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Power Apps

Power Apps

Overview

What is Power Apps?

PowerApps is a low code / rapid application development product from Microsoft that allows users to quickly build apps.

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Recent Reviews

Great!

10 out of 10
March 23, 2022
Incentivized
I use PowerApps to complete many projects. It helps to solve problems when things can be automatically calculated and shared. The scope of …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 6 features
  • Platform Security (18)
    9.2
    92%
  • Drag-and-drop Interfaces (18)
    9.0
    90%
  • Platform User Management (18)
    8.2
    82%
  • Reusability (18)
    5.0
    50%
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Pricing

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Power Apps Premium

$20

Cloud
per month per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://powerapps.microsoft.com/en…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $20 per month per user
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Product Demos

Getting Started with PowerApps || (EduX365.com)

YouTube

Auto Populate User Manager Information using PowerApps

YouTube

PowerApps Training App Template

YouTube

PowerApps in Power BI Desktop short demo

YouTube

PowerApps: Restaurant App Demo

YouTube

Get Onboard PowerApps

YouTube
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Features

Low-Code Development

Low-code development tools allow non developers to build simple process applications with little oversight. These tools simplify the application building process, and are frequently used for simple process applications.

7.9
Avg 8.7
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Product Details

What is Power Apps?

Power Apps is an app development environment that provides tools for building custom applications at scale using simple drag-and-drop capabilities and features designed to expedite the app building process for developers at any stage of their development journey.

Power Apps Competitors

Power Apps Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

PowerApps is a low code / rapid application development product from Microsoft that allows users to quickly build apps.

Power Apps starts at $20.

Airtable, Zoho Creator, and Mendix are common alternatives for Power Apps.

Reviewers rate Platform Security highest, with a score of 9.2.

The most common users of Power Apps are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(92)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-16 of 16)
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Scott Byrge, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We take advantage of the low-code features to enable business partners and junior developers' participation in the creation of enterprise-level business solutions. PowerApps is mostly used in relation to content in SharePoint Online Lists and Dataverse tables -- providing quick multi-screen apps for data entry, display, and manipulation. Since PowerApps is the out-of-the-box way to enhance SharePoint forms, it is an easy step to go further and add business logic. We extend the effectiveness of the solutions by integrationg with Power Automate to provide complete user-interactive logic and "back-end" business process automation.
  • Tight integration with other technologies such as Power Automate, Teams, and SharePoint - as well as many non-Microsoft technologies.
  • Low-code\No-code that can produce enterprise-level solutions
  • Vast number of sample and example Apps are available to kick-start a solution.
  • Sometimes the cost of solutions is greater than the benefit. Licensing is expensive relative to the scope of some business user-created personal or team-level solutions.
  • While there is a starter-kit for Governance, it is complicated to stand up and requires dedicated resources to provide on-going governance operations. Many organizations are not going to be able to dedicate resources to governance and this causes the sprawl, solution duplication, silos, unneeded and unplanned licensing expenses, and a general "wild wild west" environment.
  • There needs to be better direction and best practices given around Power Platform Environment utilization and optimization.
  • The accessibility to the platform and ease for business partners to independantly create solutions is both a benefit and a negative. When the business outcome needed is a good fit for PowerApps it is a quick win, but when not a good fit it becomes a frustration for the business partner attempting to make the platform do something it is not well-suited for. The business partner entangles tech teams in the effort which drains resources and provides a lack-luster solution. All of this to say, it would be beneficial to have some tools that business partners could leverage to determine\understand if the type of business outcome they need is well suited to PowerApps or not.
PowerApps is well suited for "quick-wins" and fast prototypes of business solutions. It also is beneficial for situations where business partners and developers work together - it allows the business folks to provide a "quick-and-dirty" prototype which is then fleshed-out by developers that are trained experts on the platform. The interactive and easy to understand representation of the solution allows business partners to "see" the solution and add, remove, or correct aspects of it themselves. It provides a common view and understanding of the actual solution across business units and tech teams.

