Microsoft Power Apps Reviews

My primary use case for Microsoft Power Apps are mostly demos for my customers and in trainings. I am a Microsoft Registered Trainer.

The most valuable feature is the completeness of the concept. It is not restricted by where you are allowed to use it and that is its greatest strength.

There is room for improvement in error handling and debugging. I would appreciate it if Microsoft created something like the social network graphs Facebook sometimes shows you (potential connections). It would be great for Microsoft to take a similar point of view regarding the data and data flow in Power Apps. It would help us see which field is changing and which is influencing the follow-up field or display or workflow, etc.

As a chief financial officer, I would like to see the mark of chain retracement and where the money flows. Imagine dropping a little drop of ink onto a handkerchief and seeing the ink sucked into the fibers of the handkerchief and distributing itself. Similar things happen to money if you put it into a small market and a chief financial officer needs to have that information. 

I have been working with Microsoft Power Apps since 2018. 

Microsoft Power Apps is definitely stable. It is as stable as SharePoint and this app model has been in place since 2013. Essentially, it requires you to put code onto a SharePoint site which is not executed there, but rather on a client or on specific workflow codes, which are client. If code executions are well work-flowed, it is capable of saving your script and of the global resources. That capability to take off where you left off, including external resources, is a great strength.

Microsoft Power Apps is scalable. SharePoint is a farm. It is a big forest of machines interconnected by a messaging system, Windows Azure Service Bus. It can be understood as a telepathic network between the machines. As long as one machine is running, the system's running and as soon as more machines are adding the capabilities, the load is distributed automatically.

Microsoft's technical support is at a high level. 

We did previously use a different Microsoft workflow operating system, but it was complicated to program and difficult to provide interactions with the users. All of that is much easier now that we use SharePoint platforms like Teams. Microsoft has the best of all worlds. I am confident that it will rock the market.

I have an MSD end subscription; it's a flat rate subscription.

My advice for anyone looking to implement Microsoft Power Apps is: please have a closer look at the Azure infrastructure and do not underestimate the complexity of Azure Active Directory and SharePoint. I recommend spending a week or so letting someone informed like me introduce you to the complexity of Azure Active Directory, SharePoint, and Windows Azure. Not having this information is like driving a car without having put oil into the motor and air into the tires. In other words, it would not be wise.

We have a partnership with Microsoft. 

The flows are good and probably the best component of this product because they can be used in a variety of situations and we're using it all the time. We're also using a lot of portal and canvas too. This is a simple solution and user friendly.  

The product has a few issues. The portal and canvas apps are the main things that need to be improved. Bringing the UI of a model-driven app to something closer to what Salesforce has will definitely be a game changer.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The solution is stable if the load is not too high. If it is, then we have issues and need Microsoft to help us sort things out. In the low to medium load, it's very stable.

Our implementation wasn't huge but the solution is scalable.  

The technical support was good. They provided us with first-rate architects and good support.

Positive

The initial setup was relatively straightforward. 

I recommend this solution because of the type of connectors that they have, the cost is reasonable, and it's easy to learn. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

The most valuable features are low-code and fast development.

Microsoft is evolving constantly.

PowerApps is still a bit new compared to a slightly more mature product such as OutSystems.

OutSystems has many features that are still not available in Power Apps.

Simple things like navigation are better with Outsystem without much coding.

The key is the licensing; the fees could be reduced, especially at the enterprise level.

I would like to have more usability, with more fanciful navigation. More like what you would find in Outsystems BI. They offer more drag and drop navigation, and more advanced navigational options around the drag and drop lists and hierarchical navigation out of the box is literally a drag and a drop.

It can be done in Power Apps, but you need to do a bit of coding to achieve the same thing. It's lacking in features.

We are in the evaluation phase and have been using PowerApps for three months.

We are using the latest version of this solution.

To be fair, we are relatively new to this solution. It's stable but at the moment in terms of stability, the enterprise version is more sustainable.

The version that I am using is not at an enterprise level. If you want to increase in size you have to purchase more licenses. It's scalable as long as you purchase the license.

We have more than 100 users in our organization.

I have not contacted technical support. We haven't had the need to.

I am currently working with Microsoft Power BI and Power Automate, which goes hand in hand with Microsoft Power Apps.

The initial setup is quite easy, it's as simple as turning it on.

It took us two weeks to deploy it and to come out with the first prototype.

The licensing fee at the enterprise level is expensive.

