Do you want to become a Power Platform developer? Keep reading, this tutorial we will start with what is Power Apps. As the name suggests, it is a powerful tool used to build applications based on business data rapidly.
- What is Power Apps
- What is Power Apps, Power Automate, and power bi
- Benefits of using Power Apps
- Companies using Power Apps
- What are PowerApps used for
- What is a Power Apps developer
- Pricing and licensing of PowerApps
- Types of PowerApps
- What is make.powerapps.com
- What is the Power Apps environment
What is Power Apps
‘Power Apps,’ a powerful tool as well as a fundamental platform, were released by Microsoft in 2015.
- One of the Power Platforms, which is a bundle of apps, services, and connections, is this cloud-based platform. It allows for the rapid building of a business app using real-time data that can be adjusted.
- By integrating business logic or flow into our manual business process, we may turn it into a digital automated process using Power Apps.
- Power Apps allows you to create responsive apps that work across browsers, mobile devices (Android, iOS, and Windows), tablets, and desktops, among other platforms. It allows the user to construct and configure a full-featured business app without having to know how to code.
- Because it has a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop capabilities, it can be used by anyone.
In our coming topics, we will see how to build a simple app using Power Apps, how to connect the app with a connector, how to work with Power Apps, etc.
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What are Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI
Microsoft provides a cloud-based Power Platform that is used to provide a customized solution to a company, institute, industry, etc.
This Power Platform contains some developing tools such as Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate. Sometimes users get confused about what the difference between Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate is.
Power BI
In this Business Intelligence tool, users can do data modeling, discovery, and interactive visual reporting.
Power Apps
With this Power tool, users can rapidly build a custom app using the provided data with 200+ connectors.
Power Automate
As the name suggests this tool is used to automate any manual work such as approval requests, email sending, reminders, etc.
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Benefits of using Power Apps
Now, we will discuss what are the key benefits and how can we profitable using Power Apps in our business process.
- Easily use the drag-and-drop functionalities to build the application.
- Users can save a lot of valuable time as this tool build an app rapidly, which will boost the speed of app creation.
- Full capability to integrate with other Microsoft tools such as SharePoint, Power Automate, Excel, etc.
- It allows the users to develop apps with prebuilt templates and using low code or no code.
- This developer tool works with more than 200+ connectors including on-premises data sources.
- By adding some logic users can automate the business process from manual to digital.
- This developer tool integrates with AI builder.
- Users can Implement the Power Apps cross-platform.
- This tool is widely available as well as it is based on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure for high security.
- The low cost of app ownership means standalone plans begin at $10 per month for two apps and one portal, or $40 per month for unlimited apps and portals.
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What are PowerApps used for
Nowadays there are no. of industries using Power Apps. From them, some top industries are Computer Software, Information Technology and Services, Construction, Automotive, Oil and energy, Hospital and health care, Banking, Telecommunications, etc.
Companies using Power Apps
Some of the top companies that use Microsoft Power Apps such as H&M, Cocacola, PayPal, Microsoft, Shell, TOYOTA, Avnet, and many more.
Types of PowerApps Apps
Power Automate allows the creation of 3 types of apps such as canvas apps, model-driven apps, and portal apps.
Canvas Apps
A canvas app is known as a ‘traditional’ app that focuses on UI and app navigation. Mostly, a traditional app requires a programming language such as C#, and JS but in the case of a canvas app, users can build a web app without any coding knowledge or experience.
It allows for customizing or designing the app by dragging and dropping the element onto the canvas. Users can create a canvas app using more than 200+ data sources. A canvas app can be deployed on the web, mobile, and tablet. We can build a canvas app using Power Apps studio.
Benefits of working with canvas app:
- Using multiple data sources such as SharePoint list, Excel, SQL databases, dynamic 365, etc in one app.
- Flawless customization on the overall app using controls, functions, and expressions.
- Simple drag-and-drop functionalities to design the app with fewer efforts.
- Allow the native AI tools.
- Provide a user-friendly and also, mobile-first application as per your needs.
Model-driven Apps
By using the model-driven app, users can create both simple and complex apps without using code or low code. It allows for the deployment of a business process flow that is structured by specific stages and actions.
