Microsoft Power Apps Reviews

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.

We predominantly use the product for a lot of intake forms. There is a lot of data collection and a lot of intake forms. We use Power Application for validation rather than using spreadsheets. It's good for automation, where we need a data repository of the input, which we get from the resource.

It's extremely user-friendly. It's easy to use. Of course, it's a local tool, however, if you're aware of some of the basic Microsoft products, you can really get on with it. That's something which is really wonderful. 

Even a beginner can set up a Power App and run with it. That's one of the most important features when it comes to the adoption of Power Apps.

The solution becomes easier the set up once you get used to it.

It's a stable product.

The solution has the potential to scale. 

I would like to see some of the connectors which they have right now to be more basic. The ones they have right now, they claim, are premium connectors. They should make that a little more affordable and have it in the free version. Some of the basic databases like SQL should be part of their normal connectors, and it should necessarily be premium.

It can be a bit more difficult to set up the first time.

They have a feature that integrates well with Power BI, however, it is not seamless. We'd like a better, more seamless integration with Power BI in the future. 

They need more of a font selection. If I'm in Excel and I'm using a particular font, I'm limited in terms of which I can use. It should allow for use of any fonts under Microsoft 365.

We've been using Power Apps for the last two years or so.

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is scalable if we integrate with other applications like Power Automate and connect it with some other applications or some other databases like SQL. That said, in the current arrangement with SharePoint, we have some limitations. The moment the data increases, if we're able to integrate Power Automate, then surely it becomes a scalable application. Right now it can be scaled, however, it's not something that we are looking to do. 

There are maybe 60 to 70 users at this point of time actively giving us data, however, there could be other applications that people are using.

In terms of technical support, we do have a governance team. The IT governance is a security team who helps us navigate through issues. We raise requests internally within our organization to help us see where the issue is, and they will escalate as required. They might reach out to Microsoft support to kind of get it sorted. That said, we have not found any major issues so far. If we do, our internal team is the first team to go to.

We previously used mostly manual consolidation using Excel, emails, and things like that. There was no other tool before. That said, we used normal Office productivity tools like Excel and Outlook. We went with Power App since we were already using Microsoft and Office 365, which helps us to integrate multiple other Microsoft solutions. That's the reason we thought Power Apps would be the best way for us. It also integrates with SharePoint and is easy to build in. 

The initial setup was not straightforward, however, once you get a hang of it, then it's pretty simple to create things. From a documentation perspective, it's kind of a good guide that they have as far as Power Apps is concerned. It's easy to get started. Like any tool, you have to spend some time understanding and navigating around it. There is just a normal learning curve that is required as with application. You won't really find it that difficult if you are ready to invest the time to learn the tool. There's a moderate level of complexity.

It was not that effort-intensive, yet it definitely took us close to three weeks to create our first app on Power Apps, which was mostly SharePoint driven and had pretty decent complexities. It was not a very straightforward application. It took a fairly decent time. It was not a very long-term project, it was short-term, and we could manage to do it in three weeks.

We have not found it difficult to maintain Power Apps. It's pretty straightforward. We haven't had any challenges so far.

Everything was handled in-house. 

Right now, we are using an enterprise license without the premium connectors at this point. For Power Automate, we are definitely going to need some licenses which we're exploring. 

Depending upon the user requirements, we're still exploring the licensing requirement. Most of the applications that we leverage are without any cost other than the normal license which we are paying for as part of Office 365. We'll take additional licenses depending on the solution and the need.

We have performed a lot of other projects on the Power platform, which is a Microsoft product. So we have used Power App and Power Automate to do many of our automation initiatives.

We are working with the latest version of the solution. 

I'd advise potential new users to have the UI designed well in advance. Articulate the flow in which you want to create your Power Apps so that you can save time. Then, do a dry run using Excel as well. It's important when you're using Power Applications, to have your UI design and the BRD clearly articulated, otherwise it might take a little longer to implement Power Apps. Once you have everything in readiness, it will be easy. 

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 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 solution is for rapid application development software.

There is a specific environment, in part a platform of PowerApps, in which you can just deploy the solutions and then you share the link with the users and they are able to open them using iPads or mobile devices, or even a computer.

We have been working to build a maintenance events app for assets, it's an app to manage and show all the assets that have been working or down for maintenance in an operation, inside one bigger mining company. They have many trucks and many other, let's say, machines in the operation and sometimes they have to put these machines just through a maintenance mode, to see what's happening, or to change some part specifically, or even if the machine is having some kind of issue. That's due to the fact that if it's down, they have to manage how long it's down and what was the part that was the issue, the cause of the issue. They have to change the parts and everything's very costly in terms of money for the company when we have one specific asset that's down.

