Why develop your own apps at all?
Do you have a paper form moving from department to department?
Do you work with version ping pong in documents with names like Orders_V1.2989_2_Neu.xlsx ?
Your people in the field still have to create forms on paper, then scan or submit them?
Do you want to develop your processes further without buying high-priced, often gigantic and not very customizable IT systems?
Then let's go!
Let us build your power app solution from your problem!
Product demo: Power Apps using the example of digital time recording
The app in this video was created individually for this customer in a short time and with minimal effort and has catapulted a previously manual and physical process into a new era in the shortest possible time, created transparency for employees and employers and increased efficiency in the company.
What is PowerApps?
PowerApps is a Microsoft PowerPlatform tool, which essentially consists of PowerApps, PowerAutomate, PowerVirtualAgents and PowerBI. More info
The idea of PowerApps is to offer people who work with the Microsoft 365 environment and are not software developers the opportunity to create small and productive applications themselves in order to facilitate daily workflows and simplify processes. With a programming language that is partly based on Microsoft Excel.
According to publications by Microsoft itself and the results of the Gartner quadrant for low-code app development platforms , Microsoft is clearly one of the market leaders in this field with its PowerApps tool.
Quite rightly! PowerApps is easy to learn and implement in the company and is incredibly compelling and professional.
Simply make manual processes more efficient
A classic example of a process that is very easy to digitize using a small PowerApp is time and attendance.
It is hardly a nice task to write the timesheet by hand. It is even more unpleasant to type in this data by hand into software for further processing. On the one hand, major sources of error arise at two points, namely the creation of the data and the transfer to a second system, and on the other hand, typing off pieces of paper is hardly a particularly fulfilling and productive activity.
With the help of PowerApps, the process of recording working hours can be made much more efficient by transmitting the data directly with the recording. The risk of data loss (oops, where is my timesheet?) And the risk of poor data quality (what does it say again?) Can thus be almost ruled out.
In addition, such a system creates transparency for both the employee and the employer. Because everyone involved is looking at the same numbers and the same data point.
Customization for the company
The exciting thing about PowerApps is that each application is unique and can be completely tailored to the needs of a company.
For the company that uses PowerApps, it is therefore possible to develop an application tailored to a specific problem or process. The application is therefore adapted to the operation and not the operation to the application.
In addition, the apps should by no means be viewed as "finished" after a one-off development. In the sense of "start simple", the application can be kept as simple as possible at the beginning and is then expanded with more and more functions and modules in the course of its use.
Another central advantage is that the apps only cost a fraction of "standard software" in their development compared to standard software and can also be expanded and expanded at any time.
Start with something small
and build it up bit by bit into something big
Easy to build & a lot to learn
As mentioned at the beginning, it is not absolutely necessary to have in-depth programming knowledge in order to build PowerApps.
As an autodidact, PowerApps can be learned and used directly in practice.
Thanks to a great and meanwhile huge worldwide community as well as so-called PowerApps UserGroups , the possibilities to learn new knowledge are almost limitless and new functions and possibilities are added at very short intervals.
Will my PowerApps be visible in the AppStore later?
No! PowerApps are business apps that are directly linked to the respective Microsoft 365 subscription and can usually only be used within the company .
The main advantage of this is that the risk of data loss can be minimized.
Once an app has been completed, it can then be shared in the organization with all Microsoft accounts that are to have access, whereby the roles, differentiating between user, processor and owner, are defined (Leung, 2018, p. 53 ff. ).
The applications can be used on almost all internet-enabled devices (Saraf, oJ, oS). In addition to internal data sources from Microsoft services such as SharePoint, PowerApps can also access external sources such as an SQL database or services such as Salesforce or Dropbox.
What about interfaces?
In the meantime, PowerApps offers over 400 so-called connectors, so that, in our experience, when it comes to the issue of interface connections, the problems usually do not lie with PowerApps, but rather established software often does not allow any or only limited access. The most common connectors that we use are Excel, OneDrive, SharePoint, Office365User, CDS or SQL.
You can find an overview of the most common connectors here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/de-de/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/connections-list
... and what does the fun cost now?
According to the current licensing model of Microsoft 365, PowerApps with many connectors and the common Microsoft Office products are already included in the Microsoft 365 Business Standard license for around 10 € per month and user.
Who uses PowerApps?
In the USA in particular, the use of PowerApps is already much more widespread than in Europe or Germany. Large companies like Pepsi, Carglass but also small businesses use PowerApps to make their daily work more efficient.
Microsoft itself regularly publishes success stories from companies at the following address:
https://powerapps.microsoft.com/de-de/customer-stories/
Just recently, an article was also published which states that currently over 90% of the Fortune 500 companies, a list in which the 500 top-selling American companies are listed, use tools such as PowerApps in their companies.
So it's high time to start!