Microsoft Power Apps - Creating an application has never been easier!

What are Power Apps?

Microsoft Power Apps is a low-code development platform, with a set of services, connectors, and data platforms, which allows the development of business applications without the need for extensive technical knowledge. 

The great advantage of these no-code/low-code applications is that users with many different technical skills can develop applications to meet the specific needs of the organization, which can be very useful for different areas such as human resources, finance, sales, customer management, continuous improvement, and process optimization. 

Apps created through Power Apps provide advanced business-related functionalities and workflows that improve manual business processes into automated digital ones. In addition, Power Apps has a very user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that allows users to create customized applications by simply dragging and dropping components. It also has pre-built templates and connectors for other Microsoft services such as Power BI, Microsoft Flow, and Microsoft Teams.

This simplicity and the platform's low-code approach is what makes Power Apps popular and successful.
 

Types of Power Apps

Microsoft Power Apps is a cloud service running on Azure - Microsoft's cloud computing platform - and is available as part of Microsoft 365 and as a standalone application. The platform supports both "blank canvas" apps and provides templates, allowing you to create apps for the web and mobile devices. 

There are four main types of Power Apps used for app development:
 

• Model-based applications

Allows data and information to be entered while automatically controlling the layout of the app under development. The type of data entered usually determines the type of presentation of the application. This type of application is useful when you want to develop a complex application. Template-based applications use a unified interface to create responsive and appealing designs.
 

• Power Apps Portal

PowerApps Portal can be used to create web portals or websites that can be shared internally and externally, allowing all users to interact securely with the data stored in the portal. 
 

• Canvas applications

To work with Canvas applications, you need to start with all the data sources of the application you are developing. Then you should add the workflows and finally create the design of the app. These apps offer more flexibility than template-based apps and are easy to use. 
 

• Dataverse

Dataverse is a Power Apps data platform that allows you to store and classify business data with custom tables, rows, and a set of standards safely and securely. 
 

Benefits of Power Apps

 

• Low-code

Anyone can create, develop and design an application with Power Apps, even without any experience, as it uses little if any, coding. 
 

• Security

With Power Apps, there is complete control of the applications used by the company. Employees can save all their work, control options, and manage data. 
 

• Low cost

Power Apps has a relatively low cost for creating applications. Having Microsoft licenses makes it easy to purchase Microsoft Power Apps tools.
 

• Easy-to-use data connectors

Power Apps has several connectors available that allow for easy linking of standardized data to the application created. PowerApps also offers drag-and-drop features and templates to make accessing data much easier.
 

Examples of using Microsoft Power Apps

 

• New employee onboarding application

This type of app allows companies to streamline the onboarding process for new employees by creating customized workflows, task lists, and checklists to guide them.
 

• Employee feedback and ideas app

With this application, employees can give their opinion on some aspects of the company, give suggestions for improvements to the organization or give ideas for activities, for example, team building, that they would like to see carried out. 
 

• Expense approval app

With this application, the employee can declare an expense by submitting a request with valid proof. The company manager can approve or reject the request and add comments if required.
 

• Service Request App

This type of application gives companies the power to manage support requests from customers and also from internal teams. Customers can submit their requests through the app, making it easier to communicate their issues. 


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