Previously, they were using a board in a room, just to manage all these statuses.  Instead of this, now we have one specific app that is working in live modes in almost real-time. Just getting the data from the services and showing it on a big board in PowerApps can show what's happened, what's the status, and what's the reason for the issue. This app allows for adding some comments. It's a collaborative app where many people can just go there and add comments and notes about what's happening with the machine.

There are many things there that I like about the solution. I like the galleries, which are really powerful. I like the way that we can build forms very quickly. 

In terms of timing to develop, PowerApps is very fast. We can integrate with Power BI. You can just show the Power BI report embedded in PowerApps, and it works really nicely.

In my experience, the solution's deployment can be tricky.

In my experience, it was not good as it was giving errors around the tables and I couldn't find what was happening. I had to break it down into different solutions - one solution containing all the tables and the second solution containing the application, plus the power domain that I had for this particular application. It's something that's not good, in terms of the way that things work. 

When I added Power Automate into the solution, for some reason it disappeared from my Power Automate page, as it was added inside the solution. It was very, very weird. It may be a bug. 

There's a primary interface and integration feature and we build some HL processes there. However, suddenly after adding this part, and automating the solution to deploy it, it was just not available for me anymore and I had to go inside the solution and open the MS files from there instead of the usual place where all the Power Automates are created. It was like a bug and also. In terms of the issues that I have with the solution feature inside PowerApps, I didn't like it. I've seen this too complicated. It's something that Microsoft has to improve.

The speed and performance could be better. PowerApps sometimes gets stuck, gets slow and I don't have any reason for why it's happening. Suddenly you are trying to see the rows on your screen and you just have a wait to get the results back, then there's nothing happening. These things look like an environmental issue, however, I don't know if it's something about the localization or something else.

We'd like our option in terms of licensing that can be paid by the app and not by users. That could be something good. Just the way that they charge the license, it's too much. There are not many options. They could give a little bit more flexibility to choose in terms of options for a license.

I've used the solution for six months. 

It's stable, however, sometimes it is slow.

There are no issues about the connection falling. Just, when you are using it, suddenly the page is broken. There is no issue yet, sometimes it gets a little bit frozen and you're waiting a little bit more time to gather results. The table is not a big table with many, many rows, so why is it taking so long, so much time to get the answer back from the app? That's the main issue. There's a performance problem. It's not a stability question.

It's scalable if we're talking about the database, about data warehouse, however, not about PowerApps. PowerApps is not scalable. It's scalable, in the sense that the app you can share for many users, however, you have to pay by user. Scalability isn't really applicable.

We're still not running it fully. We're just prepared to start testing. 

We've dealt with technical support in the past. 

We had some little situations where we couldn't get the help as we needed, however, that was a limitation in the tool - it was not an issue with them.

For the most part, they are really good.

Positive

IN terms of the initial setup, we have to choose which kind of approach we are going to use in PowerApps, as PowerApps has different strings. You can choose PowerApps Canvas, or you can choose a driving app, and that's a little bit different. In my case, I chose a PowerApps combo as I needed a little bit more in terms of flexibility and in terms of how I build this topic they screen. 

In terms of the development, it's quick, really it's quick, however, it's not the fastest way to develop and there are some other solutions in the market that are faster in some ways. In terms of deployment, in my experience, when you're going to deploy perhaps an application, you have to build a solution and a solution and it's a little bit tricky. You have to add all the components to the solution and, after that, you have to export the solution and import the solution into the production environment. We have an environment for development and a second environment for production.

The application is deployed, however, it's not in use yet. They are just preparing to start testing the application and once they finalize the test, the app is going to go live.

After I passed over all these little issues that I had, it was quick to deploy. It was just a question of minutes. When we export the solution and import the solution back, it's easy. However, all the processes to be able to finally get over these issues and everything, it took me four weeks just to realize what was going on and handle it. 

I was the one that deployed the solution. 

In terms of ROI,  I didn't see any. However, if you look at the cost of building an app, the coding costs would be much higher without this solution. You can save months of development time and the money needed to deploy the solution. In that sense, the ROI is awesome. 

The licensing is restrictive and can get expensive as you have to pay per user, not per app. It's a range of users. For example, if you go above 50 users, you need to pay more. 

If you compare it with competitors like Google, they are more expensive than Google. Google has another option that's a PowerApps competitor called AppSheets and AppSheets is cheaper than PowerApps.

We are Microsoft partners. 

I'm using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

There are some things that need improvement in some ways to make the tool better. However, it's very powerful and it's very fast to deploy something. It's great.

