Microsoft Power Apps – easy creation of individual apps.

With a canvas app, you design and create a business app on a “canvas” in the Power Apps Studio. You design the app by selecting and placing elements. You can include a variety of control features such as cameras or location awareness.

There is no need to write code in a traditional programming language such as C#. This process in the App Designer feels like creating PowerPoint slides. You can also create expressions, such as those used in Excel, for example to specify logic and work with data. You are therefore completely responsible for the layout yourself.

The model-driven apps start with your data model. Forms, views and other components are modelled using data from your core business and your processes in Common Data Service.

Model-driven apps automatically generate powerful user interfaces that can be used across devices. Unlike canvas app development, where the designer has full control over the app layout, model-driven apps are designed with much of the layout determined by the components you add to the app.

The full capabilities of Dynamics 365 portals that were previously only offered as add-ons to customer engagement apps (Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, and Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation) are now available standalone in Power Apps in conjunction with Microsoft Dataverse.

This provides the following added value:

• enabling internal users as well as external (customers and partners) to access, create, view and search data anytime and anywhere
• secure interaction via portals anonymously or via authentication providers
  • for individuals: LinkedIn, Microsoft, Facebook and Google
  • for enterprises: Azure Active Directory B2C (Azure AD B2C)

The following features are included:

• setup of portal websites with individual content and in the look & feel or layout of the respective brand through customizable portal templates, intuitive interfaces as well as practical instructions (without programming effort)
• enhancement of portal websites with model-driven forms, views, lists, charts and dashboards
• display data from a wide variety of sources used (e.g. Power BI and Power Automate) through Microsoft Dataverse
• specification of authentication requirements
• customization of data per user
• permission for private data transfer

Power Apps is an app building system from Microsoft. Using Power Apps, you can easily and quickly build apps without writing a line of code (low code application). A possible example would be a time tracking app.

To build an app, you can either choose from an existing layout from a template or start without a template. Within a few clicks, you populate the app with your data, and you can use Microsoft products like Microsoft 365 or Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly Microsoft Dynamics NAV), etc., as well as third-party products like Salesforce or Dropbox, as data sources.

With a Canvas App, you design your app through the App Designer by selecting and placing elements (drag-and-drop). In doing so, you can include a variety of controls with a click, and there’s no need to write code. The design is in your hands. You can compare the process to creating PowerPoint slides.

This process in the app designer feels like creating PowerPoint slides. In addition, just like in Excel, you can create expressions for specifying logic and working with data, for example. So you are completely in charge of the layout.

Power Apps distinguishes subscription plans as well as usage-based payment. Under subscription plans, you can pay either per user per app per month (per-app plan) or per user per month (per-user plan). With usage-based payment, you pay per active user per app per month. That is, only if a user runs an app within a month.

Microsoft Power Apps is actually suitable for every company, because there is always potential for optimization. Power Apps are excellent at replacing existing manual processes that are often tedious and repetitive.

Yes, Power Apps is included in some Office 365 plans. For example, in Office 365 E1, E3, or E5. You can use most of the functionalities of Power Apps with it, but for some features, like connecting to third-party data, you need an additional license. You can find an overview of the licensing options on our pricing page.

Power Apps can be used on any type of device, from desktops, laptops and tablets to cell phones. It doesn’t matter if it’s iOS or Android.

Yes. When you are on the road, you can access your Power App from your tablet or smartphone. You can use and submit data from the app with or without an Internet connection.

When you’re offline, Power Apps caches your entries until your device reconnects to the Internet. Once you are back online, you don’t need to do anything. Your Power App will automatically process your cached data.