PowerApps, being a low-code\no-code platform is not well suited for business processes that require many complex computations or large amounts of custom code - such as solutions that are better architected as Web Site or "full-blown" desktop solutions. There are solutions that are just not easy or quick to accomplish in a low-code\no-code platform. Enterprise Architects should know the difference, however business partners often try to create a solution and only when stuck because it becomes too complex do they engage a tech team for assistance - at which point there are sunk-costs involved and hinderences to re-platforming the solution.
Neil Kloster, MA, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I'm currently utilizing Power-Apps to fix our quality assurance issues. I've created multiple QA forms out of Power-Apps that help our department capture important information about errors in our cases and capture data from multiple sources (individuals) and sort that information by the manager, case type, error type, etc. I have also used it for other issues such as a reference tool to prevent multiple emails and case requests for situations that do not need a case.
  • Data capture.
  • Sends information to multiple places (i.e. SharePoint).
  • Creative flexibility.
  • Multiple uses.
  • Some situational formulas that seem easy to figure out are more complex than would be expected (such as using If functions, but it just takes a bit of research to figure out what you want to do).
Power-Apps can be used for virtually any type of situation. I've seen it used for an office reservation tool, especially during COVID, where that has been extremely useful. I currently use it a lot for various quality assurance forms for various teams who need different things to review for each team that calculates scores, as well as sends the information I need from various sources to SharePoint for analysis later. People can use it for mobile apps or canvas apps - I prefer canvas apps, but you can really create pretty much whatever you want and there are so many different tools and items to use for each app (scanner, signature insert, etc.). So really the sky is the limit.
Nicholas Wisel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We create alot of our own programs in house and we have recently sought the need to build apps for what we do. The Power Apps program is very user friendly for us to start the app building process. Our IT Team is able to utilize it to build apps for our employees to make certain job tasks more efficient and effective. We always need help with getting different program platforms to communicate with one another. We also need data that we have stored to be accessible to our employees as they move freight every day. Building an app for that has helped immensely.
  • Power Apps has formats that are pre-built that don't require any coding which makes it easier to achieve your vision. This does become a challenge if your App needs don't fit into that format.
  • We deal with a ton of data so the fact that you can connect to any data source in addition to their pre-stablished data connections makes the process a breeze.
  • The online learning resources and tutorials are helpful as well for those who are tech savvy.
  • I think more formats would be helpful.
  • I think having more customizability with current formats.
When building a data pulling app from one of our current programs we ran into trouble with the current program having the ability to communicate to an app without losing restrictions on the program. It did require communicating that out with the program provider. There are times where you will have to figure out solutions to make the app work that our outside of the Microsoft program.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PowerApps was primarily used to create basic user Interfaces and to guide workflows so that less technically savvy employees were not having to manually interact with sharepoint lists.
  • Fetching data from Sharepoint.
  • Manipulating items in the Dataverse (MS's SQL thing).
  • Guided user interactions.
  • The editor takes Forever to load a full project for editing. for more complex projects, I have to open it first thing in the morning, go make a coffee, handle all of my new emails, take a coffee break, then come back and pray its ready to use
  • Formulas - I'm not sure why it seems to require the sacrifice of a live chicken to get PowerApps to accept a complex formula that is syntax-correct, but it seems to help!
  • Field reference. if you are mapping to data in a SharePoint list or dataverse, being able to grab the correct fields is akin to Sorcery.
Powerapps is the lesser of 2 evils. It lets to restrict what people can see and how they can interact with it, but it has the potential to be a bit of a dragon when trying to implement it in more-complex workflows.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize the PowerApps platform to run a built-in-house application for inventory control. The tool is built on the M365 cloud platform to connect seamlessly to our databases as well as to be available across all of our facilities without the need for heavy infrastructure support. The business's workflows and Standard Operating Procedures are always changing, with PowerApps we can control the nuances and change management in-house vs waiting for an external firm to make the necessary changes on their development roadmap. PowerApps has solved the problem of waiting on vendors, leaning out infrastructure requirements, and bringing in efficiencies for inventory control through with PowerApps automation vs paper and pen model. The tool requires little support and little change, it has really been a game-changer for a start-up company in growth mode.
  • Automate manual processes.
  • Quick and easy setup.
  • Can scale very quickly.
  • Can be customized.
  • Easy to learn and manage.
  • UI can be a little confusing if not technically savvy.
  • Licensing is complicated.
  • More integrations to other platforms and processes.
PowerApps is best suited to automate any workflow or standard operating procedure that requires paperwork and data intake. Specifically, this app can build an automated process to do anything you do manually with data. It allows you to connect other platforms together for seamless transfer of data, as well as making mundane processes easy with GUI.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used PowerApps to create custom cloud-based solutions for on-prem systems. This has allowed us to go fully virtual and provide a wealth of information and systems to our customer service representatives to drive a world-class customer experience. We have built a custom invoicing system which allows the customer service representative to generate invoices upon request for our customers.
  • Low Code Solutions
  • Flexible connections
  • Built In Database(CDS)
  • Exporting Data out of the CDS is very limited
  • Save screen to PDF or Save data table to PDF
  • Data imports could be easier
PowerApps is well suited to environments where an organization wants to allow their employees the flexibility to create solutions to make their lives easier while still maintaining good dlp policies. PowerApps is very secure and you can give access to all organization or limit it just the users that you wish to use that application.
Nigel Stratton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
PowerApps is being used on mobile devices to simplify the recording of reading staff need to make. As an aero-medical retrieval specialist, we are moving COVID patients, as a result our crews must report their temperature and symptoms twice daily. The app allowed the crew to log data without having to call into a central desk to log results.
  • Deploy to mobile.
  • Create a great looking UI.
  • Handles updates well.
  • Programming model is unique and requires a total rethink for developers
  • Limitations to leverage SQL Server. Delegation limitations with Sharepoint.
  • This is a window for data, not suited to data manipulation in the app
It is fantastic for distribution to mobile devices, updates are simple and the UI looks awesome. Simple applications out of the box are fast and easy but it is not suited to customization. It is best as a window for prepared data.

