Power Apps Basics: interfaces, implementation & benefits

Today we introducePowerApps: a suite of Microsoft services that enables rapid, low-code deployment of complex custom business apps connected to various online and local data sources (Dataverse, SharePoint,Excel, Office 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and so on).

In fact, the main features of PowerApps are:

ower Apps is part of the Microsoft Power Platform stack, a set of platforms that enable the creation of customized software solutions. It consists mainly of the following components:

These elements are designed to collaborate, so, for example, it will be very easy to integrate within a Power Apps a Power BI dashboard (and vice versa) or to enrich its functionality by integrating Power Automate flows.

Should you decide to implement an application for your company, you should consider the following points:

Power Apps is based on 4 main interfaces:

When creating an app, you start from the Power Apps home page. Here you can create apps from sample apps, from templates, or from a blank screen. You can share an app with colleagues and view all the apps we have created or that have been shared with us.

That portal also allows you to perform many other actions, including deleting or duplicating an app, opening it in run or edit mode, and so on.

To get to your company’s Power Apps Home Page (provided it is appropriately licensed) simply type “Power Apps” into a search browser, enter the first available site and log in using your company credentials.

This interface allows you to fully develop apps using 3 panes:

This interface consists of a downloadable app for Windows, iOS and Android devices from Store, for example PlayStore. It allows users to use all the apps created and those shared by other users on their mobile device. When users log in with their credentials, they view all the apps that have been shared with them or that they have developed.

It is important to note that accessing an app from mobile takes full advantage of device features such as camera controls and GPS location that can be included as items of interest within the application.

This interface allows you to define and manage the different environments that host apps (for example, you may have separate environments fordevelopment apps and production apps). It also allows you to define data connections, manage environment roles and data policies.

You can implement a Power Apps in several ways:

Opening the templates in Power Apps Studio will provide a practical guideline on how an app is created. For example, you can use the budget analysis template to create an app that allows you to track budgets for projects and events, with custom categories, simplified data entry, and visual objects that highlight expenses for easy analysis.

It is important to note, however, that template-based apps can connect and interact with only one data connection, Dataverse. For this reason, its use is discouraged in favor of the following other methods that allow them to connect and interact with more than 350 connectors, enabling users to have extra functionality.

To deploy from an app a data source, simply set Power Apps to point to the specific data source, such as a list in Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft Dataverse. Power Apps will automatically create a three-screen app. This three-screen app allows you to view, edit, delete, and create records.

A special data source is SharePoint. Lists from the latest versions of SharePoint and Power Apps feature tight integration. You can compile an app from a SharePoint site or use Power Apps to customize forms with modern lists.

You can also create an app from scratch and add any desired elements during the creation process. You can then expand the app as desired.

This method is the recommended one because it is possible with ease to reproduce everything produced by the other methods and is also cleaner and more flexible.

We recommend viewing the following video tutorial in order to get a first experience of developing a Power App: in the first half of the video you can see how to implement an app from a data source and in the second half how to do it from an empty canvas.

We close by emphasizing 2 major advantages of this powerful tool:

When designing the user interface, it is not necessary to add the logic behind the various elements placed on the screen.

For this, it is also recommended to first implement the visual components as desired by the user and at a later stage the more “backend” logics: this allows, at each stage, to immediately give the customer the opportunity to see exactly what will be released.‍

These include:

–PowerAutomate: Power Apps can perform many functions, such as sending an e-mail message when a button is pressed in the application.It is sometimes possible for customers to use PowerAutomate to create this same functionality even though Power Apps already has this functionality by default. It is advisable to use Power Automate for more complex solutions, such as approval workflows, that are not available in Power Apps. For example, an expense report app can be developed that requires approval before an item can be purchased.

– PowerBI: allows dashboards and reports to be incorporated into the app, or vice versa the app (example as an input element) within a dashboard.