What is PowerApp?
From a high-level perspective, PowerApps is a subscription-based service for building applications. The apps that we build can run through a web browser, and are therefore compatible with a wide range of devices. However, these apps work best on a mobile or tablet device. A typical app will connect to a data source and include screens to view and edit data. A typical app comprises functionality to support a business process.
In the past, PowerApps progressed from a Microsoft assignment called Siena. Microsoft implemented Siena around the era of windows 8. Siena bestows a platform for coders to build trending ‘metro’ apps that are connected to data.
Microsoft provides sample applications you can use to learn PowerApps. These apps include service desk, budget tracking, and site inspection applications. One thing you quickly realize is that PowerApps is a business tool. It isn’t a tool for building consumer grade applications – for example, apps or games that you want to sell via app stores.
Who is the Typical Developer?
Microsoft designed PowerApps for non-developers – users who are not professionally trained software programmers. The target demographic includes managers or office workers who work regularly with Microsoft Office. Market research shows that demand for mobile applications will outstrip the availability of qualified programmers. Therefore, the goal of PowerApps is to address this problem by making it easier for users with basic IT literacy to build mobile apps.
What are the Typical Uses?
What applications can you build with PowerApps and what tasks can those applications carry out? To help us better understand what PowerApps can do, let’s look at some of the sample apps that Microsoft provides. These involve the Budget Tracker, Cost Estimator, Asset Checkout and Inventory Management apps.
Asset Checkout App
The Asset Checkout App enables users to check out items. However, this isn’t the e-commerce tool that the ‘checkout’ part of the name suggests. It’s more like a system that enables you to borrow hardware items from a library. That being said, the app demonstrates some useful features. The most noteworthy is the integration of product images into the application.
Budget Tracker App
The Budget Tracker App highlights the mathematical tasks that you can carry out in a PowerApps application. The home screen shows calculations that are conditionally formatted with red and green fonts. It also features a pie chart that illustrates a breakdown of expenses. With this app, users can add and delete expense records. Therefore, we can learn how to program data tasks such as adding or deleting records through this app.
A highlight of the budget tracker app is the ability for users to capture pictures of receipts, and to assign those receipts to an expense claim. This feature demonstrates how PowerApps can integrate natively with cameras that are built into mobile devices.
Service Desk App
The Service Desk App is a nice example of a data entry application. The purpose of this app is to manage the support tickets that arise through a help desk department. I like this application because it demonstrates the data structures that developers typically expect to see in database applications. For example, the application allows users to assign a priority rating, and an area (or department) to each support ticket, therefore illustrating the concept of one-to-many data structures.
Site Inspection App
The Site Inspection App demonstrates integration with location and mapping services. With each site inspection record, the user can use a device camera to capture multiple images. This one-to-many relationship of image data can be useful in the apps that you build. The Site Inspection app also enables users to record the current location using the GPS on the mobile device. For each record, the app can also integrate a map that shows the location.
Other Sample Apps
The remaining sample applications are characterized by data features with a similar theme, namely, the ability to select a record from a list, and to view and edit the selected record. Other notable apps include the following:
- Product Showcase App: This is a well-presented app that looks great and demonstrates how to display videos in apps.
- PDF Reader App: This app allows users to view PDF documents from within the app.
- Suggestion App: This app implements some basic role maintenance. You can add users to an administrator role, and those users can carry out additional tasks in the application.
- Case Management App: A feature of this app is that it stores data using the Common Data Service (CDS).
How Do You Build a PowerApp?
PowerApps Studio is the tool for building apps. There are two versions available – a version that runs on Microsoft Windows, and a version that runs through a web browser. The Windows version is a store app and requires Windows 8.1 or Windows 10. The web-based version is slightly more limited than the Windows version. Note that the Windows App doesn’t support Windows 7. Therefore, Windows 7 users will need to use the web version of PowerApps Studio. There are currently three supported browsers – Microsoft IE11, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge. Firefox and Safari are not supported.
What Data can a PowerApps Consume?
The apps that we build with PowerApps can display and edit data from a wide range of data sources. The simplest data storage option is to store our data on an Excel spreadsheet. Most of sample apps that we can create with PowerApps templates work in this way. We must save the Excel spreadsheets into cloud storage in order for PowerApps to access the data. The broadly used cloud storage platforms which Power Apps support cover Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive.
