PowerApps Tutorial & Reviews: A Comprehensive Overview
Follow This PowerApps Tutorial and Learn How to Build a Custom App
Microsoft PowerApps is a platform for rapidly developing custom apps for internal users. Usually described as a no-code tool that enables users to develop apps without writing any code, PowerApps relies on some coding. Developers can write functions using a coding language called Power Fx, an Excel-like programming language.
By reading this blog post and watching the PowerApps tutorial video, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of Microsoft PowerApps. Follow along as we teach you how to develop a simple web app in PowerApps.
In addition, we have compiled in-depth reviews on Microsoft PowerApps, summarizing what users say about working with the solution. Last, we are introducing Five, a low-code tool that can be used to rapidly build and launch custom business apps.
What is PowerApps?
PowerApps is a no-code solution developed by Microsoft. Together with PowerBI (business intelligence/dashboarding) and PowerAutomate (automation), PowerApps is part of Microsoft’s Power suite of products. These products are designed for use by business users who do not necessarily have a background in software engineering. PowerApps enables these users to build and launch custom apps, dashboards, or automations for their company.
At its core, PowerApps is designed to democratize application development, allowing citizen developers and IT professionals to build feature-rich, custom solutions. If your business relies on Microsoft Dataverse, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, or other data sources, PowerApps can connect to both cloud-based and on-premises systems.
While Microsoft PowerApps offers an attractive entry point for businesses looking to develop custom applications, it’s important to consider its limitations.
For example, even though PowerApps is relatively easy to get started with, many developers report getting stuck once they need more complex functionality. PowerApps tutorials, for example, are frequently focused on the solution’s basic features, demonstrating the simplicity of the initial stages of application development, without answering more complex questions.
Secondly, despite its initial appeal as a low-cost solution, companies often encounter rising costs as they expand their app requirements, particularly when integrating with non-Microsoft systems or trying to add external users to an application.
Last, as app complexity grows, the platform’s learning curve steepens, often necessitating experienced developers for full-featured solutions. That’s where PowerApps’ proprietary coding language, Power Fx, often creates a limitation, as most developers are unfamiliar with the language and prefer working in other languages.
Overall, PowerApps is an attractive and popular development environment for building custom applications that has some limitations in terms of complexity, cost, and adoption.
Introducing Five: The Fastest Way to Build Custom Business Apps
Similar to PowerApps, Five is a rapid application development environment that lets users build and deploy custom apps.
Five is a low-code solution. Unlike PowerApps, Five is not designed to eliminate code at every step of the application development process. Instead, Five gives users the option to use code almost anywhere. Code can be written in standard SQL or JavaScript, making Five a tool that can satisfy both citizen developers and experienced developers at the same time.
Five’s low-code nature speeds up custom application development and gives developers flexibility. Five’s features include, for example, an intuitive database modeler, wizards for forms, charts, and PDF reports, or a SQL editor. Five is also a great tool for those who would like to delve deeper into application development without immediately adopting a full-code approach.
In addition, Five comes with a range of handy tools that support the development process, such as a built-in debugger and audit trail. When using Five, developers can convert software requirements into working software faster.
Five runs on the cloud. Developers can collaboratively build and deploy custom software. Last and unlike many other development environments, Five charges a fixed fee per application and month.
This makes Five ideal for those who are looking for:
1. A responsive custom business application that can be accessed online, from any device, and at any time;
2. Predictable monthly pricing, with a fixed fee per application, regardless of the number of users;
3. Managed cloud hosting, without the need to set up or maintain servers.
Five Tutorial: Rapidly Build a Custom App
Learn how to develop a fully-functioning web app in Five.
In this tutorial, we develop a login-protected web application with a custom SQL database as its backend data storage, and forms, a chart, and a PDF report in its user interface. The application is integrated with Slack, sending a message into a Slack channel every time a new record is added.
Retrace every step of the development process by following our written step-by-step guide here.
Five Reviews: What Users Say About Five
Here’s what users say about Five:
“Five is an excellent approach to that disconnect between relational database development and the web.” – Crag Jones
“Five took away a lot of headaches of frontend development by providing a highly customizable UI and navbar alongside a MySQL database.” – Nebiyu Elias, Software Engineer
“With Five, we were able to very quickly develop a prototype of the solution we had in mind. We liked the fact that inside Five, we can work in no code, low code, or even full code, which gives us full flexibility to design software applications.” – Kurt Bornhutter, Group Manager, Revenue & Optimisation, Canstar
“Five is a great product for building admin panels or CRUD applications. It is easy to use, scalable, and has great customer support. I highly recommend Five to anyone who needs to build a web application without much efforts.” – Shweta Kale, Software Developer
“Five is a rapid, robust way to take spreadsheet-based business processes, and replace them with better validated forms for data collection, and approval workflows. Five makes it easy to write custom functions, and perform traditional integrations, using JavaScript.” – Philip Antrobus, Data & AI Capability Lead, NCS Australia
PowerApps Tutorial: Build a Simple App
This video demonstrates how to use Microsoft Power Apps to build a simple custom app on top of a list. This beginner-friendly PowerApps tutorial is ideal for those who would like to understand PowerApps’ basic features, from connecting to a data source to building a user interface.
Key points include:
- Accessing Power Apps via powerapps.com. A free trial is available for users to explore the platform.
- Connecting PowerApps to a data source like SharePoint or Excel.
- Using Power Apps Studio to create and customize the app with features like adding new records, filtering, and sorting.
- Customizing components, modifying layouts, and using formulas similar to Microsoft Excel for working with data.
- Sharing the app with others and integrating it into platforms like Microsoft Teams.
PowerApps Reviews
“It’s super quick to start developing in Power Apps. Everything is ready to use and with just a few clicks, you can start without worrying about the infrastructure. This could be ok for small internal projects, but in my company has proved to be a show stopper when addressing mid-size projects or taking smaller ones into production.”
“I disliked that there wasn’t so much guidance as to actually creating apps as well as the processes involved in execution to get the final product. Unfortunately, I found myself not being techie enough to figure it all out.”
“It allows you to do some very powerful automation and workflows around emails, SharePoint lists and OneDrive/Teams integrations. There is a lot you can do out very easily and even more complex apps are possible with less advanced users.”
“I like that you can automate processes using the Microsoft environment/softwares. It’s very easy to use.“
All reviews are based on G2.1