We are currently doing a proof of concept with Microsoft, we are evaluating some of their products.

I would recommend Microsoft Power Apps to anyone who is interested in using it.

As of recent Microsoft has been evolving the Power Platform rather aggressively. 

For example, I'm using Power BI, and every month they have a rollout of new features, and with Power Apps, when you compare to one year ago has evolved quite a bit, and so has Power Automate.

Microsoft is on a journey of evolving. 

It's a good tool now, but it will be a great tool soon.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I'm a developer and we use the product for in-house development and finding in-house solutions. We have a developer relationship with Microsoft. I'm currently working on a smart parking app for a college here in Kuwait. It would be a big time saver and enable drivers to know where there are available parking spots when it's a busy time and would maximize free space usage. It would make things easier for everyone.

The common data point would be the most valuable feature. PowerApps is also usable for data mining, it can be used with Power BI or SQL. All the data integrates easily on all Microsoft apps. And it comes with most of the subscriptions and extras.

The product could be improved by making it a production application and enabling the export of apps. If you want to set up a site for home rentals, for example, just a basic outline as a starting point, this can be done. The issue is that it cannot be exported. It can be applied in-house, for demonstration purposes for your employees, for example, but you can't really make use of it otherwise. It's a problem.

On the whole, it's a very workable solution because it's an automated way of making applications. You have a template, you have the application know-how, etc. If it could be exported into different languages and could enable different ways of outputting the information, that would be great. For now, it's limited and that's a bit of an issue. Enabling all the applications on internet-based devices to transfer data in and out would make it an excellent product. 

I've been using the product for six months and we're using the latest version.

It works as intended, it's not going to be a magical solution, but it just does what it's meant to do. That's the beauty of it.

I believe the product is very scalable.

Customer service has been pretty good. Actually I tried contacting them today and they've put up this bot that can get a response for you, but it takes more than a day, I think. I could do with some support. I can't access Azure Maps here, and I need Azure Maps to set up the smart parking system. 

I previously used BlinkID but nothing else really has the same power as PowerApps. Google has its Cloud Suite but they've been a bit slack, and Amazon is iffy. They're not really workable here. I live in Kuwait, and there are a lot of contracts with Microsoft - they have the App Center here, but they haven't enabled much of it other than for government contracts, I think.

The initial setup was very straightforward. I tend to think the documentation and the community forms are more than enough to help improve your setup experience. It's very, very, straightforward. I don't think it took more than five minutes to set up and that's amazing. Previously, it might have taken a week to complete setup - all the code, database, linking. 

I have no idea about licensing costs. I tried contacting Microsoft about this because the information isn't easily available and it was unclear where I could search for this. My guess is that the cost is dependent on the company and product needs. I tried to make a calculation and it looks like it's going to be much cheaper to purchase the product than if I were to hire an engineer, get him to develop an app, and have it maintained. This is a much more scalable and less expensive solution.

Previously, we had a whole department using the product. When I lived in Australia, it was used for assembling websites and to upload photos, videos and the like. It worked well because it was for internally-based users. 

My suggestion to anyone searching for a product would be to invest in a solution if you know that it works. Don't go for anything high-risk. This product works as it's intended. It's missing a few key features to make it really stand out but I believe it has the potential to be the best app for access to the database.

The product can be easily integrated - with Microsoft Graph, with common data links, and Power BI especially. You can have a dashboard ready, all the information you want, displayed in whatever form you want. It can present your data in whatever way, shape, and form you want it to.

I would rate this product a seven out of 10. 

The primary use case of this solution is for developing Proof of concepts and for preparing some use cases to present or to showcase them to the customers. Nothing related to production. It's only for presentations and for showing the merchandise to the customers.

The deployment model we are using is cloud-based.

The most valuable feature is easily connecting to data services.

I can have a SharePoint list and connect with users through PowerApps to present the information.

I am also able to connect with Microsoft Flow, which allows me to connect with different people to email and update items in Sharepoint.

The editor in the Web browser could be improved because it can be difficult to implement the commands in the buttons.

In the next release, I would like to see Microsoft PowerApps be more integrated with Microsoft Teams or SharePoint and with different applications.

When I configure PowerApps in Sharepoint it appears that it is not integrated with the page.

When it is configured it looks like it is a different application.

This solution is stable.

I have not contacted technical support because I haven't needed to.

The initial setup was easy and straightforward.

It took approximately two days, but it depends on what features have to be implemented.

I maintain this solution myself, and it only requires one person for maintenance.

