Microsoft Power Apps Reviews

Power Apps is a tool to create forms and solutions for collecting information from the floor. We have 10 or 15 users at the moment, but we expect to add more.

Power Apps helps our company manage projects, like improvement projects, for example. We can track each project and have a single point from which we can see all the project details.

You can easily connect Power Apps with other databases, like Excel, SharePoint, SQL, etc.

We use GoCanvas to make forms. It's easier to make forms in GoCanvas, but Power Apps is cheaper because it is bundled with our Office 365 license. if I want to create a form in Power Apps, I need some knowledge, but GoCanvas is intuitive.

I've been using Power Apps for one or two years.

I rate Power Apps nine out of 10 for stability.

It should be easy to scale up Power Apps. I don't know because I was only working with one connection through SharePoint.

I taught myself to use Power Apps. When I needed a solution, I found a lot of examples on the web.

Setting up Power Apps is easy because it's a cloud solution. The deployment required one or two people and took one or two months. 

We deployed Power Apps in-house.

We get a return.

I rate Power Apps seven out of 10 for affordability.

I rate Power Apps eight out of 10. My advice to new users is to start a simple solution to get more user-friendly apps to the people.

The primary use case for this solution for us is building in-house applications rather than having to purchase them. We build fairly basic applications and we would rather use Power Apps to deploy them or create them in-house.

The way this solution helped us improve is by allowing us to collect data by combining it with phones and the tools Microsoft uses to send out surveys and also use it for a number of automation and requests. It creates forms with which people can make requests or respond to surveys and those are worked on the backend. The whole process is done using Power Apps.

The features I find the most valuable are the 365 and Microsoft applications integrations and the automation.

The area where this product can be improved is the documentation. When we get stuck it's with the documentation when we are not able to find the codes we need. The solution requires a lot of codes and understanding of the scripting language. Most of the time I end up going to forums to get them. I would like to see Microsoft come up with a knowledge base for Power Apps.

In the next release, I would like to see more integrations because there are some that are not available and we end up having to get adjacent script to work on to work with that.

I have been using this solution for two years now.

My impression is that it is very stable. I would rate it a 10, on a scale of one to 10, with one being not stable at and 10 being very stable.

We rarely scale when it comes to Power Apps. Once you deploy the application, that's it. So if you need to scale something more robust you probably have to deploy a new one.

Currently, there are over 500 users of Power Apps in our company.

We plan on expanding because it saves us a lot of cost in terms of the application that we currently use this for.

I am not even aware if there is any technical support for Power Apps because most times we have to go through online communities and forums to get what we want. I think the support for Power Apps should be something Microsoft could look into.

The initial setup was straightforward because they have a quite number of templates that you can pick from. The deployment does not take long as it comes with the Office 365. If you have Office 365, you have the Power App enabled in your directory.

The ROI is visible considering the number of applications we have been able to use it to build.

The Power Apps comes included with the Office 365. When you purchase a business standard license, the Power Apps comes included.

Power Automate is like process automation.

Any task which you do on a recurring basis or a daily basis, you can simply automate. For example, if you have a use case where every day when you go home you need to book a cab. What I can do is I can automate that task through Power Apps at a scheduled time every day. If I'm leaving at about four o'clock in the evening, by 3:30 I can run that Power task and book a cab every day.

With Microsoft, the main benefit that we get is it's easy for a layman to understand it. That's the advantage of it, it's user-friendly. 

The way it integrates with the other applications is very good. The experience is seamless; there are no hurdles. Connectors are easily available, which can help you connect with some third-party apps if required. 

The initial setup is easy.

It is stable and reliable. 

We can scale it. 

They probably need to improve intelligent document processing. In terms of reading the documents, whether it's a Word document, an Excel, a PDF, an HTML, or a webpage. Identifying the key things with its own intelligence is something that Power Automate and Power Apps need to improve.

I've used the solution for close to a year now.

It is quite stable.  It gives you that assurance since it is from Microsoft. The stability, the reliability is definitely there.

It is scalable. We have a lot of ground for it to scale it up, and add more and more apps or users can be added as per our business requirements.

