CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCING POWER APPS      

What are Power Apps?

A subscription-based service for creating apps is Power Apps. It provides a "low code" development environment, even individuals without prior programming skills may utilize it. At its heart, PowerApps is a platform as a service. You can use it to develop mobile apps that work with practically any web browser and operate on Android, iOS, and Windows.

PowerApps has a mobile app as well! In the past, developing mobile applications meant making them compatible with every operating system (one for iOS, one for Android, one for Windows). This practically triples the amount of development effort, support expenses, and development resources required to produce commercial applications.

All of the PowerApps you develop using PowerApps Mobile Apps function via the PowerApp App. It handles the variations across operating systems and only lets you use your programs. It simply functions as a container that enables using mobile applications on different mobile platforms simpler.

PowerApps also has an online version. The same idea is used, but a contemporary web browser is used in place of a mobile app. To utilize Power Apps, we don't need to be skilled software engineers. Microsoft refers to the intended customer of the software as "citizen developers." This person may be a manager, an employee at an office, or someone whose main duties are not related to IT.

The usual app connects to data and has windows for data editing and presentation. Power Applications is a platform for creating corporate apps that streamline operations. It is not a tool for creating consumer-level software, such as games for app stores or mobile applications that need low-level, native access to hardware. Some alternative tools and platforms are better suited for these uses.

The Background of Power Apps

Microsoft's Siena project, which started in the Windows 8 period, gave rise to Power Apps. A "low code" platform called Siena made it possible to create modern "metro" applications that linked to data.

Power Apps were formally introduced by Microsoft towards the end of 2016. This release's standout feature was the ability to create applications that could be used not just on PCs but also on mobile devices like Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

It had a visual designer that was quite comparable to the one in Microsoft Excel. The designer has a formula bar that is similar to Excel's, and many of the Power Apps capabilities are also accessible in Excel. Users with knowledge of Microsoft Office found the program appealing due to its similar interface. Access to a large number of data sources, including SharePoint, Salesforce, Dynamics 365, and thousands more, was another standout feature. Additionally, it offered access to private, on-site SQL Server and SharePoint data stores. This was a useful feature since it is expensive and difficult to create typical mobile applications that can access internal business resources.

Microsoft also introduced the Common Data Service (CDS), a cloud-based database, around this time. Microsoft changed the name of the CDS to Dataverse in 2020 and released a condensed version dubbed "Dataverse for Teams" at the same time. For Microsoft Teams-based bespoke applications, "Dataverse for Teams" is intended to provide data storage.

Dataverse can seamlessly integrate with Power Apps and other Microsoft Power Platform products. Users with little prior knowledge of relational databases will benefit greatly from Dataverse. It offers a web-based interface, to handle the data we wish to save. It spares us from having to create frequently used data structures by offering a large number of prebuilt tables definitions. For instance, we can easily include the "User" table in our application to hold user information. The information we generally wish to have on hand for a user, such as a name, address, and email address, is included in the "User" database.

There have been several notable changes made to Power Apps since its debut in 2016. Tighter interaction with Microsoft SharePoint was one of the early improvements. Data input forms in SharePoint lists may now be customized thanks to Power Apps.

What Does PowerApps Do?

With PowerApps, you can create mobile apps by adding various controls (such as text fields and choice fields), media (such as photographs, videos, and camera controls for your phone), forms, and screens.

You may connect to other data sources or save data directly inside the app with this feature. The only thing left to do after creating an app is to launch it and distribute it throughout your company.

What doesn't it do?

PowerApps was created for internal usage and was intended to be used for business mobile apps. You won't make a PowerApp distributed to the whole planet. These are not intended for general consumer use, mostly because of the licensing mechanism and technological barriers to sharing with other users.

Additionally, PowerApps' whole functionality is "no-code." As a result, your internal developers won't be able to modify the underlying device by adding any unique HTML or JavaScript. If PowerApps are unable to access anything outside of itself, neither your users nor your developers will be able to.

It may seem like a restriction, but it may also be a benefit. Your PowerApps can help the platform maintain its long-term stability and usability by excluding malicious code. You may integrate any custom...