Microsoft Power Apps is a low-code/no-code solution that allows professional developers and non-IT professionals to create powerful applications much faster than with regularly developed applications. In this course, we will look at the core capabilities of Power Apps and how they help businesses automate and enhance repetitive, mundane, and time-consuming tasks.
We will cover canvas apps, model-driven apps, and portals, as well as their use cases and the differences between them. We'll also walk you through how to build each one. Finally, we'll take a look at the Power Apps Component Framework and how this allows developers to add even more functionality to standard Power Apps.
Learning Objectives
- Get a foundational understanding of canvas apps, model-driven apps, and portals, including their use cases and features
- Use data sources, controls, and formulas to build, share, and publish your own canvas apps
- Plan, build, share, and publish model-driven apps
- Create and customize your own portal and monitor user behavior on your portal
- Learn about the Power Apps Framework and how it can enhance the user experience of your apps
Intended Audience
This course is intended for both IT professionals and non-technical professionals looking to automate and enhance business processes for mobile and desktop users.
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course but any computer coding knowledge and even basic Excel knowledge would be beneficial when learning about Power Apps.
Canvas apps and model-driven apps are internal facing. Meaning, only users inside of the actual organization will be able to access them. Power Apps portals on the other hand, are external facing. Meaning users both outside and inside of the organization can have access to these portals. Essentially, Power Apps portals are websites that allow users outside and inside of the organization to view and enter data.
Portals allow layout and page customization as well as integrate templates, forms and views to display data in various ways. Similar to model-driven applications, the only data source they can connect to is Dataverse. Another great aspect about portals is that they can allow users to sign in using a variety of authentication providers such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook or LinkedIn. Once they sign in, the user experience and data can be customized so that for example, the user is only seeing data related to them as well as a nice welcome message displaying their name. Users can also choose to not sign in and simply browse anonymously.
In summary, here are some key points to remember with Power Apps portals. Portals are external facing, which allows users from outside the organization to access them. Users can either sign in or browse anonymously. The architecture of portals is similar to a website and they allow customization through layout, pages, views, forms, templates and more. Lastly, they only connect to data inside of Dataverse. In the next lecture, we'll identify common use cases for portals.
Ben is a Power Apps and Power Automate Specialist for Sovereign SP and has been using Power Apps, Power Automate, and SharePoint since 2017. Since then, he has built 100+ solutions using these amazing Microsoft tools. He loves helping others realize what technology can do and how it helps automate and enhance business processes. Most of all, though, he loves how these tools help make people’s jobs easier. The phrase, “This will make things so much easier!” is why he's in the IT business.
Ben Fetters lives in South Ogden, Utah, with his amazing wife and brand-new baby girl. A Weber State University Business Administration graduate, he loves to create businesses and help current businesses improve.