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Power Apps

Score7.8 out of 10

101 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Power Apps?

PowerApps is a low code / rapid application development product from Microsoft that allows users to quickly build apps.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Power Apps has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 101 ratings of Power Apps's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Visual Modeling

    Visual modeling tooling allows business users to design processes visually.

    Category average: 7.6

  • Drag-and-drop Interfaces

    Drag-and-drop interface for building applications

    Category average: 8.5

  • Platform Security

    Security guardrails in place to help prevent malware, data breaches etc.

    Category average: 8.5

Areas for Improvement

  • Platform User Management

    Tools enabling admins to control user access and on-board and off-board users

    Category average: 8.3

  • Reusability

    An internal repository where assets, modules, and even entire applications can be reused

    Category average: 8.8

  • Platform Scalability

    Apps developed by low-code platform must be scalable and capable of supporting large numbers of users

    Category average: 8.5

Reviews

What users are saying about Power Apps.
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Highly recommended as a no code web app development platform.

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Power Apps are used to develop low-code web apps, publish them, and deploy them quickly across the organization. It supports integrating all the standard Microsoft applications like SharePoint list, etc., using various built-in connectors. As most of the data is stored in SharePoint, it is extremely easy to link it with power apps while creating an application. Most features can be easily added to the development canvas with drag and drop, and anybody with basic programming knowledge can develop an end-to-end application.

Pros

  • Supports connectors with most of the Microsoft applications like SharePoint/SQL Server, etc.
  • It can be easily published and deployed with a simple button, and the version of the deployment can be easily viewed.

Cons

  • Power apps need to improve the process of changing data sources. For example, if I want to change the source of a share-point list that is linked to certain fields in my development canvas, I need to rebuild and link them back, which is time-consuming and additional effort.

Return on Investment

  • The budget to develop an application is technically 0 as only standard connectors are used and no paid features were used, so the ROI is very high right from the day of deployment.

Usability

Other Software Used

UiPath Automation Platform, ZingHR, Snagit, Microsoft Power Automate, Cisco AnyConnect

Power Apps- low code with Microsoft ecosystem

Incentivized
Abhijith PrasannakumarView profile
Associate Consultant in Information Technology at Quadance Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I used the Power Apps tool mainly for two processes: one for employee performance tracking and the other for NACH form creation and management for a project POC. In both cases, this tool was perfect because our organization uses Microsoft Teams and Outlook for main communication. As a result, the integration, tracking, and everything else were easy for us. Moreover, it can integrate with Power Automate, and a single click in Power Apps can trigger an entire Power Automate process, which attracts me even more.

Pros

  • Seamless integration with Microsoft ecosystem
  • Easy development of Ui and easy to give controls
  • Cross platform compatiability is a new

Cons

  • need to improve UI improvement options like styling. Currently I personally feels like using HTML without CSS
  • Sometimes it produce different outputs for same formula, may be it was a but that I encounter.
  • What if I want to integrate with non-Microsoft tools. I feel diffuculty in integrating with other apps
  • Sometimes app's response was weird. It simply stuck in same page for long time.

Return on Investment

  • We can reduce development time and enhancing agility
  • development and maintenance cost is comparatively low
  • May be it generate performance issue in large application
  • In some cases connectors are only for premium users

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Appian

Other Software Used

Microsoft Power Automate, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive

See the power of PowerApps

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Quick development with no code for specific line-of-business applications.
  • Allows greater control over business process automation through workflows and better-formalized connection to crucial business data, such as Accounts, Salespeople, etc.
  • Building an elegant user experience is very user-friendly and doesn't take a ton of time to put together.
  • Forms and views into the data all come "pre-packaged" for the quick implementation of model-driven PowerApps.

Cons

  • Canvas-driven PowerApps may take a little time to understand. They are incredibly powerful, but as such, there is more to learn, test, and understand.
  • PowerApps offer a lot of flexibility, so they don't always get completed extremely quickly. That being said, they offer a lot of power without any code.
  • Building navigation and launching the app could use a little improvement as well.
  • Licensing, as with many Microsoft Products, is continually changing and requires assistance in most cases.

