What Is Microsoft PowerApps and How Can It Benefit Your Business?

powerapps

Picture this, it’s Super Bowl Sunday, an American tradition, one of the most-watched sports games in the world. People everywhere gather around their TVs cheering their team.

In fact, 1 in 3 US citizens are tuned in.

That’s a staggering 111.3 million viewers.

What’s bigger than the Super Bowl?

Smartphones.

If you’re a business it would be an oversight to not focus on smartphones and their uses in the workplace. So, what is Microsoft PowerApps? Microsoft has stepped up with Microsoft PowerApps and made app development accessible to everyone, from amateurs to expert programmers.

Apps can help you create a streamlined work environment that’s accessible to everyone in your network. If you’re interested in learning more about this incredibly powerful tool, keep reading!

A Quick Overview of Microsoft Power Apps

PowerApps was released in 2017 and comes with the Office365 Suite as well as being available for purchase on its own. The basic premise behind its creation was to simplifying internal app development for businesses, making it easier to create collaborative work environments.

PowerApps is not for developing customer-facing apps, it’s primary purpose right now is to create solutions for businesses and their employees. It is rumored that Microsoft is working on adding these capabilities in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled.

While using PowerApps is intuitive and doesn’t require any coding knowledge, the user can also connect their app with other high powered connectors like SharePoint, SQL Server and Office365. This offers PowerApp users a consolidated and robust way to access data, and how you use your data can make or break your web development efforts.

What’s It Really Like to Use PowerApps?

The short answer: Very Easy.

A quick YouTube search of PowerApps for beginners brings up hundreds of videos. Ostensibly it’s a WYSIWYG user interface, which means you’ll be able to drag and drop features to create the look, feel and functionality of your app, all without coding.

While it is pretty straight forward, you’ll still need to create the app’s tools and processes. This is going to be similar to how you create formulas in Excel versus trying to master complex programming languages like JavaScript or Python, so you better think to hire a python programmer.

โœ‹ Warning

๐Ÿ’ก Don’t miss our guide on how to choose the perfect Python development company for your business needs!

What Else Can You Do With PowerApps?

With its extensive catalog of connectors it’s possible to create an app for just about anything your business needs, using any data bank you have. While this can seem overwhelming, there are some really informative articles out there to help you figure things out, like how to create a form in SharePoint. Microsoft also has a super thorough PowerApps documentation portal available to anyone.

Finally, Why Should You Bother?

We’ve already explained how the overwhelming ubiquity of smartphones can change the way you do business, but if that isn’t enough a Forrester Total Economic Impact study in 2019 made the business benefits of PowerApps pretty clear. They found that there was a 362% ROI for PowerApp users, and you really can’t argue with numbers like that.

With that being said, what do YOU think about using PowerApps for your business?

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