The Ultimate User Guide to Power Apps in 2023

This guide to Power Apps in 2023 will provide you with all the information required to decide if this platform will provide value to your organisation.

What is Power Apps?

Power Apps is Microsoft’s low code application development platform that gives citizen developers the power to develop their own applications.

This allows business users to solve business challenges without the need of involving software engineers.

Developing solutions is a lot quicker as it is a low code platform with drag-and-drop simplicity.

As for data sources, Power Apps has the ability to connect to many different types.

Some of the most common data sources it can connect to are:

• SharePoint
• SQL Server
• Salesforce
• Dropbox
• Excel

Purchasing Power Apps requires you license your users with either a Per app plan, or a Unlimited App plan.

When to use Power Apps

Organisations that have business logic and repeatable processes are perfect for Power Apps.

If an organisation is using Microsoft 365 already, a lot of their data will be already available as a data source.

Having business units coordinate and develop solutions for their own needs is common. This allows business users to collaborate on the design.

The low cost of Power Apps also allows organisations to involve its staff in developing solutions without having to invest large sums in head count.

Another added benefit is that the added confidence in allow staff to develop solutions will have positive effects on their motivation, since they are in charge of their own destiny.

How to Build a Sample App with Microsoft Power Apps

Let’s build a sample app.

The use case here is of a office manager who wants to track their IT assets. Assets were tracked in a excel spreadsheet and we will be connecting to the spreadsheet as a data source.

Key items are:

• Name
• Description
• Serial Number
• Warranty Details
• Warranty Expiry
• An image of the item

This will be a model driven app. What is a Model Driven app you ask?

Power Apps come in two different types, Model Driven and Canvas Apps.