It's being used widely by many people, in fact. However, it's hard to pinpoint the exact number of people who benefit from it. Anyone can quickly learn how to use it as well. 

I'm aware of UiPath and Automation Anywhere which take a longer time to implement. 

It's very easy to set up. You should have all the licenses available. It's quick and easy to implement, and you can get your hands on it immediately. It doesn't take too much time to get up and running. In contrast, its contemporaries like UiPath and Automation Anywhere are not so quick and easy to implement.

The cost depends on which bundle you get from Microsoft. For example, if you go with the standard Office 365 with the other packages around it, it's good enough. However, if you go for anything specific, you'll have to think about it and customize your requirements. If you go for 365, your cost would be less. If you go for Dynamics 365 with Azure, then it's a complete package that will be expensive.

We are Microsoft partners. 

My advice for those people in tersted int eh product would be to try it if they are looking at implementing something very quickly with minimum cost and minimal training. If these are their objectives, then Microsoft Power Platform is a very viable solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use Microsoft PowerApps for the typical use cases including website creation and a work portal, covering all the operations involving the manufacturing side of my customers.

There are three app-building interfaces available in PowerApps. Canvas is model-driven. Power Pages, which was Power Portal, which has more low-code, no-code capabilities and makes web design easy for the everyday user to create a website. Lastly, Power BI reports, or Microsoft DataWorks, which we have integrated with our data provide us the option to work collaboratively.

Most of the people in our organization using this solution are business people. They are not experts in technology and are not familiar with how to use the application. They use Excel and other documents to collaborate. Moving Excel to the application helps them access different data sources. It allows us to provide all the information in one single place. Everyone can view the data based on their role or access level.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft PowerApps is the ease of use to create an application. For example, if you use the Canvas app, there is a feature that you can upload an image, and it will easily identify it and convert it into the application.

The solution is convenient for using Power Effects so we can write customized business logic.

Microsoft PowerApps is not responsive in nature. For us to make an application responsive, it requires some effort. We need to work with CSS, HTML5, or JavaScript.

I would also like to see improvements made to the integration with other data sources, including Azure Databricks or Spark. When we connect from DataWorks, CDS, SharePoint, or OneDrive where the actual Excel file is kept, it is easy. However, if we connect with other data sources, we need to do a no-data filter, particularly when there are in-built integrations available. 

Out-of-the-box connectors, like dataflow, would help to load the data from those data sources into CDS.

For future releases, Microsoft PowerApps should add more templates that help bring more experiences to the websites.

I work as an IT analyst. I have been using Microsoft PowerApps for two years.

In our organization, PowerApps is used by program managers, IT engineers, IT analysts, assistant consultants, and delivery partners.

The initial setup of Microsoft PowerApps is straightforward. 

For deployment, we use the ALM CoE kit, and GitHub through the pipeline. It is done through the team, creating a Dev environment for each pre-Dev and production environment. When we have completed testing and validation, we proceed with staging and then production.

We have not implemented using an automatic deployment through Azure Pipeline as there are a lot of bugs. We are still doing the implementation manually.

Deployment is done by our customers' teams. They are handling the pipeline activities.

The ROI is always positive. Our customers who use this solution can quickly create and circulate through a group. For example, for an innovative idea, you can create an idea zone, QC, or something similar. You can create a form and circulate it via email through PowerApps.

PowerApps has been adopted by all major partners and Microsoft is widely used. We use Microsoft Teams to collaborate. You need to have licenses. E1 plus Intune or E1 plus licenses is enough for everyone to use PowerApps as it's free, even if you are using data sources like SharePoint.

If you want to deploy something with RPA or Power Virtual Agents, you will need to think about the licensing model and the capabilities of the AI builder. AI can deploy the AML model, so you can use the capabilities, meaning you need the licensing.

For an organization looking to implement Microsoft PowerApps, they should consider the timeframe required and the experience they would like. 

Responsiveness is a concern with PowerApps. If you want to build an application for your desktop, tablet, or mobile, the application needs to be responsive on all screens. PowerApps is not responsive to these requirements. If responsiveness is not a concern, then I recommend this solution.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We had a new requirement from a business in the clinical domain and the business wanted to identify risk at a study or site level. We created an application using PowerApps, which works well as we usually interact with the SQL Server on Azure.

