Build Complex Apps for Your Organization Without Learning to Code (Low Code) Using Power Apps 

Microsoft Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform (MPP) is a product group that includes Power Apps, Power BI, Automate and Power Virtual Agents. These products are used to develop and build complex business solutions, analyze, draw data simulations, automate a business process and create virtual communications agents. The power platform enables data standardization – the ability for digital information to be accessible to the typical (non-technical) end user. All of these products require less or sometimes no coding to build the solution. These platforms are in a simple user interface format.

Microsoft Power Platform products are:

• Power applications: – Used to build powerful mobile applications for the internal use of the organization or company
• Power Automate: – It is used to design automated workflows to reduce manual and repetitive tasks
• Power BI: – Analysis of data from various sources
• Virtual Power Agents: – Development of flexible chatbots for communication with external customers.

In this article, we will discuss Power Apps

What are Power Apps?

Power Apps is a data platform that provides a fast development environment for building customized applications for your business needs. It is also a package of services, apps and connectors.

Low or no code access to custom application development allows developers to quickly and easily create custom applications.

Power Apps provides the user with drag-and-drop functionality to respond and build easy-to-use applications for standard business needs.

Users can add different controls like text boxes, text fields etc, different media types like cameras, videos etc, And other features for building a modern mobile app.

Power Apps provide a platform-like service, and it allows users to build an app that runs on modern web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc. and runs on mobile apps using Android, iOS and Windows.

Different types of power apps

We can create 3 types of apps using Power Apps

1. Canvas app
2. Model-driven app
3. Portals

The difference between canvas-oriented models and portals

Different types of environments in Power Apps

The environments in Power Apps are containers that store, manage, and share the organization’s data, flows, and applications.

Environments are created under the Azure Active Directory Tenant.

Power Apps automatically creates a default app development environment, and this environment will be shared with all tenant users.

We must choose an environment that depends on the organization and the applications we create.

We can create more than one environment in Power Apps.

If we want to delete the created environment, we can delete it and restore the deleted environment. We can recover it in seven days. But the default environment cannot be deleted.

Types of environments in Power Apps

1. Default environment
2. Developer environment
3. Sandbox environment
4. Production environment
5. Experience environment

1) Default environment

• Power Apps creates it automatically, and we can not delete or disable this environment.
• This environment is shared with all tenant users and communicates with everyone in the tenant.
• Each time the new user signs up for Power Apps, the new user automatically adds or assigns to the default environment.

2) Developer environment

• This environment is created by a user who has a license program as a developer.
• This environment is for use only by the owner.
• The developer environment has unique access to authors and many other out-of-the-box features for building your data schemas.

3) Sandbox environment

• This environment is used for reset and copying
• This is a non-manufacturing environment used only for development and testing.
• This environment requires 1GB of Dataverse database capacity, limited to administrators only.
• If this environment is used for testing, only user access is required

4) Production environment

• This environment is used for the regular work of the organization
• Anyone who has a Power Apps license can use the environment whether it was created or owned by the administrator
• This environment provides 1GB of database capacity

5) Experience environment

• This is a testing environment that can last only 30 days, and after 30 days, it has expired
• This environment is limited to one per user
• If a user wants to use the environment for more than 30 days, then the user needs to buy a license plan for it, then the user can use the production environment
• This environment is used for short-term testing purposes, and the data is automatically cleared after 30 days

In this blog we will learn how to create a Canvas app

Steps for creating a Canvas application

1. Log in to the Power Apps portal
2. Select from the blank data source or data

3. Click Create in a blank Canvas application

4. Name your app, select the app format and click Create

5. After following the steps above, the image below of Power Apps Studio will appear. By doing so, you can create the app as per the need of the user by dragging and dropping and by using some formulas and any other functionality provided by power apps studio

6. After creating the Canvas app, save the app. Select the cloud or computer and click Save

7. After saving, click Publish to publish the Canvas app

Anyone can create and use a Canvas app by following the steps above.

Connectors in Power Apps

Connectors are the bridge between UI and backend services for communication purposes.

It simply passes the information to the backend and gets the response from the backend, and we can change the request to move to the backend.

The different types of connectors available in Power Apps are as follows:

Standard connectors: – These connectors are available for all Microsoft platforms. This includes SharePoint, Office 365 Outlook, Office 365 Users, Twitter, etc.

Premium authors: – These authors are available by subscription to the license program. This includes external applications Salesforce, Amazon, Survey Monkey etc.

Custom connectors: – These connectors are used to connect external systems like API. By using these connectors, we can access, modify, etc. This connection is not available in the Microsoft Authors list. For verification of this author, parameters and actions must be passed.

Many more ways to create a Canvas app

1. Template (this is the default built-in application format)
2. Using SharePoint
3. With Excel
4. Dataverse
5. SQL

Get started with Power Apps on mobile

1. Download the Power Apps from the Play Store
2. Log in from your credentials in Azure Active Directory
3. If the Microsoft Authenticator app is installed on your device, enter your username when prompted, and then click OK.
4. The screen will display various created applications
5. You can add favorites by clicking on the star feature. Also, applications you have recently used are displayed on the screen
6. You can also sort apps by date or name or Canvas and a model-oriented app
7. This app also has a search function, and you can refresh the screen by scrolling down

Power Apps provides a simple way to build enterprise-wide applications, and some of the applications built on the Power Apps platform are available in the App Directory. Power Apps allows users to create Canvas mobile applications. It also provides users to add favorite apps and recently used apps. The app also includes an on-screen search box. But to create complex business solutions, data is key The Microsoft Power Platform provides the data and analytics to build complex business solutions. It provides data from various sources such as Power BI, Power BI applications, Power Apps and Power Community. You can share data across the organization and access employees.

About the writer

Sharwani in Halchandra Godka, Senior Member Engineer

Shravani Bhalchandra Ghodke is a senior fellow engineer working as a SharePoint and Power Platform developer. She has years of experience in SharePoint development and expertise in developing Android applications.