Microsoft PowerApps - Review 2022 - Devinney Speorne1972

If yous're looking for a low-code development platform for building custom applications, then you could exercise much worse than Microsoft PowerApps. We found the tool to be well designed for those with custom business challenges to solve. Microsoft PowerApps (which begins at $7 per user per month) delivered enough coding flexibility to address most business organization challenges, but does so in an attractive user interface (UI) that's easy to use. This platform, which comes bundled with select Microsoft Office 365 plans, uses more than than 230 built-in connectors, and also provides back up for setting up your own custom connectors. And while Microsoft PowerApps did well the first time we reviewed information technology in 2022, over the past year Microsoft has improved on an already-great product. This is why Microsoft PowerApps keeps our Editors' Selection designation for low-code development platforms.

Similar Google App Maker, Microsoft PowerApps is even so a relatively new entry in this field, peculiarly when compared with more established players such as Editors' Choice Appian and even Salesforce App Cloud. When nosotros first tested Microsoft PowerApps last yr, we thought its newcomer status brought a few inherent benefits, namely, an uncluttered user experience (UX) and comfortable UI. When it offset launched, we were impressed that Microsoft was able to develop a low-code evolution platform that has nearly everything a power user or developer would desire in terms of design, usability, and a comprehensive set of features for building intuitive business apps with picayune to no coding. Appian and Google App Maker are slightly more intuitive for users with zippo technical feel (although Microsoft has improved this pain point somewhat over the by yr). Only good Microsoft Excel users and IT staff volition discover a lot to like in the polished power and wealth of integrations that Microsoft PowerApps supplies.

Pricing and Plans

Microsoft PowerApps pricing can be sliced a few different ways. As a standalone product, it begins at $vii per user per month for Microsoft PowerApps Programme 1, which is targeted at business users without programming experience. Program 1 comes with 4,500 Microsoft Catamenia "runs" or automations per user per month, likewise equally access to Microsoft'south Common Information Service. Microsoft PowerApps Plan two is significantly more expensive at $twoscore per user per month, equally this program is geared toward developers and It administrators with deeper programming and data modeling features along with enterprise-grade policy management. Programme two allots fifteen,000 Menstruation runs per month. Both plans come with a 90-mean solar day free trial and no limit on how many apps you can create.

The other fashion to become Microsoft PowerApps is through an existing Office 365 or Dynamics 365 subscription. Though in that scenario, y'all only become 2,000 Flow runs per month and simply ane custom application programming interface (API), every bit opposed to unlimited APIs for Microsoft PowerApps Plan 1 and ii. Microsoft PowerApps also comes with straight integrations to Office 365, Microsoft Power BI, and the customer relationship direction (CRM) database and capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 by default.

In addition, Microsoft has besides added integrations to "premium connectors" at both plan levels, such as the ability to pull in data from sources including MailChimp and Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional person. You tin besides connect Microsoft PowerApps apps to a number of 3rd-political party cloud apps and services, from social networks such every bit Facebook and Twitter to GitHub, Dropbox Business, and Slack.

Microsoft PowerApps - Sample Apps, Templates, and Video Tutorials

Edifice a Low-Code Business organization App

Low-lawmaking evolution platforms have value both for boilerplate business organization users who want to build apps without coding, and for programmers and IT managers who are looking to reduce some of the manual endeavor in developing basic business process apps within an organization. As such, we tested Microsoft PowerApps from both perspectives. To exam Microsoft PowerApps from a concern user perspective, nosotros built a basic scheduling app. The base of operations goal was to create an app that could add together a new event with fields for effect proper name, engagement, time, and duration. In terms of features, we wanted the ability to invite users to events and sort the events listing in a calendar or chronological view. Any additional functionality would be a plus.

The Microsoft PowerApps dashboard and visual designer were among the most straightforward and easy to navigate user interfaces (UIs) we tested. While not quite as minimalist as the Google App Maker and Zoho Creator UIs, Microsoft PowerApps manages to give you lot quick access to all your apps, workflows, integrations, data connectors, and notifications, without inundating yous in the type of cluttered UX that can make Salesforce App Cloud difficult to navigate.

