It is estimated that more than 500 million apps and services will be built in the next five years, which is high when compared to all the apps built in the last three decades. This demonstrates the speed at which organizations and developers need to convert an idea or an existing asset into a working application.
Now, here’s where PowerApps comes into the picture.
What is PowerApps?
PowerApps is a suite of services, connectors, apps, and data platforms that empowers your team to build custom business apps using prebuilt templates, drag-and-drop simplicity, and quick deployment. Apps built using PowerApps provide rich business logic and workflow capabilities to transform your manual business operations into digital, automated processes.
What’s more, the apps have a responsive design and can run seamlessly in browsers and on mobile devices. Power Apps enable users to create feature-rich, custom business apps without the need to write code. It also lets pro-developers programmatically interact with data and metadata, apply business logic, and create custom connectors.
Types of PowerApps
You can design PowerApps in the following two layouts, based on your business needs.
- Canvas Apps
- Model-driven Apps
Canvas Apps
Canvas apps are like a blank canvas for your business app idea. It has the maximum design flexibility, an attractive interface, and a better user experience. They offer easy drag-and-drop controls instead of complicated coding or programming. These apps enable you to design and organize freely by bringing your knowledge and creativity together in the Pixel Perfect environment.
Model-driven Apps
Model-driven apps start with your data, built on top of the Common Data Services model. When you want to create a model-driven app, you can leverage the power of Dataverse to create and configure forms quickly. With such a remarkable ability to run as a standalone application or as the backend to Canvas apps, Model-driven apps automatically generate excellent User Interface and responsiveness across devices.
Advantages of PowerApps
1. Enterprise-grade Platform for Administrators
The Power Platform admin center enables admins and partners to manage storage capacity, environments, and deployments in a more reliable, unified way. The advanced analytics capabilities help the admins to analyze and diagnose deployment difficulties and enable them to get the help they need and escalate issues to support when necessary.
2. For Existing Microsoft Users
Existing Microsoft customers of Dynamics 365 for Sales, Project Service, and IT, will be able to leverage the Interface to create adaptive, efficient, and responsive experiences that provide the functionalities users need.
3. PowerApps for Developers
Using code, developers can create data and metadata, and apply server-side logic, plug-ins, and workflow extensions. Pro developers can also take advantage of PowerApps by interacting with data and metadata, applying business logic, creating custom connectors, and integrating with external data.
4. PowerApps for App Creators
Power Apps allows you to create two major types of apps; canvas, and model-driven. The app creator for canvas apps is PowerApps Studio for robust PowerApps development. The model-driven app designer allows you to specify the sitemap and add components.
Bring the Power to your Apps with PowerApps
PowerApps accelerates how business apps are built, reducing time-to-solution from weeks or months to minutes. It allows you to better leverage the strength of the Power portal to design applications to solve your problems and fulfill your business needs. Also, it balances the power between IT and business users with tools and services not just envision but also implement the solution.