I did some POC for another application. We’re expecting we'll get it in a new project in the near future. It is a really good tool. We can run programming knowledge, we can learn the PowerApps and we can interact with applications.

It is user-friendly. Anyone can easily learn and work on this tool.

The solution is easy to implement.

It’s a stable product.

Not much coding is required.

I don’t have much hands-on experience with PowerApps. I’d need more time with it. As of now, I can’t think of an area for improvement.

We did a POC with the solution. We’ve used it for the last 12 months.

It’s very stable. It’s reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze.

I cannot speak to how scalable it would be. However, it may work best with a lesser amount of data.

We might have about 100 people on the solution.

I don’t have any experience using any other tool.

It’s straightforward to set up the solution. It’s not overly difficult or complex.

We did the integration ourselves. We didn’t need the help of any consultants or integrators.

I don’t have any details in relation to the pricing or licensing.

The tool was suggested to us, and we decided to try it. We did not evaluate other options.

I’m not sure of the exact version number. However, we are using the latest version.

I’d recommend the solution to others.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. There may be other tools that are easier to work with. However, I’m not sure. In general, it works well, and we have been happy with it.

We use Microsoft PowerApps for very small use cases. For example, conducting internal surveys, or say some of the key business stakeholders want day-to-day reporting. Using PowerApps, we are creating such reports for those executives.

We connected PowerApps to the relational database, which generates the report. 

Also for contract review and approval of these types of use cases. Those are, in my opinion, very simple use cases. There are no complex rules or decision-making processes, which is why PowerApps was designed.

It offers integration with several Microsoft products, including SharePoint and Outlook, in my opinion, is a huge plus. 

It can also integrate with Microsoft SQL servers, which makes it easy, and you can send reports and create business applications from it.

In terms of workflow automation, I believe that capabilities for creating the entire business process are required, or, at the very least, the option to model the business process, define complex business events, handle them, and route them to appropriate business stakeholders.

Those, I believe, are the critical areas that require improvement. 

For the time being, it is only an application development platform. I am not counting a business processing management platform, only working on capabilities with business process management.

It is extremely stable. 

The apps that we created were not particularly complex. We did not thoroughly test PowerApps to determine their true capabilities. It was similar to tactical applications built as part of the POC to ensure what capabilities of the PowerApps could be used.

It was not used for any critical business application.

I believe it should be scalable. 

However, in our organization, we only have approximately 15 to 20 people who are currently using it.

The initial setup is straightforward. It does not take long.

Maintenance is minimal. It is only one or two people who keep it running.

I believe it simply depends on the complexity of the business process. If you are serious about implementing a complex business process, I believe you should use a platform like Appian or Pega.

In terms of low code automation, I believe those two platforms are quite mature. They also develop capabilities such as robotic process automation and process mining. That's where the most value is because business users don't just want one thing; they want several things at the same time.

I believe it is preferable to use a platform that is robust in nature. Appian and Pega, in my opinion, would be better for them. However, if you only have a simple application that does not require much scaling, I believe you can use PowerApps, such as a simple three or four screens or forms. That should suffice for Microsoft PowerApps, in my opinion.

We are Microsoft partners and resellers.

I would rate Microsoft PowerApps a seven out of ten.

The one that we currently have is only to SharePoint Online as we want to be able to have analysts be able to maintain data, and we want a graphical user interface, a GUI front end, to do that. Especially if it's interfaced with PowerBI, it allows analysts to have a research tool to identify what data needs to be updated right there, and to then be able to do that through PowerApps is a huge benefit. Right now, we're only able to write back to SharePoint Online.

Right now, it's only write-back to a SharePoint Online list, however, I have proof of concepts. I've got a business case that I'm currently trying to get pushed through. I've got other services within our organization that I need to get buy-in from so that we can get this business case approved and get the funding.