Microsoft PowerApps - Database Development

When y'all sign up for a complimentary trial and open the Microsoft PowerApps dashboard, the left-paw navigation puts all your Apps, Connections, Flows, Gateways, Notifications, and Common Data Service Entities front end and center, forth with a prominent Create New App button to start building. On the main dashboard, Microsoft also gives yous links to a number of sample apps and templates, as well equally video tutorials and a Guided Learning tour through the platform. For a business user with no programming experience, not having to search for assist resource is a major plus.

After you lot select Create New App, Microsoft PowerApps gives you the option to offset with a blank app or an existing template, or to begin with data pulled from whatsoever of five prebuilt connectors: Common Data Service, Dynamics 365, Microsoft OneDrive for Business, Microsoft SharePoint Online, or Salesforce. Some other smart flourish in Microsoft PowerApps are buttons to choose a mobile or tablet layout from the showtime.

The visual designer has a very familiar feel, with the toolbars and part box across the top inspired by Microsoft Excel, and the drag-and-drop screen thumbnails in a left-hand side column reminiscent of managing slides in Microsoft PowerPoint. We began by creating a blank app for our PCMag Scheduling App, but quickly institute that it was more than effective to start with a data source and build the app from there, rather than trying to connect a Common Information Service database nosotros hadn't built however. Microsoft PowerApps tin can be a flake hard to use at offset if you don't have a data source or Microsoft Excel sheet ready, and load times could use improvement. But, afterwards sending usa back to the main dashboard to create a database for our app, we were off and running.

Earlier designing the app itself, you need to connect information technology to entities from your database. An entity is essentially a table in a database that helps you manage the data getting pulled into your app. Microsoft PowerApps has dozens of prebuilt entities for various commerce and sales use cases (contacts, leads, vendors, invoices, purchase orders, and many more), and you can choose multiple entities from which to describe data. The app starts you with a few prebuilt screens, only the Insert tab atop the designer lets you add all kinds of tables, objects, and multimedia onto your screen. You can add line, bar, or pie charts; diverse mobile app icons and menus, affect controls like a toggle, links to open your phone camera or microphone, and even barcodes.

Microsoft PowerApps - Visual App Designer

While the designer tools and particularly the mobile-optimized visual development in Microsoft PowerApps are impressive, we quickly realized that adding and ordering elements and managing data sources all happen in the Holding Editor on the right-hand side of the designer. Adding and editing elements requires constantly connecting to different database entities, and changing property values and titles leads to errors.

Ultimately, building the basic scheduling app from scratch or from an existing template proved significantly more complicated compared with Appian and Google App Maker, where creating the basic scheduling app was more of a guided experience that takes you through a course-based magician. Microsoft PowerApps is not necessarily the tool for a business user without any experience, at least with Microsoft Excel—unless you're working from prebuilt templates. The most effective way to build the scheduling app turned out to be trying out a few of the templates, then inserting UI elements such as a date picker and form drop-downward to create a screen where we could add an effect, choose a appointment and time, save that event to a tabular array, and then invite users. Later creating our app and using the Frontward push on the top correct-hand side of the designer to cheque out the app preview, we were able to publish the app to an internal company "app store," sharing the app via email with specific co-workers or team members.

The Developer Feel

To exam Microsoft PowerApps from an Information technology-focused perspective, our programmer used the tool to build a small CRM app nosotros called "Crowd Control." The goal with this app was to build a simple, collaborative contact and lead managing director with the ability to add together photos and multiple notes to each contact. The app was to take a Contact List page, Contact Item page, and a New Contact page. It was also important to add together new data model fields and change existing fields in the finished app to ensure the Information technology section would be able to update and modify the app over time.

Microsoft PowerApps compared most closely to Zoho Creator in terms of the design tools. It was easy for our developer to create and lay out the visual elements of the app and to wire them together. Reordering UI elements wasn't quite as intuitive every bit Zoho Creator, though. Instead of doing this via the design page, users must reorder elements from inside the Properties panel on the correct-hand side of the Designer view. That's a small thing, and once you lot adjust to that fashion of doing things, information technology's fine. However, it felt a little unnecessary or incomplete the first few times nosotros used it.

