PowerApps, a New Way to Develop App Faster
Well, there should be an App for that. Every time we think of an idea or a requirement the very first thing that crosses our mind is that there should be an app for this. Especially, organizations now do not want to overwhelm their employees with multiple apps to get a simple task done. This is where PowerApps step in.
PowerApps is a smart way to organize resources, projects and also enhance business productivity. It is a simple way to build app design and make testing easy, PowerApps are a user-friendly platform that can help you to quickly identify what your idea wants to display in an app and also how you want it to work with the devices.
PowerApps is a built of Microsoft and is defined as a suite of services, connector, and apps that offers a robust application development environment. With it businesses can integrate with other apps making it a key ability to develop apps based on Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and also including SharePoint Online, Excel and Dynamics 365.
PowerApps in Businesses
Organizations can make use of PowerApps in processes, such as automation, collaboration, reporting, workflow, and data visualization. And these processes can easily run as mobile apps be it on Android, iOS, or Windows. Also, PowerApps are no code making it restricted to rogue code that means no one will be able to add code that can make changes to your apps. Maintaining its stable and easily available for long term. But in case you require customization in your business app that PowerApps just cannot provide for it you can add on REST API with PowerApps to get the best of both worlds.
PowerApps can help businesses in tracking assets such as hardware, mobile devices and software licenses; conduct due diligence on new clients, covering various criteria and interrogating various databases; develop model standard documents such as contracts using automation; and database handling.
Along with these PowerApps have sample apps that you can work from scratch or either customize it. It also has more than 200 connectors that can help in the integration of system and data, easy to create user interfaces with drag and drop facility, high composition with Dynamics tools and Office 365, and active PowerApps community.
PowerApps brings in the capability of low code development this has speeded up the process of development and given highly sophisticated assets that are required for a high-end app.
Customized Components in PowerApps
Microsoft has released frameworks that have the ability to develop custom control using coding that can directly reflect in PowerApps. This also includes two new plugins PowerApps CLI and Visual Studio that give out high productivity tooling in order to make end-to-end development experience smooth. Organizations that are using these plugins to build a stunning array of custom UI with the component framework.
Types of Apps that can be created with PowerApps
With PowerApps you can build three kinds of apps
Canvas – Canvas Apps are those apps that can be designed by dragging and dropping elements onto a canvas and the logic can be created like excel sheet expression.
Model-driven – Model-driven apps are component defined. They do not require code and the apps you can create can either be simple or complicated. But unlike canvas app where the developer has complete control over app layout, with model-driven apps the layout is determined for you and largely designated by the components you add to the app.
Portal – PowerApps portals can create external websites that allow users outside organization to sign in a range of identities that can create and view data in Dataverse.
Industry type application development that can be built via PowerApps
Financial, Sales, and accounting
Planning and decision-making
Quality control
Administrative
Procurement and supply chain management
These are mere some example a lot can be developed through PowerApps.
PowerApps, a quick and easy way of application development
Because of low code development, PowerApps can be built 5 times more quickly than any simple app. PowerApps have already been used by several big companies to develop custom applications, some of these include American Red Cross and Virgin Atlantic Airlines.
PowerApps are particularly useful in scenarios when a connector between different data sources and in prototyping. They can also be used to customize and expand Office 365 and Dynamics 365. Developers can use one of the templates or can even build an app from scratch.
Developers can expand PowerApps with coding for report creation, in order to integrate third party or external applications, or to fulfil specific UI requirements.
Apps that are developed with PowerApps are not stand alone apps, instead they are available to end users through a container app on mobiles. Users just need to download the official PowerApps to access the applications shared with them.
Benefits of PowerApps
no code app development
fast time to market development
less resources required
inexpensive
User centric app development
Fast prototype development
higher ROI
Additional Office 365 integration
You can build apps based on Power Platform data storage CDS and Common Data Model called the CDM, and also Canvas UI. The User Interface can further be extended with code such as JavaScript or TypeScript with React and Angular frameworks to develop personalized User Interface controls of Microsoft Professional Capabilities Framework called the PCF.
The custom business logic while the application is building can be implemented with Power Automate and entity plugins.
Additional Features of PowerApps
Microsoft has developed an AI Builder that allows PowerApps Artificial Intelligence and machine learning frameworks to build smarter and advanced applications.
Just like Microsoft cite has the authority to analyse and categorise customer feedback responses and accordingly take actions. This creates a marketing automation to the next level. The AI builder also has the text recognizer component and additionally it also brings in the opportunities to integrate blockchain to develop even more sophisticated apps.
The AI Builder is a complete solution that brings the power of Microsoft AI through a point and click experience and is directly integrated into Power Apps and Power Automate.
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