What are Power Apps

“PowerApps is a service for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile - without the time and expense of custom software development.” For more details go here.

Need of PowerApps

Nowadays, It’s very critical to have a mobile application for each business need and we all know how much it would take to build a Mobile that works across all the major platforms (Android, iOS and Windows) and across all the resolutions and sizes.

Most of the Organizations require Mobile Apps for automating a few of the basic requirements like conducting a Survey, conducting a Poll etc. within the organization and they might need an App for those kinds of temporary requirements. It doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of effort and money to build such apps.

The solution from Microsoft for quickly building Enterprise Apps that employees use within an organization is PowerApps.

How do I build a Power App?

You can start building Mobile Apps without writing a single line of code. All you need to do is the following.

  • Create an Account in https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/
  • Download the PowerApps for your Windows machine (8.1 or higher)
  • Start authoring the app (drag and drop the controls)
  • Choose one of the existing Template or start authoring from scratch
  • You would need to choose of the existing DataSource.
  • Share it with Friends and Colleagues

How do I install the app built using PowerApps?

In general, we all install apps from Market Place / Playstore / iTunes. However, we don’t need to publish our App (build using PowerApps) to the Stores / Market Places. We just need to install the PowerApp client in our mobile. Below are the URLs of the PowerApp client for the major Mobile Platforms.

After sharing the PowerApp with your friends they can install the app in their mobile device and start using the same.

Advantages: Below are a few of the advantages of using Power Apps.

  • It works in all the three major platforms iOS, Android (preview) and Windows.
  • You don’t need to write a single line of code.
  • Any business user can author a PowerApps
  • You have lot of options for storing the data, right from an Excel sheet located in One Drive, Google Drive, Sharepoint lists to SQL Azure database.
  • You can utilize existing layouts and templates.

However, please note that PowerApps is still a Public Preview and might have certain limitations (cannot send Push notifications / Offline Sync etc won’t work for now).

Stay tuned for a demo on creating an app in the coming days J.

Your feedback is highly appreciated.