The Entity design tool was solid and easy to employ for our programmer. There is a Picklists carte du jour option nether the Common Data Service menu. But, as with our boilerplate user testing, this consistently brings yous dorsum to the principal Microsoft PowerApps landing page until you lot create your database. Picklists, which are lists of entries shown in a selection box or drop-downward list box, were not every bit piece of cake to create as most of the other tools, which permit you create the custom pick lists while defining your entity. However, equally with most things, Microsoft PowerApps provided a huge number of prebuilt options.

It was also like shooting fish in a barrel to add together a new field to the data model and make changes to the existing app. Altering a field was piece of cake, as well. However, you couldn't change the proper noun of an existing property. So y'all could, over time, end upward with legacy naming that no longer makes sense; this could pb to confusion equally new developers come up online to enhance or back up an app. Zoho Creator, on the other hand, handled this more gracefully.

Our developer found Microsoft PowerApps to be amongst the nearly polished and comprehensive tools we tested. In that location'south a high level of UX customization without having to be a designer. In fact, for the basic app functions, there wasn't even a demand to get as well deep into the "low-code" or more than logic-heavy portion of the tool, such equally the ability to add together specific automatic processes past using Microsoft Flow.

Whereas everything about the Salesforce UI was decorated, with a huge number of links and options all displayed at once, Microsoft PowerApps is cleaner and presents a consistent design throughout. The contact-based app was like shooting fish in a barrel to build. There were only ii bug found. One was a lack of an "paradigm" data type, making information technology hard to attach a photo to a contact. The other was difficulty trying to add together multiple, distinct "notes" for each contact, considering Microsoft PowerApps seemed during testing to only provide one-to-one relationships between entities. There are template apps that seem to support 1-to-many relationships, but something about the tool wouldn't let for drilling into that relationship to run into how it could exist done. This was actually a problem in several tools; Zoho Creator was past far the easiest to comprise a multiple-notes feature in Crowd Control.

Microsoft PowerApps - Mobile App Templates

App Checker

Since our original review, Microsoft has been regularly adding new functionalities that help alleviate some of the pains involved in app development. The biggest new development might exist the App Checker, which is designed to help customers track downwardly errors and solve problems. There are two ways to make use of the App Checker. Yous can either click the stethoscope button on the Microsoft PowerApps studio screen, or y'all can double click on the mistake indicator that now shows up when Microsoft PowerApps detects a trouble.

The App Checker breaks down problems by either formula or accessibility problems. It marks errors with a red dot and warnings with a xanthous triangle to warn users about potential data loss. Bluish dots offer suggestions to ameliorate your formula.

The accessibility checking functionality works in a similar fashion, merely it is designed to help you make your app more accessible for disabled users by spotting keyboard and screen-reader issues. For example, if you lot have an video or audio command in your app that does not have an accompanying closed captions URL, so you will get an alert. Subsequently all, without captions that file is useless to someone who his hearing dumb, and all developers should try their best to make sure everyone can utilise what they create.

If yous take ever tried to build an app (either through a depression-code solution or traditional, good one-time-fashioned programming), and then you know that finding errors and trying to be accessible are two large pain points in the development process. Proactive alerts nearly formula and accessibility issues will likely help you build a better app, and Microsoft PowerApps is a better product because of it.

A Ability User's Dream

Microsoft PowerApps is still a young low-code evolution platform. Even so, from an It and power user perspective, information technology offered the almost polished UX in whatsoever platform we tested. Whether information technology was the data-modeling tool, the UI designer, or maximizing reusability with its long list of entities and growing choice of templates, the low-code concepts are clearly executed throughout the UX.

The visitor regularly adds new features to the platform, and it is axiomatic that it is committed to keeping Microsoft PowerApps one of the all-time low-code products on the market. For business users defective Excel proficiency and expertise in working with data modeling and entities, Google App Maker and Editors' Choice Appian are better options for a guided visual app-building experience. Microsoft PowerApps isn't a perfect low-code platform, only its slick design, low toll, and comprehensive features in a familiar environment earn information technology an Editors' Selection for power users and IT users, with enough of room for improvement.