Microsoft Power Apps in Brief

   Power Apps is a suite of low-code development software to help citizen and pro developers create custom apps with rich business logic and workflow automation capabilities. The suite is best for building web and mobile apps (e.g., for employee onboarding, and work scheduling) and web portals (e.g., a customer portal, or a community portal).
 

   86% of the Fortune 500 companies leverage Microsoft Power Apps with its drag-and-drop app designer, pre-built app templates, AI Builder, and 200+ data connectors for easy integration with other Microsoft products (e.g., SharePoint, Office 365, OneDrive, Excel Online, Dynamics 365) and third-party platforms (e.g., SAP, Oracle) and tools (e.g., Dropbox, Google Docs).
 

   Canvas apps
 

   App elements are dragged and dropped onto a canvas, data sources are connected to the app via Excel-style formulas.

Highly customizable. Suitable for apps with simple business logic, e.g., for holiday approval, and event registration.
 

   Model-driven apps
 

   Apps are created based on data models built on Dataverse, an underlying data platform for Power Apps.

Layout and functionality customization is limited.
Suitable for complex apps, e.g., customer service management and event management apps.

   Web portals
 

   Designed using preconfigured and custom templates, forms, and views.
Suitable for employees or users outside organizations like customers and partners.
 

   Power Apps: Key Features
 

   App creation

   Drag-and-drop app designer. An intuitive graphical app editor for codeless from scratch app creation.

Templates. Pre-built templates for canvas and model-driven apps (e.g., Cost Estimator, To-Do List, Book a Room, Contacts, Product Showcase) and portal templates (e.g., community, customer self-service, employee self-service, partner portal).

   Workflow automation. Creating and automating business process flows for one app or between different apps.

Power Apps component framework (for pro developers). Extending Power Apps capabilities by creating custom code components for canvas and model-driven apps to enhance user experience in terms of forms, views, dashboards, and more.

   App management

   App monitoring. Checking apps during building or published apps for issues like bugs, slow performance, and more.
Analytics and reporting. Dashboards and reports on app usage, performance, and more.

   Data and integrations management

   Connectors. 200+ pre-built and custom connectors to integrate business applications created in Power Apps with Microsoft products (SharePoint, Office 365, OneDrive, Excel Online, Dynamics 365), third-party platforms (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Salesforce), and tools (e.g., Dropbox, Google Docs), and social media (e.g., Twitter).
On-premises data gateway. To keep databases and other data sources on-premises and quickly and securely transfer on-premises data to Power Apps.

   Data security and compliance

   Multi-factor authentication. Several data protection layers can consist, for example, of a password and a code from an email or a text message.
Versioning. Tracking application versions and related data (e.g., dates of app modification, users who implemented modifications), which allows rolling back to any previous app version if needed.
 

   User permissions. Defining users who can use and edit each application.

Audit trail. Tracking user activities like creating, publishing, and deleting apps, restoring an app version, and more. The retention period for audit data is 90 days.
Regulatory compliance. Compliance with government and industry-specific regulations (e.g., GDPR, SOX, GLBA, HIPAA).
 

   Artificial intelligence (AI Builder)

   AI models. Pre-built models: key phrase extraction, language detection, sentiment analysis, text translation, business card reader, text recognition, and receipt processing. Custom models: prediction, form processing, object detection. Pre-built and custom models: category classification and entity extraction.
Data capture. Quick extraction of text and visual information via a camera or from available electronic images and documents.

   Useful Integrations for Power Apps

 

   Power BI – to build applications in Power Apps that offer diverse reports and dashboards.
 

   Power Automate – to create logic in Power Automate for workflow automation in Power Apps.
 

   SharePoint – to extract and store data from SharePoint lists, libraries, or OneDrive in Power Apps and create apps directly from a SharePoint list.