Question 1

What are Microsoft PowerApps and what are they used for?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft PowerApps is a low-code application development platform that allows users to create web and mobile-based applications to automate processes within their organizations. It helps standardize all types of data, which can be used to build specific apps. For example, a marketing department can build an app to contain customer data or product inventory, which can then be standardized and funneled across other departments and divisions such as sales, logistics, and human resources. You can integrate it with all major business systems and customer relationship management systems (CRMs), including Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, Github, Azure, and Workday. It's also compatible with AI, mixed reality, and analytics platforms for a more comprehensive view of any business.

Question 2

What jobs use Microsoft PowerApps?

Accepted Answer

Many different jobs and industries use Microsoft PowerApps to automate their workflow, including developers, business analysts, and administrators. Essentially any role that regularly shares business data on programs like Salesforce, SQL databases, Sharepoint, Oracle, and Dynamics 365 will find it useful. Some companies have dedicated PowerApps developers who are responsible for building and managing the custom business apps in a low-code environment before sharing with the team.

Question 3

What skills or experience should I have before pursuing learning Microsoft PowerApps?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft PowerApps offers an application development framework that requires little to no code to create apps for multiple platforms. The platform also doesn't mandate you to have any technical knowledge or coding skills to begin learning to use the platform to build your apps. A beginner can get started right away and pick up the skills they need, navigating the many features of PowerApps. Familiarity with Microsoft products like Word, Excel, and Power BI will help you learn quicker since PowerApps can interact with these other products. It can also help if you have a basic knowledge of tabular data and have technical skills. But again, none of these skills are required.

Question 4

What is the difference between Microsoft PowerApps and Microsoft Flow?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft PowerApps is a tool used to design interfaces while Microsoft Flow is a different kind of tool, one designed for process and workflow automation. With PowerApps, you can build apps that run within a browser, on a tablet, or on a phone. You use PowerApps to build screens and forms that users can engage with in order to perform Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations. Microsoft Flow, on the other hand, is used to automate workflows across more than one service or application. Flow also includes pre-configured settings that make it easy to design workflow and task automation across several Microsoft apps, as well as third-party apps.

Question 5

What programming language does Microsoft PowerApps use?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft PowerApps uses Microsoft Power Fx as its coding language. This language was created by Microsoft and it draws its inspiration from Excel. In fact, Power Fx and Excel share many of the exact same functions, such as “Average,” “Concatenate,” “isBlank,” and “Sum.” Microsoft Power Fx is a low-code language, meaning users need to enter little to no code to design processes and applications. To make it easier to use, Microsoft Power Fx leverages a graphical user interface as opposed to requiring users to manually enter lines of code.