We use the solution to integrate with enterprise solutions like SAP and other enterprise solutions. It's highly integrated and highly secured. 

Externally or internally, we have several business processes that need to be automated. We write evaluations and also evaluate business procedures to see how they can be simplified. Power Apps is one of the solutions that we mostly use in our company to automate processes. We also have several clients who use it to automate SAP processes. This is the most critical business function in clients' core mission.

It's easy to use. We create great user experiences.

The track-to-use function is great.

It is easy to design automation processes.

The initial setup is mostly pretty simple. 

Users don't have to have any technical competence in order to begin creating automation. 

We'd like to have access to previewed content and preset options. If we could preview content for specific software, that would be ideal.

The user experience could continue to be improved upon. 

We'd like more features and less to no coding. 

I've been using the solution for three to four months. 

It is s stable product and I have found the performance and reliability to be good. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is scalable. It's also adjustable. 

We have around 200 people using the product.

We do plan to increase usage. 

The product is fully supported by Microsoft. We have a ticket for tracking issues. There's also a community around it that can assist. They are quite responsive. 

Positive

We've also used Blue Prism and UiPath. Since most of the automation processes are based on Microsoft technology like Excel and other Microsoft-related solutions, and Power Apps is based on Microsoft technology and is highly integrated with those solutions, it made sense to switch.

It's a stand-alone solution and uses connectivity to the software we want to automate. It's not hard to set up or to start automating things.

I'd rate the solution a four out of five in terms of ease of setup. It's not overly difficult. 

We were able to deploy the product in about a week. 

We have 50 to 100 people maintaining the solution. 

I handled the implementation myself as I started out using it for testing purposes. I did not have outside assistance. 

I don't handle the licensing aspect of the solution. It's handled by another team. 

It's my understanding we pay around $150 to $200 USD per user. 

We're using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend the solution. It works so well with other Microsoft solutions. It also could reduce the workforce and release employees from redundant daily tasks.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

With Power Apps, we create some of the collaboration forms for our employees to use during the pandemic. We can record our employees' status health daily, and start a database of the information. After that, we can track using Power BI if there are any symptoms or if the risk is low, high, or medium. We use it basically for self-declaration forms.

The solution offers good integration on the Microsoft Power platform. You can use and develop apps, local apps using Microsoft Power Apps. It helps automate processes. We can do the monitoring and tracking of the Power BI app in Microsoft. 

It's very easy to set up.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good.

The flexibility of the user interface could be better. Currently, they are using the Microsoft OMS, Management System. It would be ideal if we could customize the layout of the user interface.

I've used this solution for one to three years. 

The solution is very stable. We haven't dealt with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

You can easily scale the solution as needed. 

We have 500 people that use the solution. We use it quite regularly. We do not, however, plan to expand usage at this time. 

Technical support has been good. They're also very supportive. When we have any problem or issue, we can reach out to them and they will reply.

The initial setup is not complex or difficult. It's easy to set up. It's very straightforward. 

It took us about four to five months to set everything up. The apps vary in how long it takes to develop and release them.

We develop everything in-house. We handled the setup in-house as well. We didn't need any outside assistance. 

We have not yet seen any ROI.

I cannot speak to the exact pricing of the product. We are, however, heavily affiliated with Microsoft.

We're users and Microsoft partners. We use a lot of Microsoft products.

It's my understanding that we are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend the solution. Everyone would be able to use it as it is not overly technical. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We're using it for our business processes. We have applications for expenditure requests, travel requests, and accident reporting.

I am using the latest version of the solution.

It is easy to use.

Most of my training for what I do has been by watching or learning in the community. There needs to be better training on either one of these. 

We started implementing it in February 2020.

It is stable.

It is scalable. About 150 to 200 people are using it. 

In terms of our plans to increase its usage, I'm moving to a different department and starting over. We might be scaling up in my new department. In the current department, they still need to figure out what they're trying to do.

If I'm dealing with the community, technical support is incredible.

We were paper-based before switching to PowerApps.

It was easy. We started in February, and everything had to be up and running in March because of the pandemic of 2020.

I did it, and there was no reseller. We're a university, and the university was not going to pay for us to have this deployed by an outside partner.

I also take care of its maintenance.

I don't have that information. We work with a procurement office that deploys it for our university.

We looked at ServiceNow because some of the departments in our organization were using ServiceNow.

Deployment has to be supported from the top down because if you're trying to get things supported from the bottom up, you run into a lot of interference. This has not been the easiest.

PowerApps is incredible, so I would give it a nine out of 10.