Member Article

Did you try Microsoft Power Apps?

Microsoft knows the demand of programming tools; particularly for power users. Look at the powerful functions of Excel’s macros. Microsoft has also tried to re-introduce the latest versions of its early Basic development tools. The company has been continuously making changes to Access by adding more tools to rapidly create and implement simple web applications on an internet.

But it’s difficult to find new Basic. It’s really tricky. The latest attempt of Microsoft to deliver general-purpose easy-to-use app platform Visual Studio LightSwitch will not be added to new Visual Studio 2017 release which means its days are totaled.

No new release to LightSwitch let’s make sense how enterprise software development has changed these days. Of course, it requires skilled developers as it never actually received mainstream traction and its focus on working with Sliverlight turned off developers to use it in cross-platformmobile app development. With a little and clunky HTML front-end it can hardly help developers in enterprise app development. Though Microsoft will continue supporting LightSwitch until 2020 but what’s the sense of building new LightSwitch apps when the support to it ends to Visual Studio 2015.

So now what other choices the new generation power users have to build new line-of-business apps? Excel seems to be an option but what about its main limitation related to runtime environment. With a fatty runtime Excel really needs big screen. That’s why it is not an answer.

But there are other interesting tools being brought in by Microsoft Business Application Platform group. The Power BI is one great example. They also developed Microsoft Flow which is one of the parts of a suite of automation tools, linking cloud data and application APIs and building on a set of new services which are created to work with business data. Microsoft Flow takes advantages of APIs built into Microsoft’s own services such as Dynamics and Office 365, as well as Saas apps such as Salesforce, Box , Trello and MailChimp.

The other tool in the suite is PowerApps which is a combined development framework and runtime for desktop, web, and mobile apps that work with line-of-business data. These apps can be updated and modified on the fly without any need of going through app-store approval every time you need to make changes.

Also with PowerApps, you do not need to be a developer to write code because it’s targeted at business analytics and other users who are already familiar with Office and Excel macros and have not written any code.

It’s easy to start with PowerApps – either on the web or through Windows Store app. Users are presented with a set of templates to start with creating an app and then you assemble an app from common building blocks. Everything is designed in visual layout tool, with connections to familiar cloud service APIs.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mobilmindz .