But how does this work and what does it look like in reality for a normal business?
In this article, we’ll explain Microsoft Power Apps as simply as possible, without the marketing jargon—to get your comfortable with Power Apps and the endless possibilities for how your organisations could benefit.
In a nutshell, Microsoft PowerApps is a suite of tools that allows organisations to build their own business apps with minimal coding.
If you store your organisation’s data in the Microsoft Dataverse, you can create apps that sit on top of it—which are known as Power Apps.
A Power App is simply the user interface that allows users to interact with the data stored in the Dataverse, which is Microsoft’s underlying cloud-based relational database.
Because the Microsoft Dataverse is key to how Power Apps works. It provides the integral underlying data layer of Power Apps as well as Microsoft’s wider ecosystem of business applications such as Microsoft Dynamics 365.
It’s essentially a SQL database that lives in the cloud on Microsoft Azure, but it opens huge opportunities for the organisations that use it.
The benefits of keeping your business data in the Dataverse is that you get a single centralised database, allowing for structured data storage and to maintain consistent data and integrity. This data is accessible to all your Microsoft apps and many non-Microsoft apps via connectors, with relational database functionality supporting complex data relationships and advanced querying capabilities.
Much of the power of Power Apps comes from having the robust data architecture of the Dataverse supporting it—and the fact you can easily create apps to leverage that data in your processes and workflows.
When listing specific examples and use cases for Power Apps, it’s important to understand that any Power App will fall into one of two categories:
Canvas apps are great for very specific and targeted use-cases. For example, submitting expenses or updating meeting notes. Canvas apps are created with drag-and-drop tools and give you flexibility in terms of the look and feel of your app. You can add whichever fields you want, and it makes data entry and retrieval simple. Canvas apps can be surfaced in many ways e.g. through Microsoft Teams, your SharePoint intranet, or even on your smartphone etc. Canvas apps are much more suited for front-office type scenarios. These apps have a looser framework than model-driven apps and therefore require more testing.
Further common examples of Power Apps using canvas apps might include:
We also created an internal ED&I tool at Chorus using a canvas app in Power Apps, which you can read about here.
Model-driven apps are great for broader apps, which provide more backoffice-type functionality. Model-drive apps give you a host of pre-built UI options to choose from, so you don’t have to put effort into look and feel or making it responsive and doing security etc. because that is already part of it. The licences for model-driven apps are more expensive than canvas apps, because model-driven apps have already had a lot more investment and R&D put into them by Microsoft —so you pay extra for that additional value.
Examples of common use cases for model-driven apps might include:
In fact, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is just a collection of pre-built model-driven apps from Microsoft. For example, the Sales or Customer Service apps are literally just different model-driven Power Apps sitting on top of the Dataverse.
Yes, Microsoft Power Apps is part of the wider Microsoft Power Platform. The Power Platform includes Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Pages, and Copilot Studio. These are all considered low-code tools, which require minimal coding.
The individual products within the Power Platform are designed to work together seamlessly, underpinned by the Dataverse. For example, the majority of Power Apps projects we work on will leverage Power Automate to provide the workflow engine, e.g. the automated processes and data integrations that take place within the Power App.
Not exactly. Power Apps gives users a combination of drag-and-drop tools, connectors and pre-build functionality to create apps that help improve workflows and processes within a business.
This is commonly referred to as “low code / no code” software development, which doesn’t require writing raw code as is required with traditional custom software development.
However, unless you’re a serious power user of Microsoft technology with a strong knowledge of Microsoft Power Platform development, you’re unlikely to have much success creating usable Power Apps for your business. Low code doesn’t mean simple! It basically means there’s no Javascript or C# code, but there is still code involved. Like Excel, you’ll need to use formulas in bars etc., but you will need to have some idea of how to code and implement logic as well as good development practices.
However, this shouldn’t put you off considering Power Apps for your business. Whether you have the expertise internally or externally, finding someone that can create you a solution with Power Apps can save significant time and expense compared to traditional app development – due to the rapid development path for Power Apps developers to create high performing solutions.
Hopefully, this explanation of Microsoft Power Apps has helped you understand what Power Apps and the Microsoft Dataverse are.
If you’re looking for ways to improve your business processes or add more structure to your data and replace complicated spreadsheets, Microsoft Power Apps could provide the ideal solution.
If you don’t have the expertise in-house, our Power Apps consultancy and Power Platform consultancy services are always here to help.