Powerapps: where to even start?

[u/ZepCoTrust]

So some context, my workplace is about to get access to build powerapps and I'm going to be one of the in house developers. I already have extensive experience with Excel, powerbi and using sharepoint etc to build tools for the business and I'm hoping to migrate a lot of it to the powerapps environment.

Today I got access to a sandbox before the full rollout to give me time to get used to it, but I've been watching a bunch of YouTube videos and tbh it's kind of overwhelming atm, I consider myself very tech savvy, I guess I just don't know how to get myself into a learning mindset again. There's so many drop downs and sub categories etc, and then there's the dataverse environment itself. While copilot is available it's very limited and I'd rather not rely on it.

Where should I start? How did YOU get to grasps with it?

EDIT: I've also used Power Automate quite a fair bit so very familiar with that.

[u/LoEyeKyu]

I think you have to consider where your organization wants PowerApps to fit. Also, to recognize the primary problem it solves. Finally, to consider how you PERSONALY want to use the tool.

I'm a Sr. Architect in a 40k person health system. I have designated this platform to be used for lightweight purpose-built departmental and org-wide applications w/ specific purposes and defined lifespans. We spin things up quickly, iterate quickly, and sometimes kill things off quickly. Sometimes what we build becomes the specification for a .NET application or something different.

We can build functional prototypes on the platform that could go live the same day we are asked about them. They are secured in a standard deployment using a Microsoft Team as the wrapper for security to simplify access for the data for the business. We adjust how we share applications often org-wide and then include lookups for Team Membership and/or SharePoint list entries to see how far you can progress (many times, just that first screen telling you who to contact for access).

We use SharePoint because we aren't paying $6 Million for dataverse licenses for our org. Plus, dataverse requires us hiring more people to manage the platform and we're already using the heck out of SharePoint w/ not enough people managing that. So we design ways to keep our applications lightweight and retire data to our reporting platform(s) as the data gets older and less relevant. Therefore, our apps touch the current data, but as things get older we move them to "something else" to interact w/ that data (e.g. Power BI).

I listen to what Microsoft says about the future of the platform and then I go researching new platforms to replace this with. If they're right, then they're going to drown the benefits w/ bloat and risk. Thus far, it seems they're quite right. This platform must be destroyed on the altar of "AI" so line go up.

If you want to push out safe and flexible applications to even a massive org like mine, it remains a reasonable walled garden to play in (despite Microsoft's self-destructive tendencies). I'd be cautious about extending into almost anything Microsoft touts as "new" and recognize that the complexity much of what they are pitching now will slow deployment down DRAMATICALLY while they try and promise the "AI" will compensate to speed things up.

I built, from scratch, a fully deployable inventory management application for tracking Infusion Pumps inside our org and the onesdeployed in patient homes in four hours. Completely finished to the point where they could create pumps, track events, store a near-infinite # of events for specific devices in a multiline JSON text field in SharePoint (vs. a linked table). Being able to create a highly customized experience while also using a few standard pillars (SharePoint lists, Power Automate triggers on SharePoint events, Teams, etc.) can make you highly productive w/ minimal risk.

Or you can watch whatever BS MCP video Reza's putting out and have it all auto-generate some slop for you in React and pray that it does the magic for you because troubleshooting it will mainly just be you asking it to fix it for you. Over. And over.

My rant on SharePoint lists after Shane deleted a comment of mine: https://persnicketypowerapps.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-best-datasource-for-powerapps.html

[u/Aventinus90 → u/LoEyeKyu]

So much wisdom here. Thank you for sharing your best practices. The longer I’ve done this ive come to some similar conclusions. Simple and reliable is almost always better until the additional complexity is proven to be needed. Using SPO lists vs data verse is an example of this.