The write-back capability right now is just SharePoint Online, however, hopefully, we'll get the funding and subscriptions so that we can get write-back to our SQL server database. Of course, this is for our analysts within business architecture so that they can maintain the metadata, the relationships, and the mappings. Those are the biggest things that we need to have analysts able to do - the research, analysis to identify what data needs to be updated for those relationships and giving them a front end, a form to go in and edit, either create rows or modify existing, whatever needs to be done to the table.

We're one of the administrations within a governmental organization and I wish that they would make it and just provide it to those environments that are still on-premise for their relational databases, which we are. We're stuck on this on-premise environment, however, we don't have the premium connectors subscriptions for those. It's something we require.

As far as dealing with SharePoint, it'll allow you to ha manage up to 2000 rows, however, performance-wise, they're recommending that you just keep it at the default of 500 rows. Beyond that though, I don't know too much about its limitations. Having to do export and import from SharePoint Online and then in the SQL server, the solution is obviously there, if you can get the premium connection.

I'd much rather have the gallery set in a tablet or a normal computer, more of a landscape setting than what you would think you would see for a cell phone.

We just started pursuing the solution with our write-back capability. We have not used it for more than three months. We've actually put a proof of concept together.

The solution works great and is stable. My obstacle is being able to demonstrate it and show its value to other leaders within the organization. I don't have issues with it crashing or freezing, for example.

While we're still in the early days and need to develop it more, I'll be asking for 30 subscriptions initially. Within business architecture here, we're probably going to be somewhere between 10 to 15 analysts. Right now, we may only have ten as we are still building the business case.

It's unlimited where you can implement this. The scalability just depends. With the continued support within an in-house setup, you can make it what you want. It's my understanding that the scalability is really unlimited.

We have an office within OIT and they have office hours. They've got a site, however, it's specifically for PowerBI. I don't know that there has been a whole lot of movement to get support for PowerApps, maybe since the value hasn't been realized we haven't really explored support options.

If more people saw how you could utilize PowerApps integrated with PowerBI to maintain data, we might have more questions and need more support.

BISL is the name of the support group we use. They have weekly meetings and office hours and are more focused on PowerBI. They've got a contract with Microsoft personnel that support this BISL team and specifically PowerBI. I don't know if they're going to expand that level of support and also include PowerBI. I would hope so. 

We used asp.net. The main platform we are using has asp.net, Cascading Style Sheets, CSS, Hypertext Markup Language, HTML5, jQuery, and JavaScript Library. It's a high code solution. Having to put an IIS web and app server and develop all this and HTML and C# and all these other languages that you would end up having to learn, it's a huge learning curve compared to putting something together in PowerApps. The learning curve for PowerApps for whatever you're trying to do is going to be under two weeks, whereas trying to learn ASP.net, that environment and all the other suite of stuff that you have to have and get resources too and all that, you're talking months. There are a lot of costs involved when it's so high code, and a lot of time. Using PowerApps would save time and money. There's also the risk that if the person you assign a task to goes away, you lose all of their work or cannot continue it. 

There's a learning curve with any new tool, so it's going to be somewhere between a three and a four out of five in terms of ease of setup. It just depends on the person's experience and working with these types of tools, as to how well they understand and are able to work through that.

Once you have a concept of what to do, I'd say it takes less than two weeks to implement. With that initial building out of your very first PowerApps set of forms to accomplish what you're trying to do, you're going to tweak and enhance in the end. I just put this filter or search capability and sort capability on a couple of columns. Implementing new features and adding additional buttons, et cetera, will be something you are going to be doing along the way. You're going to continue to enhance it when you discover new capabilities you want to implement. It's a work in progress to roll it out and it's continual. That said, for the initial rough draft of something, from concept to actually putting it together, it's going to be just a week to maybe two weeks to do.

There is a learning curve for the initial cost of doing it. That said, I would definitely consider this a low-code job. It's definitely not high code. There's low to mid-level coding involved.

We're very limited in terms of users for deployment and maintenance. Staff within my office that would actually develop the PowerApps forms and implement and train up the other analysts are only going to be somewhere between three and four. They are program analysts themselves. They aren't IT.

We handled the initial setup ourselves in-house. We didn't use any outside assistance.

