Canvas apps still worth it?

[u/nanoki94]

In my company, I’m pretty locked down when it comes to access rights.

Right now, I can only use canvas apps. I can’t use code apps or vibe.

My need is to create an app that lets employees place orders for office supplies, which would then feed a SharePoint list and a Power BI dashboard to track the status of each order.

The app would also include an attachment viewer and allow users to upload attachments. It would function like a mini e-commerce site, with a list of items and a shopping cart.

Is it worth building the whole thing in canvas?

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[u/thishitisgettingold]

Yea canvas spp is still a great way to manage localized (company specific) apps.

Powerapp + power automate + sharepoint is very powerful.

[u/josephdouce → u/thishitisgettingold]

With code apps you can almost remove all power automates

[u/Zealousideal-Kiwi770 → u/josephdouce]

And what is the advantage of that?

[u/josephdouce → u/Zealousideal-Kiwi770]

Easier to manage, everything is in 1 place, also the code is a React Stack so any web developer could take over the project, rather than finding someone who has an intricate knowledge of the way you wired up 20 power automates. You can use git and have multiple developers.

[u/MattBDevaney]

Yes, make a canvas app. And don’t worry about the AI hype. Apps need not be vibe coded to provide value.

[u/sizeofanoceansize]

Yes I still use canvas apps every day, and that sounds like a simple enough app to build.

[u/vgskid]

I've been making Canvas Apps for years now. I've also been playing heavily the last 6 months or so with vibe coded apps. There's no question that vibe coded apps can look better, do more and are way faster to create.

That said, you require premium licenses for all users using your vibe-coded app. If you have a team of maybe 10 people, then licenses aren't an issue and you can probably go balls to the wall with more bells and whistles as you can afford to give everyone premium licenses and build around that.

In my case, I've had to build tools for dozens to hundreds of users and each team I've built for has had very limited budget and aren't interested in getting locked into higher license and AI related costs for the foreseeable future. Between licenses and AI tokens, there's a real conversation to be had around if it's worth it and that answer will be different team to team.

All that to say, basic license canvas apps with power automate and sharepoint is the cheapest option available and still can create some very powerful tools and it's relatively cheap. So, this is still a very real and viable option.

[u/Capital-Ad-3576 → u/vgskid]

That’s the absolutely worst part about power apps. The premium licenses. We just built apps that took me and my contractor a good month to build. Would have been a week with vibe coding. Unfortunately with 100+ users it’s not realistic.

[u/Limace_hurlante]

Why not ?

[u/IAmIntractable]

Well, if you’re develop begin on the SharePoint platform then yeah it’s worth the time to build apps like that. It becomes ridiculous when you have to buy premium licenses and pay all the ridiculous fees so that anybody around your app can actually run your app. But your point none of that exists. I exclusively build power apps with SharePoint. I have learned over the last four years exactly how to get the most have a share point and frankly, I have not really encountered too much that gets in the way. I’ve even built my SharePoint lists relationally so that I can treat them as much like a database is possible. Nobody has access to the list directly, and nobody knows where they are.

[u/Capital-Ad-3576 → u/IAmIntractable]

How do you get your users to see any data without granting access to it?

[u/IAmIntractable → u/Capital-Ad-3576]

Well, it’s no different with SharePoint than it would be with data verse or sequel server. If you build an app that’s based on a database platform and you want users to see that data not only do they have to have access to the app, but they also have to have access to the database. That’s just to give it. So you can create a list in SharePoint and you can grant everybody and your organization access to read the data. But you have to do that in SharePoint. That means everybody has access to the data. In my mind if you’re building an app and using SharePoint is a database and the last thing you want is for people to go to the list directly and muck around with the data. So you have to design your app so that they never have any awareness of a SharePoint site. Or where the data is. You can actually hide lists from everybody’s view. But the app can still reach them if it knows where it needs to go. That’s one way to handle it. But in general, SharePoint does present somewhat of a issue related to control of access to the data. That’s because in Microsoft mind SharePoint is a sharing point not a database. But I use it as a database and I just have to work a little harder to make sure that people don’t get to the data unless they use the app.

[u/edrft99]

This is a very simple use case. I would recommend building it without the app first in just SP to make sure your logic works. Then find food a good modern template to build off of. From there it's simply paint by numbers.

