2017-05-05

​With the ever growing suite of applications and tools being released into the Microsoft product landscape, it can be difficult to keep up, so we thought we'd show you how to get started and how to use PowerApps!

​What is Microsoft PowerApps?

Microsoft PowerApps is a powerful and innovative service introduced by Microsoft that allows enterprise users to create, collaborate, communicate and manage mobile apps without requiring developer skills or extra IT infrastructure to distribute. Microsoft PowerApps is available to install on iOS, Android and Windows devices. Using Microsoft PowerApps, Developers and business users can create custom native, mobile and web apps from anywhere using any devices.

PowerApps is based on Microsoft Azure, and it’s easy to integrate with other services of Azure, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamic CRM, Salesforce, OneDrive and On-Premises systems SharePoint, SQL Server, SAP, Oracle, Excel workbook and many more.

How is PowerApps licensed?​

Currently, there are three plans available to use this enterprise service of the cloud. You can see the mains features of these plans in the below screen shot. This gives the user the opportunity to select best plan to meet their requirements. For more details on this from Microsoft take a look here.

​After first login?

After subscribing to Microsoft PowerApps, you should be able to access the PowerApps portal. As you can see there are many built-in apps that can used to meet your needs:

And if you don't find what you need you can create new apps using the option “New app”. To develop custom apps you just need to allow the install of Microsoft PowerApps Studio,  there are two versions available; Windows, and Web based.

​PowerApps Studio for Web

If you choose PowerApps studio for Web, you will get the option to select your data source and you can choose the layout for the App.

​PowerApps from the Windows Apps Store

For the Windows version, you can install PowerApps from the Windows Apps Store on Mobile or PC.  Click on open once you’ve installed and away you go.

Now, you’re set to create custom or use existing PowerApps using your iOS, Android and Windows device as you can see from the screen shots.

Microsoft PowerApps makes it easy to develop business apps. The business user can create apps on mobile, based on the requirements and the data that they want to connect with. Microsoft has changed the 'App' development life cycle drastically by introducing this powerful and awesome cloud based service.

Microsoft Flow is also integrated with PowerApps giving the user the power to create and run several automated processes in form of Workflows.

​Other Resources and Reading

Take a look at this fantastic post to give you some further details on integrating with StaffHub -   How to integrate a PowerApps ‘App’ with Microsoft StaffHub?

Then to jump further into PowerApps and Flow this one gives you a great overview and pulls together some other great sessions to watch on the subject​:

I hope you find this blog helpful.

Keep reading and learning!!

Thank you!!

 

About the author 

Dharmendra Singh