Let's Talk PowerApps 
Tags: mspkenya, msftstudentambassadors, powerapps
Published: 2020-08-18 15:04:26

Microsoft through its mission to Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, introduced Power Platform to help the Citizen Developers develop custom business applications, automate business flow in the organization. Power Platform is a big umbrella that consists of PowerApps for building custom business applications, Power Bi for analyzing business insights, Power Automate for automation of business processes.
 
You will come to think of it, most of the business are generating a lot of data and undergoing digital transformation. Power Platform provides a wide set of tools to enable this. Now, let’s talk PowerApps.

Power Apps enables users to create customs apps and connect to a wide variety of data sources. This is a low code no code environment where it uses drag and drop features. It uses functions to perform actions. 
You might be wondering how it happens, these functions are used to provide instructions which provides output. For example adding a functionality when a button is clicked, connecting to data sources and also adding connectors 
That’s the reason it is on a low code development.
PowerApps is best used to solve internal problems within the business since this is quick tool that can be implemented within a short period of time. A PowerApps user identifies a problems in a department that slows down production and develops an application that can solve the issue. It is also flexible since it connects to more than 100 data sources and connectors. It can also make good use of the various API’s available.
 
Apart from that it also has capabilities such as integrating Artificial intelligence and IoT. These capabilities are made possible since one does not need to have a background in AI. 
This is an internal tool and hence the employees can access the app shared to them by the admin via their emails. The public can also access this through the use of PowerApps Portal where the business can customize the portal where people outside the organization can use it for business interactions. 
It has a good responsive design and can run seamlessly in the web browser and also on mobile device. The user will download PowerApps App from the Google Play Store where he/she will be able to access all the application shared to him/her under the app 

PowerApps is an open opportunity for all; 
1. App creators who create the apps to be used
2. PowerApps users who can be able to use the apps shared to 
   them
3. IT admins 
4. Developers who can apply the server side logic, azure 
   functions and also plug-ins 

PowerApps developers are not meant to replace the IT department rather they are meant to lessen the burden in the IT department where those in the IT can focus more on other complex things. These users, majorly focuses on the business side and create solutions that aligns itself to the current problems of the organization 

Here’s how get started with PowerApps [link](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/get-started-with-powerapps/1-powerapps-introduction)
To start your development on PowerApps visit [link](http://powerapps.com/)