDM. These data streams can be scheduled so that new records generated at the source are automatically replicated in our CDM entity.
When will we choose one over the other?
The choice of one or the other will depend on the complexity of our application, if we want to focus more on customizing the interface, the data sources, the device from which the application is going to be used, if we need to add dashboards on it. and above all the licensing that we will require depending on each case. In short, Microsoft PowerApps allows us to develop applications of varying complexity in order to meet the needs of business processes with shorter implementation times, more flexible and with lower costs than traditional programming.
Portals
We also have Portals, these are external websites that allow users outside the organization to create and view data in Common Data Service, browse content anonymously and even log in with different identities.
Users can quickly create a website where they can customize the pages, content, and layout. Using templates you can reuse layouts and, similar to canvas apps, you can display and edit forms based on Common Data Service data. Even through PowerApps it is possible to display, edit and even add new data to Dynamics NAV in real time.