With a model-driven app, we can easily build applications using forms, views, dashboards, charts, and all the power of data verses (as it is configured by dynamic 365).
The model-driven app designer allows you to specify the sitemap and add components to create a model-driven app.
The benefits of working with model-driven apps are:
- Integrate with business process flow.
- Based on low code or no code.
- Contains a similar UI on both mobile devices and desktops.
- create data sources from scratch.
Portal Apps
There is another app called the ‘Portal app‘ that is mainly used to design websites. It allows the user can sign into a website-style site with navigation and forms using the Portal App.
Also, Users from outside your business can sign in with a number of identities and create and access data in Dataverse through the portal.
Portals and model-driven apps have a lot in common in that they’re both built on Dataverse and have access to the same collection of Dataverse components (Views, Forms, and so on) as well as the same data.
Note- The canvas app is used to design the application; where the portal is used to design the websites.
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What is a Power Apps developer?
A Power Apps developer who can write code to create apps and adapt and expand business apps.
App developers can use the code to generate data and metadata, plug-ins, client-side and server-side logics leveraging javascript and Azure functions, and custom connections.
Microsoft supplies us with the requirements of many types of developers depending on the different types of Power Apps we create, such as:
Pricing and licensing of PowerApps
According to Microsoft, There are 3 types of plans that can be used to build an app in the Power Apps environment. Such as the trial plan, standard plan (including 2 plans), and pay-as-you-go-on plan.
Power Apps Trial Plan
The trial version provides a free 30-day of trial. That means if you don’t have a subscription plan, then still you can explore this tool.
With this trial version, you can do the below activities such as Extend Office 365’s capabilities such as SharePoint Online, Teams, Excel, and more.
- Create and execute canvas apps with Microsoft Dataverse and over 200 other data sources, including premium connectors and on-premises data.
- Allows the creation of Model-driven apps and execution.
- With Power Automate, you can create automated workflows.
- Create and administer Dataverse databases and environments.
Power Apps Standard Plan
Apart from this, there are 2 other subscription plans i.e. per-app plan and a per-user plan.
| Per-app plan | Per-user plan |
| The cost of this plan is $5 per month/user/app. | The cost of this plan is $20 per user/month. |
| It allows running one app or portal per user. | For a single monthly fee, any user can run an unlimited number of apps and portals. |
| It includes 250 AI Builder service credits per month. | Similarly, it includes 500 AI Builder service credits per month. |
| Access to the Microsoft 365 admin center is required, as well as the roles of a global administrator or billing administrator. | With a credit card, you can purchase this plan immediately. |
Power Apps Pay-as-you-go-plan
Apart from these plans, there is another plan ‘Pay-as-you-go-plan (per app plan)‘ which is best for organizations who want the flexibility of paying just when a user runs an app over the course of a month.
- The cost of this plan is $10 per app/user/month.
- This plan requires an Azure subscription. Also, this plan covers user authentication for internal apps and portals.
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What is make.powerapps.com
To create an app (canvas, model-driven, portal), we need to start with ‘make.powerapps.com‘.
- The Power Apps studio is a designer tool that is used to build and customize canvas apps. The app designer makes designing apps feel more like putting together a PowerPoint presentation.
- The app designer for the model-driven app is used to build a model-driven app by defining the sitemap and the components.
- WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design tool for adding and configuring websites, components, forms, and lists in Power Apps portals Studio.
What is the Power App environment?
An environment is a place where your company’s business data, apps, chatbots, and flows may be stored, managed, and shared.
- It can also be used as a container for apps with varied responsibilities, security constraints, or target audiences.
- Users can manage the storage associated with the Dataverse database in the PowerApps environment.
- Each environment is built as part of a Microsoft Azure Active Directory tenant and is geographically bound.
- There are 5 different environments available in Power Apps that can be created such as the default environment, the developer environment, the production environment, the sandbox environment, and the trial environment.
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Power Apps Desktop
Power Apps is a cloud-based solution that allows you to create and use custom business apps that link to your data and work across web and mobile platforms. This service is usually accessed through a web browser. This technology, on the other hand, is a desktop interface for Power Apps.
To download the Power Apps Desktop, the following steps are:
- Open the Microsoft Store on a windows 10 or updated version. Also, you can open the Microsoft Store directly on the browser.
