Do you ever have a business challenge, small or large, and simply think: “Oh, I wish there was an app for that?”
Well, maybe there could be…
Power Apps, from Microsoft, can create new business applications and streamline your business workflow. But what exactly is this platform? Here, we explain what a business power app is and how building one could be beneficial for your business.
What is Power Apps?
Power Apps is a Microsoft tool that allows businesses to create custom applications without the need for extensive computer programming or coding knowledge.
The platform can access and integrate data from various sources across your business, such as databases, spreadsheets or online data services, and create apps that can be used across web browsers, mobile devices or other Microsoft applications like Teams or SharePoint.
The main benefit of Power Apps is that you can create bespoke solutions to your business workflow and its “low-code” approach means using the tool to create an app can be quicker than using traditional development methods.
What are power apps used for?
Thanks to its versatile design options, Power Apps can be used for many different functions across your business.
To give an idea of what the platform is capable of, here are a few ideas for how Power Apps could be used in a business:
- Staff holiday management: you could use Power Apps to create an app for employees to input their holiday requests. You could then add an approval procedure, which would allow you to approve or deny the request from your end.
- Staff holiday management: you could use Power Apps to create an app for employees to input their holiday requests. You could then add an approval procedure, which would allow you to approve or deny the request from your end.
- A comms tool: A bespoke app to manage, track progress or communicate with a team doing a specific job.
- Lead capture: rather than waiting for your salespeople to return to the office to input details of business leads, an app could be created that allows your staff to collect and add details to a database on-the-go.
How to use Power Apps
Power Apps is easily accessible at make.powerapps.com. From there you can begin building an application for your business, although you may still appreciate some expert support which is available.
With Power Apps, you can create three types of apps: canvas, model-driven, and portal. These are outlined below:
- Canvas: In this mode, you design the app by dragging and dropping elements into a canvas, similar to how you might design a slide in PowerPoint. You can also create Excel-like expressions for specifying logic and working with data.
- Model-driven: With model-driven apps, the layout is mostly controlled by the information and data you feed into the app. This mode is often more appropriate if what you’re designing requires complex business logic.
- Portals: Here you can create web portals that can be shared both internally and externally, allowing users to interact securely with stored data.
Which option is best for you will depend on your business and its product. You can also hire a professional power apps developer to complete the design for you if you are unsure or want support in creating your app product.
Power Apps benefits
Fully Customisable
If you’ve ever felt let down by an off-the-shelf app solution, you can solve that issue with Power Apps. The platform allows you to build fully customisable apps designed for your business, meaning you don’t have to make your business needs fit into a pre-designed solution.
Cost
Traditional app development can be expensive and time-consuming. Power Apps can offer a quicker, more cost effective way to create and run an app for your business. Power Apps Licensing starts from just £3.80 Per User/Per App/Per Month.
Microsoft Tools integration
Power Apps also offers seamless data integration across other Microsoft applications, including Dynamics 365, SharePoint, Excel and other third party services.
Security
Power Apps works with Microsoft Dataverse, which runs on a role-based security model. This means that you can establish security roles for users based on a certain set of access permissions. Your employees will only be able to access the data you have allowed them to see, rather than giving them access to your whole data set.
Find out more about Power Apps
Intrigued? If you are reading this before Friday 23 June 2023 and you are based near Bristol, book yourself onto our Elevate Pathways event we are hosting for FREE at the Bristol and Bath Science Park. You can sign up here. We have invited an expert to run a whole session on Power Apps, as well as sessions on modernisation and collaboration.
If you can’t make it but want to know more about Power Apps, please get in touch via our contact form or telephone, and one of our experts will talk to you in more depth.