Return on Investment

  • Incredible ROI, especially with the new licensing of just using one PowerApp. Update your navigation to include multiple apps and release this to several users who only need one or two of these. For model-driven PowerApps, this is a huge win.
  • If you break up your PowerApps or if users are using several, you will have to be more careful about your licensing. But overall, there is so much value and power, I would encourage spreading out the ability to create and build PowerApps to more and more users to get full value out of the tool.
  • Again, learning PowerApps isn't for the faint of heart. You will likely have to invest some time figuring out several things, but I promise, the effort is worth it.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Microsoft Dynamics CRM) and MS SharePoint

Other Software Used

Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Microsoft Dynamics CRM), Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Flow, TIBCO Cloud Integration (including BusinessWorks and Scribe), OneDrive, MS SharePoint, OneNote, Trello, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Teams

Usability

PowerApps is a great platform - If it fits into your development model and unique business outcome needs

Scott Byrge, MBAView profile
Lead Software Engineer in Information Technology at McKesson (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We take advantage of the low-code features to enable business partners and junior developers' participation in the creation of enterprise-level business solutions. PowerApps is mostly used in relation to content in SharePoint Online Lists and Dataverse tables -- providing quick multi-screen apps for data entry, display, and manipulation. Since PowerApps is the out-of-the-box way to enhance SharePoint forms, it is an easy step to go further and add business logic. We extend the effectiveness of the solutions by integrationg with Power Automate to provide complete user-interactive logic and "back-end" business process automation.

Pros

  • Tight integration with other technologies such as Power Automate, Teams, and SharePoint - as well as many non-Microsoft technologies.
  • Low-code\No-code that can produce enterprise-level solutions
  • Vast number of sample and example Apps are available to kick-start a solution.

Cons

  • Sometimes the cost of solutions is greater than the benefit. Licensing is expensive relative to the scope of some business user-created personal or team-level solutions.
  • While there is a starter-kit for Governance, it is complicated to stand up and requires dedicated resources to provide on-going governance operations. Many organizations are not going to be able to dedicate resources to governance and this causes the sprawl, solution duplication, silos, unneeded and unplanned licensing expenses, and a general "wild wild west" environment.
  • There needs to be better direction and best practices given around Power Platform Environment utilization and optimization.
  • The accessibility to the platform and ease for business partners to independantly create solutions is both a benefit and a negative. When the business outcome needed is a good fit for PowerApps it is a quick win, but when not a good fit it becomes a frustration for the business partner attempting to make the platform do something it is not well-suited for. The business partner entangles tech teams in the effort which drains resources and provides a lack-luster solution. All of this to say, it would be beneficial to have some tools that business partners could leverage to determine\understand if the type of business outcome they need is well suited to PowerApps or not.

Most Important Features

  • Ease of use
  • Integration with other technologies
  • An abundance of examples, samples, and resources

Return on Investment

  • PRO: Increased number of business outcome solutions fielded
  • PRO: Faster time to market, including faster revisions, enhancements, and bug-fixes
  • CON: More siloed solutions and duplications
  • CON: Unexpected Licensing Costs\Issues

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365, Salesforce Experience Cloud, Nintex Automation Cloud, Google Analytics

Power-Apps for Quality Assurance.

Incentivized
Neil Kloster, MA, MBAView profile
Sr. Analyst in Quality Assurance at Adtalem Global Education (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I'm currently utilizing Power-Apps to fix our quality assurance issues. I've created multiple QA forms out of Power-Apps that help our department capture important information about errors in our cases and capture data from multiple sources (individuals) and sort that information by the manager, case type, error type, etc. I have also used it for other issues such as a reference tool to prevent multiple emails and case requests for situations that do not need a case.

Pros

  • Data capture.
  • Sends information to multiple places (i.e. SharePoint).
  • Creative flexibility.
  • Multiple uses.

Cons

  • Some situational formulas that seem easy to figure out are more complex than would be expected (such as using If functions, but it just takes a bit of research to figure out what you want to do).

Most Important Features

  • Gathering information from various sources.
  • Able to connect to multiple data points.

Return on Investment

  • The ability for our department to create quality assurance forms that have helped other teams/departments send information.
  • Created a number of forms for ideas that have had a significant ROI ($15K+) or more per idea.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Power BI

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