PowerApps explained

Throughout this series, we have been stripping technology back to basics and putting it in terms we can all understand – which is just what Microsoft Power Apps is all about!

Power Apps allows you to build apps to support your business processes – without needing to be a tech whizz. For the vast majority of us, app development has been shut off behind an impenetrable wall of never-ending, incomprehensible code. Power Apps breaks down that wall, allowing anyone with a basic familiarity with Microsoft’s core products – Word, Excel and PowerPoint – to build applications which can smooth out your business processes, manage your work and even facilitate communication with your customers.

Power Apps is part of the wider Microsoft Power Platform – a collection of ‘low-code’ tools to add new levels of functionality and automation to your end-to-end business processes. The Platform also includes Power BI for data analysis, Power Automate for (you guessed it) automations and Power Pages for creating and hosting websites. The whole suite of tools are specifically for businesses and are all geared to allow every business to unlock new efficiencies without needing high-skilled tech developers on the payroll.

Building a Power App

Power Apps offers three main app-building options: canvas apps, model-driven apps and portals. Canvas apps allow you to build an app from a blank canvas. Using drag-and-drop components, you can build the interface of your app – down to every last pixel. This can allow you to build an Inventory Management app, a Scheduling app, an Employee Onboarding app and more, pulling data from on-premise and cloud solutions, including Sharepoint, to do so.

And the best part? These apps are made by you, for you. So, no more endless trial demos of various software solutions for project management, annual leave management, internal communications, with none of them quite fitting the bill. Instead, with Power Apps, you set the parameters of what you need and you have the power to make it happen.

Model-driven apps allow you to build data models – akin to a CRM system. Again, drag-and-drop functionality allows you to mould pre-existing layouts to your needs so that your data is sorted and used as you need it to be. Once you have a model-driven app, you can build a Portal to give your customers – with the right permissions in place – the ability to interact with your data. A portal could be for tracking order status, checking stock availability and more. Once again, you will be able to seamlessly build a high-functioning, device-tailored user interface for your app, making for a stress-free means of communicating with your customers.

So, Power Apps can unlock a whole host of avenues for changing how your business plans, delivers and communicates. And, as a Microsoft platform, you can work with confidence knowing that the utmost standards of security governance are in place and that inTEC’s team of Microsoft experts are always on-hand to support you. Ultimately, you will never find a perfect app for your business through a third-party tool. You know what you need your app to do better than anyone – and if you know what you need, you can build it with Power Apps.

Get in touch

If you are interested in Power Apps, please call 0345 565 1767 or email info@intecbusiness.co.uk.