For context, this is a low code platform, I am a developer, not a citizen developer, and I have found the PowerApp platform is not suited to customizations. I have only developed one application but I've spent a substantial amount of time perfecting it. There is a limited event model to tap into. The programming model for variables is backwards to standard programming, which requires a constant mental rewrite. Datacards are both useful and restrictive.

Data access for SQL Server is limited. Stored Procedures can only be accessed with Flow and in fact Flow is the best way to interact with it, which somewhat moves it out of the citizen developer zone. Joins can be done with Lookups but that will fire a separate query for each record in a list. Customizing the Item property resulted in quite unexpected queries being sent to SQL Server. Sharepoint is fast but searching with criteria is poor. For instance, you can't query using a date or a yes/no field.

SQL per-user pricing is expensive, which requires the use of per-Flow pricing to mitigate the cost but that increases complexity.
Krishn Garg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PowerApps is very good in creating professional apps with no code required. We are currently using PowerApps to integrate with SharePoint Online list and to display user data from other sources. It's being used by the whole organization to display users information daily on basis. Also integrating with SP Online to track customer requirements and follow up on same.
It's helping us in tracking user requirements and get a notification when any request raised.
  • Quick development with continuous improvements in apps
  • Integration with different services and MS Flow
  • The app load time with custom connectors that take time
  • Apps are only accessible with Microsoft account
PowerApps is best to display data in a very nice, presentation form. It's well suited for application within Microsoft account domains and can be accessible by domain users only. Best fit to integrate PowerApps with MS flow to represent data to users. Also can be used to display in all devices and OS.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft PowerApps it is used worldwide. It is used to add business functionalities that the common platforms don't do or don't have any best solution for. Also it is used to create small applications that are easier to develop inside the company rather then buy from a vendor. The integration with Azure platform is a superb feature.
  • Easily deploy applications company-wide.
  • Integration with MS Azure and the integration of features.
  • To have a better integration with MS Visual Studio.
  • Connectors and data sources could be more friendly and have better performance.
It is suitable to use to develop internal applications, integrating your current environment and platforms. It is highly recommend to use as a low-code platform if you already have an Office 365 subscription (E3 or greater is much better in terms of value). Easily deploy mobile applications [without] investing in a specific platform. It is less appropriate to be used as a platform to sell applications to customers and for high-performance applications.
Nathan Roberts | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use PowerApps as an easy way to quickly develop apps that might otherwise take considerable time and resources. For instance, we recently built a help desk application using a PowerApp that had already been significantly developed. We just tweaked it for our needs. The automatic tie-ins to O365 and SharePoint made authentication data storage seamless.
  • Low-code design reduces learning curve to develop useful apps.
  • Pre-built templates means development time is reduced.
  • No desktop development environment.
  • Limited options to tweak code; there should be an override for advanced users.
If you have a need to quickly develop apps, PowerApps can be good. If you have a simple project and don't have an experienced developer available, PowerApps can be good. If you have a complex project that needs a lot of customization, PowerApps is probably not the way to go. Another way to say it: PowerApps has simultaneously impressed and depressed. It's impossible to recommend for every development scenario, but probably worth exploring when needs are conservative and skills and budget are at a premium.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have several departments that use specific line-of-business applications build on model-driven PowerApps, including Sales and Purchasing, our Create Lab, our Quality Control Lab, and our Regulatory department. Our business could not function without these applications as data and requests would get completely lost in email. Using PowerApps allows us more visibility into the process and offers more business process automation.
  • Quick development with no code for specific line-of-business applications.
  • Allows greater control over business process automation through workflows and better-formalized connection to crucial business data, such as Accounts, Salespeople, etc.
  • Building an elegant user experience is very user-friendly and doesn't take a ton of time to put together.
  • Forms and views into the data all come "pre-packaged" for the quick implementation of model-driven PowerApps.
  • Canvas-driven PowerApps may take a little time to understand. They are incredibly powerful, but as such, there is more to learn, test, and understand.
  • PowerApps offer a lot of flexibility, so they don't always get completed extremely quickly. That being said, they offer a lot of power without any code.
  • Building navigation and launching the app could use a little improvement as well.
  • Licensing, as with many Microsoft Products, is continually changing and requires assistance in most cases.
It's so good as powerful line-of-business applications, I can't recommend it enough. The ability to tap into the Common Data Service and use this information along with custom entities, forms, and views, makes model-driven PowerApps incredibly useful and powerful. It's also very friendly for those who have implement business processes and logic but don't have experience with an actual coding language. There is so much flexibility with PowerApps.

