Microsoft Power Apps

What differentiates Microsoft Power Apps from other similar products?

Allows for the rapid development and expansion of current Office 365 functionality. Easy implementation and integration Friendly to Business Users (software development experience can be helpful but is NOT required to achieve results)

What is your favorite aspect of this product?

Don't pass up this choice if you already use Microsoft's Office 365 licencing. It has been extremely advantageous to be able to quickly create and modify applications in response to altering business needs. We can now complete tasks that used to take months in days or weeks, and if your apps don't require a common data service or premium connectors, you should be able to accomplish much more than you anticipated without the need for extra licencing. (SharePoint lists can be a backend for apps, and work extremely well for most tasks with moderate utilization, and apps that use them can be built and deployed with no "new" costs).

What do you dislike most about this product?

Some functions are locked behind licencing requirements, and occasionally in completely illogical ways. (Dataverse, a core component of the platform, has a licensing structure designed so that cost scales with the number of apps and users, rather than capacity or usage, which can be extremely expensive on large-scale deployments) Additional licencing is now required because some previously standard connections have been upgraded to premium versions. Strong emphasis on centralization restricts the choices available to individual developers in favour of platform oversight and administration, which is understandable.

What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?

Instead of waiting until there was a pressing need and trying to learn and solve at the same time, I would have started using it much sooner. In addition, rather than beginning with individual solutions, I would have focused first on building internal support systems. It pays off greatly to plan how you're going to configure and assign environments, security roles, DLP, etc. before you even begin building if you choose premium features like Dataverse, third party connectors, or Pages (the externally facing web portal version of Power Apps). Although it isn't required, starting there will allow for a quicker rollout.

What differentiates Microsoft Power Apps from other similar products?

I don't find any other product like Microsoft Power Apps. It is a small package with Many big tools that help me to process faster with tasks.

What is your favorite aspect of this product?

Power Tools provides many solutions like long screenshot, OCR, Text Replace, Rename In batch etc. Among all I mainly use OCR for older documents. OCR function will scan and convert to text that I can use with other documents like excel and word.

What do you dislike most about this product?

There are small training videos available within app when we hover mouse on them but I think that is not enough for first time user. They should also include detailed training videos for every tool.

What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?

I will recommend this if you want to use multiple tools in a single application.