We have not yet witnessed any ROI. It is early days. Not until we're really up and running with it will we be able to look at that aspect.

That said, if I were to compare it to other solutions, I'd rate the potential for ROI five out of five. The workload and what you save on manpower will likely be impressive.

We're a federal entity, so we've got a government rate, and this is per user, which is unlimited apps for PowerApps. 

Typically, it's $20 per user, per month, commercial. For the government,  on a per user basis, what we were looking at is $11.23 per month.

I'd rate the pricing five out of five in terms of affordability. It's way cheaper than the commercial price. That said, I know if that's just an introductory price to get you into it. Then they're going to boost the price up. It won't stay at $11.23.

I'm not aware of any other costs above and beyond the licensing. 

We are a customer and end-user.

We're likely using the latest version. We just started using the product a few months ago and then we likely also have the IT team keeping everything up to date. 

I'd advise new users to not be in an on-premise environment; be in the Azure Government Cloud.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

If you're looking for a GUI front end to maintain your data, that interfaces with PowerBI, this has to be up there in terms of best options. And the learning curve is low. It is very compatible with whatever you're doing in the Power Platform environment.

I had to upload a form, an invoice, specifically, and then using an Azure function, I had to get that form from the Dataverse database and feed it to an Azure form recognizer and write the data back to the Azure Power App.

I like that you can quickly click together a user interface. For all no-code platforms that let you create a front end, you can click together something very quick. 

My problem with solutions like Power Apps and Betty Block blocks and probably with every no-code platform out there is that, as soon as you want to do something custom, something that's not provided by the environment you're using, it gets really tough. You have to work around the constraints of the platform. No-code platforms have constraints. I'm a developer myself, so I tend to not use no-code. I tend to code a lot. 

The notion people have is that no code equals no knowledge, and that's simply not true. Even though you don't have to write codes, you still have to know what you're doing.

I had some trouble interfacing with the Dataverse database. If I could, I'd make the couplings with other software easier. The integration with other software could be better. Any developer who had to work with an application made in Power Apps would find that useful.

There are limited use cases. 

I've used the solution within the last 12 months. 

The solution is a lot more stable than Betty Blocks. I haven't had any crashes or lost data or anything. That said,  haven't used it thoroughly. While I say it's pretty stable, I can't say how it performs under heavy use or big projects.

I've never had to reach out to technical support in the past. 

I've also used Betty Blocks. With Power Apps, you can quickly click together a user interface, that's also the case with Betty Blocks. However, both being no-code have constraints. For example, Betty Blocks was using jQuery one, and at the time we had jQuery three. I wanted to use a front-end framework. That was just not possible since it would mess up the Betty Blocks designer. And that's also the case with Microsoft Power Apps.

The ease or difficulty of the initial setup varies. For me, it wasn't that hard. However, I already had an Azure subscription and a Microsoft account. If you don't have any of that, it's not that easy - especially if you're not very technically inclined. It can be a daunting task.

I'd rate the ease of setup six out of ten. 

The deployment is fast and takes almost no time at all. I developed the application, and I pushed the publish button, and it was published.

I handled the initial setup myself. I did not need outside assistance. 

The license for the solution comes with my professional license, so I'm not sure actually if you pay by the user. For me, it was free to develop with a professional license, which is about 70 euros a month. That said, if you get a lot of users using it, it's not included. I don't know how much that would cost.

Whether it is worth the cost or not depends on the use case. 

We initially chose the solution as it was a customer specification. They wanted to use a Microsoft Power App.

I'm an end-user. 

I have been using the latest version of the solution. However, I don't even know if you can switch between versions.

If you want a complex system with lots of custom work done, then it is not ideal, as you are going to have to face the limitations of the platform. If what you want is a simple tool where you just need to upload some files, or you need to store some data to make a custom CRM application, then it's very easy to use.

It's certainly not a replacement for actual development work, and it's not a replacement for developers.

I would recommend the solution to others. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. In terms of no-code, it's pretty good, especially when you use it with a Logic App, which is part of the Power platform. When I compare it to Orbis or Betty Blocks, it's just a really good product. It has a small learning curve, however, it should be really easy for people who have no previous experience.