But again, you may have to invest some time figuring out the functionality. Even though there isn't a specific code involved doesn't mean that the work will be simple and quick. You can do a lot with PowerApps, but it might take some time and effort to get a broad understanding of all that it is capable of.
Chris Carpenter | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company and parent company are in the piloting the use of PowerApps in the midst of a move from on-prem SharePoint to SharePoint Online and Office365. We are using PowerApps to bridge the gap left by Nintex (that we are no longer using in O365) and the sunsetting of Microsoft InfoPath. It has been made available for pilot and soft-adoption across all operating companies from a centrally governed parent company's MS master agreement. Use at each operating company can differ slightly and support for the tool is mostly a shared burden between parent company IT and operating company IT. The business problem that it addresses for us is the management of data entry points in the mobile space for SharePoint. It allows us to collect metadata for Lists and Libraries in a mobile environment and to design some forms for online client use as well. It is primarily mobile consumption, though.
  • Because PowerApps is tied to the Office365 environment, it does a very good job at talking to source information in SharePoint. For those considering PowerApps, there is something to be said for the seamless handshakes that Microsoft authors between their own tools.
  • If you are wanting to parse down the fields requested (again, in relation to SharePoint) and get away from messing with content types or default forms behind the curtain in SharePoint, PowerApps is a good buffer to selecting exactly what you want to capture and nothing that you don't (that isn't required).
  • While still in its early deployment, PowerApps does have good flexibility because of the coding opportunities in the tool. Coding can be a barrier of entry, but it balances code and common sense entry pretty well.
  • PowerApps works pretty well on a Mac. Of course, everything Microsoft functions better in Microsoft products (IE, Windows, Edge), but the online authoring tool for PowerApps is just fine for Mac.
  • PowerApps has a great coding option, but there are some pieces of the tool that the requirement to understand code is a barrier to fun if the user doesn't code.
  • MUCH time can be spent looking for solutions on this young platform and the body of forum/help/lessons learned is not as robust as it will be in a few years.
  • Like many early-stage Microsoft products, PowerApps is a relatively blank slate that will be improved by the feedback of their users and ongoing feature development. Right now it seems that the product lacks a critical mass of use-case driven templates (there are some, but I haven't yet found one that didn't require more work to customize it to my need that it would take to build my own tool).
PowerApps does a great job of bridging the gap for mobile form entry where needed. We don't have a ton of mobile use cases, but that's because we haven't had a very active online tool kit until the deployment of O365. With most tools behind a firewall, any opportunity to work in business applications has been through VPN and that usually requires a PC/Mac. Now that we're able to access the system through a credentialed entry point in O365, we have the opportunity to think about what our mobile environment could look like. That's where PowerApps comes into our portfolio.
Damien Dolan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Since we are short staffed and thin on personnel, we have to use what tools we can to help automate business rules and practices. PowerApps is perfect for that. I am a programmer by trade but when we (the IT department) don't have to time to create applications from the ground up we use PowerApps. We can easily create a well functioning, SharePoint integrated data entry/workflow system within a couple of hours. It also automates a lot of the tasks requested by users. It is being used across our whole organization and we are leveraging it heavily.
  • Easy to create new apps.
  • Integration with cloud data sources (Azure, Sharepoint).
  • GUI for creators is excellent.
  • Mobile and Desktop apps are created simultaneously.
  • Customizing interface for phones and tablets.
  • You are limited in layout, either phone or tablet, no desktop support.
  • The "Code Editor" could use some work. Giving you a bigger canvas so to speak.
  • It can be buggy if you make changes to data sources and flows outside of PowerApps. I have had one or two controls "break" because I made changes outside of PowerApps.
We had a layoff where the employee who was responsible for data integrity was let go. Their job was to make sure all new products, projects etc. had a naming scheme that fell in with our business rules. When they were let go we were able to create a PowerApp(s) that helped take some of their tasks and pass it on to the user with feature-rich data entry screen that interfaced with our ERP's data source. I'm not saying this will replace people in the workforce but it helps alleviate some of the burdens a scenario like this might create.
Tim Dorscher | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization has access to PowerApps through the Microsoft Office 365 suite of products. I stumbled upon it a little over a year ago and have used it to create a time calculator for in-house projects as well as a budget calculator for our products. Others have created more elaborate apps that connect to Microsoft Common Data Service(CDS) which takes the Power in PowerApps to a whole new level.
