Photo by Tran Mau Tri Tam ✪ on Unsplash
For quite some time I'd heard of the Power Platform here and there, but to be honest I didn't think I needed it until I one day I realised, I really did! So what is exactly is the Power Platform ? Well according to Microsoft Learn,
"The Power Platform is a suite of apps, services, and connectors, as well as a data platform, that provides a rapid development environment to build custom apps for your business needs."
The collection of applications that make up the platform are Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Virtual Agent and Power Pages.
In this article we're gonna be focusing on Power Apps but basically the Power Platform is a web interface that allows you to build apps quickly and easily. These apps can then run on the web or on your phone or tablet device. Sounded promising indeed, I was definitely intrigued!
Learning Power Apps
There are a number of different ways to learn Power Apps but one of the more popular methods is the "App in a day"(AIAD) experience. It's a workshop style training environment and like the name suggests, App in a day is a whole day training workshop. These are hosted on a regular basis by many different Microsoft partners across the world. The one I attended was hosted by "Appfie" Home | Appfie, a Belgian-based, Power Platform consultancy.
Training day
The morning session was spent learning about the Power Platform and the many different apps that make up the Power Platform ecosystem.
Let me also point out that the Power Platform enables users to integrate processes around automation, workflow, business intelligence and use a low code/no-code app development environment. These processes and other technologies all work together to support each other cohesively!
Fyi, "Low code/no-code" means just that, the ability for non-tech users to program applications without using code or needing to be a developer all whilst using drag and drop interfaces.
This introductory session was really helpful as it showed us the digital landscape and how all the different technologies worked together. Moreover, Appfie also shared lots of use cases with us, so we could immediately start to understand how these technologies could be leveraged in real life scenarios.
Afternoon session
Now for the fun stuff ! The afternoon session was focused on getting our hands dirty and we worked our way through several labs/tutorials and actually started building apps! This was very exciting and the whole session was done through Microsoft Teams. During the session our instructors were always on hand to support us when we got stuck. We shared our screens with the group whenever we got stuck so we could all see and learn from each other's mistakes thus creating a shared learning environment. This also created a sense of togetherness and needless to say, there was lots of screen sharing throughout the day.
Creating my first Power App
I have to say, it's pretty easy to use Power Apps. It has a pleasantly designed interface and for the most point is predominantly drag and drop and pretty intuitive. You create your app by dragging and dropping elements onto the canvas, I.e.buttons, lists, text boxes, etc. Then when you want to generate an action, for instance when somebody clicks on a button in your app and you want it to do something, you will then need to use what is known as a Power Fx formula. This is kind of like an Excel formula but that is as technical as it gets. It really is designed for non-technical business users.
The project
There are actually 4 modules in total to complete and turns out you're only really meant to complete the first module on the day. That'll take you the best part of 3/4 hours if it's your first time using Power Apps. This is fine as there's so much information to digest throughout the day. Of course you're welcome to progress with the other modules during the second half of the day. The app we were building was a coffee machine ordering app and actually, it's quite an involved project containing four different modules:
Create a machine ordering app with Power Apps
Create a Dataverse table for the machine ordering app
Create a model driven Power Apps app for machine ordering
Integrate a Power Apps app with Power Automate
Clearly this app was chosen to showcase the many Power Platform features and how they work seamlessly together. That being said, there are many less involved apps you could build in far less time. You only need to look at the Power Apps "Start with an app template" section on the Power Apps homepage to get some ideas e.g. an expenses app, a holiday/leave request app, budget Tracker app etc.
Kickstart your learning
I started this post by stating that you could build an app in a day and even though I didn't completely finish building this app during the day, I totally stand by that statement. If you're considering doing the "App in a day" training I'd say go for it. I thoroughly recommend it and I reckon it's the best springboard to begin your Power Platform app bulding journey.
Microsoft also runs different flavours of the AIAD experience ranging from App in a Day to App in an Hour, and Power Virtual Agents in a Day, to Admin in a Day etc. You can even download the materials and do the training at your own pace, more information's here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/adoption/in-a-day
Have you done the AIAD training before or are you considering it? Let me know your experiences or comments below.