What PowerApps Can and Cannot Do

If you had superpowers, would you want to know what they are and how to use them? So does every other organization. That is why we help organizations learn more about how they can leverage PowerApps to supercharge their operations.

The latest Beyond Transformation Podcast covers a clip from our free On-Demand Webinar, Discover the 5 PowerApps Use Case Superpowers. As the name suggests, the webinar covered information about leveraging PowerApps for your organization. We provide you with different use cases that explore how various organizations use this tool.

PowerApps Webinar Transcript

Using tools like PowerApps, you have an enterprise-level platform that helps you easily build new business applications or customized existing apps.

How can PowerApps help your organization?

PowerApps is a framework to run your cloud-based PowerApps applications. You can even leverage their sample apps library. So, even if you don’t know the exact business processes or don’t know how to connect different things, you have a sample apps library that guides you to update your processes.

Furthermore, you don’t always need to know how to code.

The great thing about PowerApps is it connects your PowerApps with over 480 different data sources, as the last time we checked, and this is a growing list. As you continue to watch this, it’s very possible that it will continue to grow over time because it has so far.

In addition, I mentioned that you don’t need to have a lot of coding experience. The one coding they have on PowerApps is what’s called Power FX. Power FX is an open-source coding based on Excel formulas. The idea is that you’re using these formulas to help understand how to manipulate the data for your own purposes. With that said, there are some limitations of PowerApps. We’re not going to say this is the end-all, be-all of all applications.

So, you must first know that this is not for commercial use. So, you’re looking at PowerApps, you’re like, “Oh, this is so great. It connects all this data. It does all these things.”

What does PowerApps not do?

One thing it does not do is you cannot sell it on an app store. So, for example, if you go into the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store, you could download an application. This is not for that type of use. This is for internal audiences only.

Additionally, because this is designed for citizen developers, there are some limitations on what developers can do with customizing HTML and JavaScript code. Furthermore, you’re also reliant on Microsoft to roll out new functions. That said, they do have a regular schedule.

For example, we talked about the Dataverse in terms of connecting information and connecting data. One of the things they just rolled out was a simplified Dataverse search to help connect all this information together, and you now have a way to search for it. There are also advanced lookup capabilities and model-driven apps.

There are model-driven and canvas apps. And this is a model-driven app that helps you so that you have better ways of creating those different model-driven apps. So again, they are rolling out new functions regularly, but you are relying on Microsoft to roll out those functions in the first place.

Final Thoughts

Thanks again for listening to the Beyond Transformation Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this episode. And again, don’t forget to check out the free webinar.