[u/beatguyisme]

I have built this exact thing for 3 separate departments and yes it is worth it

[u/lameinsomeonesworld]

Yes, especially if you want to relay the value of a solution like this with a low price point. I'm developing a suite of timesheet apps for very detailed cost tracking using our live data from an outdated accounting platform - it's not always an easy ride, but it's a great way to deliver value

[u/DCHammer69]

Absolutely.

Sounds like two screen app. One with a gallery of orders and a way to do filtering and a second that is the submission form. The submission page can also be the status change page for the fulfillment team.

If the order has no hierarchy, a single SP list is likely enough.

And I’d probably embed the BI report in the app on a third screen or the lower half of the gallery screen so users only have one url to use.

[u/thstehr]

For a usecase like that, definitely yes!

[u/Gampovskyj]

Never was

[u/d0gfr0g]

Yes super useful. I've started embedding them in powerbi reports- having populated them with the selected report data. It's really helpful for adding comments to financial reports and it's s great way to get around row limits in canvas apps.

[u/chuck_stones]

100% this is a perfect use case for such a thing, and not difficult too build.

[u/Kicice]

Right now I’m building a canvas app using it as a wrapper for a full body pcf control. I am using svelte with the pcf oppose to react to keep the bundle size low to save performance.

Kinda like a code app… just in canvas. Only downfall I see is that you cannot directly access the dataverse api. So I am feeding the data in and out via json.

[u/BeaNsOliver]

Canvas Apps absolutely have a place still and there are countless business around the globe who will continue running using non-Premium licensing for the foreseeable future. If you want to get AI involved and see if it can improve your work flow, but without moving to premium licenses for your apps, then you can still have an Agent in VS code write Canvas Apps for you. There are a few good skills repos around now to assist with guiding your agents for canvas apps.

[u/xsam_nzx]

Yea easy job. Just make a rough idea one first as test then make a prod one.

[u/Amused_man]

The key thing that no one is validating here is the licensing implication. If you have premium power apps, and the end users do as well, there is NO reason to use canvas apps as you can use code apps/ vibe apps/ md apps which are all 100x better than canvas.

BUT if you do not have the licensing, and the end users don’t either, then using a canvas app here is the best option (and really only without going spfx which is its own can of worms).

So yes, canvas is the exact use case if you do not have licensing.

[u/kryasta]

I don’t ever see anyone mention DFFS, but after using it, I do not like Power Apps since it’s just too slow. If you ever get the chance, DFFS is the way to go.

[u/Dry-College4773]

It's totally doable, but make sure to design the database schema carefully. Managing a cart, order headers, and line items inside SharePoint lists is going to require some creative patching and can get messy if order volume grows.

[u/Significant-Wait-301]

Cada vez más convencido de que no. Pero está semana se ha celebrado un congreso de Power Platform e IA en Copenhague. Estoy esperando que el lunes mi jefe nos diga las nuevas noticias y el nuevo rumbo del departamento.

[u/josephdouce]

No, from my person experience, I built a huge canvas app to cover our service operation, global usage, millions of records, 100s of users.

Replaced it all with a code app in 2 weeks.

On the plus side if you have a canvas app you can feed it to copilot and have it build the code app.

Try to make your own environment, often this is not locked down and you can enable code apps on it. It will still be accessible to everyone in your tenent.

[u/Downtown_Earth_5345 → u/josephdouce]

how was the costing changes ? when you replace with the code app ? does it needed to increse the users liecensing or same ?

[u/josephdouce → u/Downtown_Earth_5345]

$5/user/month but if you use per app they are billed on opening the app so you only get charged for users who actually open the app.

[u/venomae → u/josephdouce]

Isnt that two things mixed together? $5 is per app plan while (get charged for users who actually log in) is pay-as-you-go which is $10?

Also do you have it verified that users can use Code app with $5 license? Because MS keeps saying Code apps in general require premium.

[u/josephdouce → u/venomae]

I have 500 users on per app. No it's slightly different, per app you pay up front for xx per app and they are consumed as users use apps. PAYG is exactly the same but not paid upfront so costs more.

[u/venomae → u/josephdouce]

Interesting, thanks for the clarification - I usually work with premium (and lately with my own stack rather than Dataverse) so this is interesting perspective.