PowerApps: A Toe In The Water

 

Power Apps!

Yeah!

Maybe.

  15:00
  CDIO: PowerApps!
  ...
  Me: Wha?
  Colleague: Yep

  15:10
  CDIO: Looks interesting, do a presentation with me on it next week.
  ...
  CDIO: And a workshop!

  15:30
  Me: Hey, we have an app!
  Colleague: Yep

So, a couple of new tiles have turned up in my O365 tile estate. Exciting day.

PowerApps promises automatic, intuitive, mobile ready app generation from a plethora of data sources - everything from external databases to facebook to simple Excel tables. This sort of connectivity, without the need for deep technical understanding, has been promised before.

Can PowerApps deliver?

Getting up and running:

There are two routes to access PowerApps. Either a desktop application (Windows 8.1+), or a browser based solution defined as 'Preview'. The latter is a bit limited, missing functionality found in the desktop app, which may cause issues for organisations still using Windows 7. So most of them.

Once you have created an application you can share it with colleagues where it can be accessed from either the PowerApps desktop application, the PowerApps tile in O365, or via a mobile app.

There are a great range of templates available for both content and connections, and most are generally optimised for phone and/or tablet.

There are number of out-the-box data source options that let us create simple apps with a few clicks. We found connecting to a spreadsheet (Excel stored in a SharePoint site), SharePoint list or an MSSql database via a gateway quick and easy to set up. We haven't explored all the options available, but taking a non-technical perspective plugging in some data was easy and intuitive.

Once created apps can be shared with other users, being available via the PowerApps interface The PowerApps 'app' can be downloaded free allowing those you have shared your own app with to access it on any mobile device.

Can non-technical users really create apps? 

Plugging in data and creating a basic app can be achieved very easily. Trial and error would get most people there even if they didn't fully understand the user interface.

You get a nice animated splash screen to watch while you're app is set up and the customisation interface loads:

Customisations are handled by a Visual Studio-y point and click interface with a number of template layouts to choose from. Text can be changed, or properties viewed by double-clicking, and moved around the app screen. PowerApps  seems to generally create a common bunch of pages from a list of data for viewing, editing, adding and deleting. Clicking on the pages in the left-hand column allows the user to edit each page in turn.

So far so good. If you're used to this type of deign interface it probably won't pose too many problems. For users more familiar with Office (and perhaps not much more), this will likely all be completely new. The terminology of fields and properties, even of having colours expressed as RGB values will almost certainly cause confusion.

If simple on the surface PowerApps has a more complex underbelly that will certainly require developer input to take full advantage of.

Permissions Issues

One of the initial problems we found was permissions, and this went to both directions.

Firstly, even for simply, publicly available information, the data itself would need to be shared with everyone the app was shared with before they could see it. We could create the app, share it, and another user could open it, but without explicit permissions to view the source data the app would be blank.

Secondly, although you may have explicitly shared the source data with another user, you may only want them to view it, not be able to update or delete it. Any app we created by default gave all users access to all CRUD functionality.

I should stress we had very little time with the platform, but these options, if they exist, are not obvious, and pose some serious limitations on what can be usefully created.

Use cases

As a large organisation with a lot of departments still taking it upon themselves to construct the most 'creative' Excel spreadsheets, use cases abound. In many instances end-users are either having to remember information from activities to enter into a spreadsheet, or wander around with a tablet or other device entering details as they go.

So long as the spreadsheet data is in a table we now have the option to present this information, securely shared with only those who need to see it, in a mobile ready app, shared amongst the group. It doesn't immediately remove the spreadsheet, but at least gives a consistent format for the data.

Just off the top of our heads at the workshops we discussed asset registers, contact details for project members, data entry for parking staff, first-aiders lists and a facilities faults database.

The possibilities probably aren't endless, but for simple data visualisation, and even for temporary access to data sources, there are a huge number of use cases that power-apps may be suitable for. There are also a large number of more complex and fully-fledged examples on the PowerApps site.

Fragility concerns & Windows 7 support

Despite the desktop application being marketed as running only on Windows 8.1+, we were able to download and run it successfully on Windows 7. That said , we have also run the software on Windows 10, mindful that 7 isn't strictly supported.

You'll also be unable to use the web application (termed 'Preview') on FireFox, which is currently unsupported.

The preview web application has more limited features than the desktop app, however it has enough to get going with, especially if you're just exploring the platform.

More, worryingly, what we found with both the web and desktop apps is that they worked highly inconsistently. This is fairly new software, so we perhaps should expect too much, but creation, content and sharing was  flaky from the start. Sometimes data sources would appear in the interface, other times not. Sometimes the app would be created, many times the process would just fail.

Frustratingly we found content such as images would randomly not display in the newly created app, or would display on someone else's identical setup, but not our own. And there were instances of the interface not loading, getting itself caught in a loop.

These issues were bad enough for us to seriously scale back what we demonstrated in our workshops for fear of the demon of technical demos appearing.

Conclusion

Maybe. Maybe Not. 

Many have tried to create this type of limited-code, rapid app development platform and most of them fall fairly short of the mark. PowerApps isn't all that different. It's ease of connections with Microsoft data sources may be a plus for some, but the currently fragile interface will put off many, especially non-developers who just want something up and running consistently in a few clicks.

It's also unlikely that IT departments are going to want to let all users loose on this platform. While simple to create a basic app there is an obvious danger that IT will end up being expected to support a plethora of poorly conceived creations. 

It will be interesting to see how (and if) the platform is developed. Time will tell for PowerApps.