- Search ‘Power Apps’ and then download the application.
- After downloading, sign in with your Microsoft user ID.
Power Apps Mobile
At its core, PowerApps is a Platform as a Service. It enables you to construct Mobile Apps for Android, iOS, Windows (Modern Apps), and practically any web browser.
All PowerApps we develop using PowerApps Mobile Apps run through the Power Apps Application. It handles the differences between operating systems and lets us to focus on running our apps.
To download the Power Apps Mobile, the following steps are:
- Go to App Store (for iOS) and Play Store (for Android).
- Search for Power Apps.
- Get the app.
- Then sign in with the Microsoft Office ID.
In our coming topics, we will see how to use Power Apps for desktops.
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Power Apps checker
By using the solution checker tool we can do a rich static analysis check on our solutions against a set of best practice criteria and immediately discover these problematic patterns.
When the check is through, we get a full report with a summary of the issues found, the components and code that were affected, and links to documentation that explains how to fix each issue.
The solution checker examines the following elements of the solution:
- Plug-ins for dataverse
- Custom process actions for Dataverse
- Web resources of Dataverse (HTML and JavaScript)
- SDK message steps and other Dataverse configurations.
To find this, Power Apps checker, the following steps are:
- Sign in to the Power Apps.
- On the left panel, click on Solutions.
- Select a unmanaged solution > commands > Solution checker > Run.
It will take a little time to complete the run. When the check is finished, we’ll receive an email notification as well as a notification on the Power Apps site’s Notifications page.
Cancel the solution checker
The status pane on the upper right portion of the Solutions page can be used to cancel a solutions check that has been submitted in your environment.
When you cancel a check, it stops executing and the status of the solution check returns to its prior condition. We can cancel the solution checker only during the running period.
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Power Apps test studio
Power Apps Test Studio is a low-code tool for writing, organizing, and automating canvas app tests. We can develop tests in Test Studio using Power Apps expressions or utilize a recorder to save app interaction and have the expressions generated automatically.
To work with the test studio, the following steps are:
- On Power Apps, build a new canvas app or open an existing canvas app.
- Go to the advanced tool on the left panel.
- Click on Open tests.
Note- Make sure to enable the Formula-level error management on the experimental features.
Then the test studio will appear on another tab like below:
To test the app, the following steps are:
- By default, it is showing a suite; otherwise, you can create a new suite and give a name.
- Similarly, set a test name.
- Then click on Record.
Now the test studio is ready to test the app. After the testing click on Done.
How to work with Power Apps test studio
Then click on Publish to automatically save and publish the app. Then select Play. Finally, select Done to return to the test studio. Microsoft’s Power Apps documentation has more information on test studio and working with it.
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Power Apps templates
There are different kinds of pre-built templates available in Power Apps that are provided by Microsoft. This allows you to choose a rebuild template that is the easiest way to start and customization as per your business requirement.
It contains both model-driven apps and canvas apps templates that can be used for different scenarios such as building a help desk app for your organization, power apps training for the office, asset checkout, leaves request app, etc.
On Power Apps, go to create > select from a template.
You may like the following Power Apps tutorials:
- Power Apps SharePoint Button
- Power Apps in SharePoint
- Power Apps Radio Button
- How to create a PowerApps Canvas app from Excel OneDrive for Business data source
- How to build multilingual apps in PowerApps
- Automatically scroll Gallery control in PowerApps
- PowerApps notify function
- Share PowerApps to external users or guest users
Conclusion
From this Power Apps Tutorial, we discussed what is Power Apps. Also, we have covered below topics such as
- What are Power Apps, power Automate and power bi?
- What are the benefits of using Power Apps?
- Which companies using Power Apps?
- What are PowerApps used for?
- What is a Power Apps developer?
- What is the Pricing and licensing of PowerApps?
- Describe the types of PowerApps?
- what is make.powerapps.com?
- What is a Power Apps environment?
- What is Power Apps Desktop?
- How to use Power Apps from a Mobile?
- What is Power Apps checker?
- What is Power Apps test studio?
- How to find Powerapps templates?
After working for more than 15 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Office 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (9 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.