We did not use a vendor to implement this solution. I did everything myself.

My advice would be to create a master screen for items like layouts and all of the typography that you may have in your application. 

Create a master screen widget. The rest of the screen will have, for example, settings for the layout that will refer to these objects in the master screen settings. Mainly for editing.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution to integrate our apps, and send processed data via the different connectors it provides.

This solution has allowed us to offer our customers to integrate with our platform platform to send documents, and for them to be processed with a digital key network solution, without having to use the platform directly.

We like that this solution allows us to fully define our test environments, and link them using different code. This means we can do different tests, but with one basic structure, and then export the data and use it in other platforms.

We would like to see the period for viewing executions within this solution to be extended beyond its current limit of 28 days.  We would prefer to be able to offer our customers an infinite amount of history to search.

We have been using this solution for nearly a year.

We have found this to be a generally stable solution, and have only experienced issues when there are a large amount of registers involved.

This is a very scalable solution.

We did not previously have a single solution, but instead we used a component that worked using Java.  We switched to this software because it was less complex to maintain.

The initial set up of this solution is fairly straightforward.

We implemented this solution using our in-house team.

We would advise organizations that this solution has a high-price point. However, the cost is justified for how comprehensive the package is, and all components of the solution are available under the standard license plan; there are no hidden costs involved.

We would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The performance is showing signs of improvement. 

Technical support is okay.

It is good for using for small apps and automation on Microsoft Office items.

The stability of this solution could be better. It's getting better, the performance. However, it's not there yet.

We'd like to be able to leverage more reuse of the code we are implementing in the apps.

I've been using PowerApps for two years.

The solution needs to improve stability and performance. However, they are working on it. 

Technical support is okay and we are mostly satisfied with it. 

Neutral

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I would advise other users to try out the product. We've had a largely positive experience. It's good for using for small apps, and automation specifically for Office stuff. If a company needs that kind of specific usability, I'd suggest they use PowerApps.

Microsoft has come at the right time. To come out with a RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool where you can develop your apps on the cloud much faster, and deploy them for multiple devices, whether it is mobile, cloud, laptops, or desktops. It is similar to Oracle APEX or Oracle developer tools where you just drag and drop into your application within minutes.

The primary use case of this solution is case management reporting. If, for example, you have a set of engineers who have been assigned a particular case or project they will need to record all of their activities and their visits. Using the application created in PowerApps, they report everything, then it goes through a workflow. 

The workflow goes from recording the daily activities of the team for the specific project. The project then goes through a series of approvals and gets logged, completed, and the report is generated. 

Expenses are also being logged. 

We have Power BI as well, and it moves the data from the source to the data warehouse then generates a report.

This is quite a short term, six-week engagement. We wanted to create an application and have it up and running within four to six weeks, rather than spending three to six months on bigger projects on the platform. We wanted it to be quick and fast.

PowerApps is best suited for those cases where you have a small scenario and an application to support that project or scenario. You can call these departmental applications, which are needed on the fly. We create a much shorter development lifecycle and then deploy, and then people start using it.

Take an example of the COVID-19 situation. We wanted all of our branches to log their COVID cases or what exactly are they doing daily to manage the COVID cases and to know what the process is. All of those details are logged into the COVID folder and then the reports are generated daily or weekly.

Microsoft PowerApps is a no-code solution.

I would say that the most valuable features are the user interface, navigation, and business routes.

It quickly drags and drops. It doesn't take much coding, there is no coding in fact. You drag and drop, select a few things to configure, and then read those applications in the user screens. 

With business rules, you can just select and you don't need to elaborate coding or backend code. This way, it's much easier to write or create those applications using their features.

When you capture a lot of data, the data becomes enormous. It's one of Microsoft's challenges that there is a threshold limit of 5000 items. It has to improve the threshold limit where it can handle data beyond 5000 items.

I would like to see integration with on-premise business applications, complex business routes, and complex business workflows.

We started using Microsoft PowerApps in 2014.

Currently, there is a challenge in scaling up. We can't scale beyond large data.

We have approximately 10,000 users in our organization.

There is a challenge in getting support. The support staff is not trained properly in PowerApps.

The initial setup was not easy, but not exactly complex. There was a lot of research.

There are two licensing costs, one is pay-as-you-go, or you can develop it for one year.

I would advise others to make an informed decision before you implement it. There are a lot of challenges, and the product is going through a lot of changes.

It's promising, so I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.