See the power of PowerApps
October 28, 2019
See the power of PowerApps
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with PowerApps
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.
- Incredible ROI, especially with the new licensing of just using one PowerApp. Update your navigation to include multiple apps and release this to several users who only need one or two of these. For model-driven PowerApps, this is a huge win.
- If you break up your PowerApps or if users are using several, you will have to be more careful about your licensing. But overall, there is so much value and power, I would encourage spreading out the ability to create and build PowerApps to more and more users to get full value out of the tool.
- Again, learning PowerApps isn't for the faint of heart. You will likely have to invest some time figuring out several things, but I promise, the effort is worth it.
I'm not sure if you can say D365 CRM is an alternative to PowerApps, because basically all the customization of using D365 CRM, or what used to be called XRM, is now called a model-driven PowerApp. Likewise, SharePoint has become intimately connected to canvas PowerApps. Both are just simple ways to start creating a PowerApp, and it doesn't take too much work to quickly get up to speed creating useful PowerApps for your company.
Do you think Power Apps delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Power Apps's feature set?
Yes
Did Power Apps live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Power Apps go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Power Apps again?
Yes
Power Apps Feature Ratings
Evaluating PowerApps and Competitors
Yes - In a way, with the changes Microsoft has been making to licensing, model-driven PowerApps has replaced D365 CRM and canvas PowerApps can replace custom development or highly customized SharePoint applications. The reason to replace these is development time. Instead of developers working on this via code full-time, we can spread the work out to others who are less technical but still understand a lot about the business and can put that business knowledge to technical use.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
It's really a combination of Price, Features, and Usability. Without it being cost-effective, we wouldn't have been able to proceed. Without it have several features, it wouldn't have been as useful. And without it have exquisite usability, we wouldn't have gotten very far creating new applications and getting users to use them.
I suppose we may have expanded our selection options beyond just Microsoft products. But truthfully, we are a Microsoft shop. There is so much value with using all the cloud capabilities that Microsoft offers, it's hard to expand and look elsewhere. The integration, the single sign-on, and the flexibility within the O365 and D365 tools and capabilities makes it hard to look at competitors.
Using PowerApps
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Connecting to pre-existing, business-critical data, like accounts, contacts, products, orders, invoices, etc.
- Designing an elegant, line-of-business application is relatively straightforward.
- Very powerful, no-code option, even if there is a bit of a time investment required.
- As mentioned previously, there is a time investment required to get a deep understanding.
- While it is no-code, it is beneficial to have someone who can think logically and has a good sense of the business process and user experience.
Yes - It's solid. You have a PowerApps app on your phone and from there, you can open any PowerApp you have access to in your organization. It's pretty straightforward, even if there is a sense of redundancy having to open first the PowerApp phone app and then the actual, developed application itself.