  • Easy to learn
  • If you have a working knowledge of Excel formulas you can get significant benefit out of PowerApps
  • Empowers the citizen developer
  • Reduces the time to market for solutions you would normally have to rely on IT/IS for
  • The tutorials provided are too brief and too high level. You need to dig into the forums and the help topics on the Microsoft PowerApps website.
  • Without IT/IS blessing the citizen developer may not have the ability to save a final output.
  • Unable to print to a printer or PDF. You need to take a screenshot of what you have done.
  • I would love being able to right click a function and have a tooltip/explanation of what that function actually does. Not just how to write it but what the outcome should be.
I don't know of an area PowerApps would not be suited for. It is extremely powerful and when connected to the common data service becomes more powerful. I have seen it used in libraries to track books and attendants down. I have seen it used to track bus routes and or broken down buses. I have used it as a calculator, with a large number of formulas that drive it, that becomes simple and easy to use on desktop and on mobile. If you have a need to present or gather information of any kind, PowerApps can likely solve your issue.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently looking to implement on the job site. Using PowerApps we are going to remove all the pen to paper activity that is occurring on the construction site. Instead we will begin to have construction workers enter the data into an app on their smartphone that was built using PowerApps.
  • Empowers the management team and support staff. PowerApps allows someone without any programming experience to conceive a resolution to problems. For example the capturing of data which may start out with someone entering data by filling out a form and that form is then presented to someone to enter into an Excel Spreadsheet which in turn is emailed to numerous parties for their inputs. With PowerApps you can easily push all of that activity to SharePoint and the automation being driven by Flow which will make the collection and use of data much more effecient.
  • PowerApps is highly flexible, it affords you the opportunity to connect to all kinds of data types from Excel Spreadsheets, to Lists built in SharePoint to all manners of databases.
  • It's really really simple but at the same time provides you with the ceiling to perform complicated task. PowerApps will meet you where you are at.
  • I'm sure cons exist but just haven't spent enough time working with the tool to experience its short comings yet. But what I've experienced thus far has been great. The support provided by Microsoft has been great, there is plenty of support for training as well.
PowerApps can find a home in any situation. If a company already uses SharePoint then that company can find a place for it that makes sense. The real strength of PowerApps is realized by empowering those workers that aren't a part of IT, typically analyst, schedulers, or someone who works in managing, collecting or reporting data, by allowing them to develop their own solutions for any issues they may have. PowerApps well lessen the dependency that organizations have for Developers/IT and put them in a position to do things for themselves.
Corey Brandt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am currently developing an application for our estimating department to address a need for tailor made software that manages the organization and indexing of contractor proposals and assembling of these proposals and our costs to bid to owners for consideration of construction management contracts.
  • Easy to create simple apps based on data from a wide variety of sources.
  • Branding and customization and is simple and powerful.
  • Works well for people with an excel background.
  • I feel that although it is possible to adapt the tablet view to desktop it can be cumbersome and the screen ratio is not right. There should be an option for making a desktop or browser based application specifically; or at least more screen ratio choices.
  • "PowerApps Desktop" is only available via windows store; for some enterprise users(specifically LTSB users) that makes it unavailable as windows store cannot be used with this version of Windows. A stand alone download or an explanation in the documentation would be nice to have.
  • I have spent a ton of time changing the formating over to the standard that I am using throughout the application on each data card or places where copy paste isn't an option. A format painter or a place to provide typical formating options such as font type and color would be a HUGE time saver for those of us trying to brand our applications.
More basic applications for creating and editing records are very easy to create and can be very powerful. For more complex applications people need to make a relatively large time investment in order to adapt excel workbooks or other static databased work-flows to PowerApps and I have discovered that it can take some creative thinking in order to get certain scenarios to work the way you want. That being said I would still recommend PowerApps but with caution depending on the type of Application.
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