This article was written by Pascal van Dooren and Jim de Ronde on behalf of the Marketing Engineering team at GroupM Nexus.

Within today’s rapid digital landscape, the need for flexible and efficient business solutions has never been greater. Businesses are constantly looking for digital solutions and tooling to optimise their operations and to enhance their productivity. Building these solutions can become both challenging and time consuming, especially when a solution should integrate with multiple platforms or datasources. This is where PowerApps offers a solution. 

PowerApps bridges the gap between business requirements and technical opportunities, providing users with a user-friendly toolkit to help build robust business applications and automations – seamlessly integrating with other Microsoft products. PowerApps supercharges non-technical users with a set of low-code functionalities that helps them to build solutions without the need of engineers or any software engineering experience.

Core features

• Drag & Drop UI
  Create modern responsive apps with a simple to use drag & drop system.
• Low-code Development
  Provides a user-friendly interface for app development, making it accessible to non-developers.
• Microsoft Integration
  Seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft products, providing a unified and efficient experience.
• Data Connectivity
  Connect to various data sources, from Excel spreadsheets to cloud services like SharePoint and Snowflake.

Pros

• Build Apps & Prototypes Quickly
  Drag and drop elements in a visual interface to create apps without extensive coding.
• Good Connectivity
  Utilise built-in connectors for popular services like SharePoint & Excel, or create custom connectors for specific needs.
• Manage Users
  Control user access and permissions directly within the PowerApps platform.
• Troubleshoot Easily
  Access detailed logs to identify and fix errors in your apps.
• AI-Powered Assistance
  Leverage Copilot, an AI tool, to help you build apps faster and more efficiently.

Cons

• Limited Element Reuse
  Each element is unique and needs a unique name, and cannot be reused across your app. You can however build and use template elements.
• Fixed Element Types
  User input lets you change the content of UI elements, but not its type (e.g. dropdown to text input). 
• Limited Data Processing
  Performance issues or limitations may arise when working with very large datasets.
• Buggy Data Source
  Some data sources might exhibit unexpected behaviour, such as inconsistencies or connection errors.
• Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master
  Implementing advanced features and complex app logic requires additional learning and practice.

Working with different data-sources

As addressed earlier, PowerApps integrates with most Microsoft products. PowerApps has built-in connectors that can store and retrieve data from multiple sources, like: Excel, Sharepoint Lists and Dataverse. Other than that, PowerApps also provides connectors to other (third party) data sources like and platforms like Azure, GitHub, etc.

PowerApps also provides the opportunity to develop custom data connectors, which can be published within a community based marketplace. So, if the data connector you desire to use does not exist, it’s possible to build your own.

Type safety

Type safety in PowerApps ensures that the data used within an application complies to predefined types, preventing errors and enhancing reliability. This feature allows developers to define specific data types for variables, inputs, and outputs, such as text, numbers, dates, and more. By enforcing type safety, PowerApps helps in minimising application errors caused by type mismatches and promotes stable application development.

PowerApps in practice: use-case

PowerApps offers great possibilities when it comes to app development. It’s suitable for setting up both business applications as well as creating simple prototypes, especially when there is a lack of back- and front end developing resources.

We used PowerApps to create a solution for one of our global clients, that serves over 20 markets and brands. There was a need for a centralised and uniform way of briefing and tracking both local media buying (TV, Radio, Print, etc.) and programmatic buying (Social, Display, Online Video).

The application features input forms that allow media buying specialists in each market to create, edit and remove campaigns and tactics. These campaigns are stored in a database, which is used for dashboarding and reporting purposes on a global scale.

Additionally, digital media campaigns submissions also trigger a notification for centralised media buying teams. This allows many local markets to brief media buying specialists in a uniform way, improving and speeding up the process for campaign setup.

Because PowerApps is a user-based platform, it allows all the different users across these different markets to use the app at the same time, without interfering with each other.

Due to its ease-of-use, the markets are able to maintain and further develop the app collectively, even by people with little technical skills. 

The app has been widely adopted, measuring over 100 active users. Already more than 400 campaigns and 1.000 tactics have been briefed using the application. This truly shows the power of PowerApps, making it an extremely useful tool without the need for advanced development resources.

Power Apps: Where Innovation Meets Accessibility

Power Apps empowers users with its user-friendly, low-code approach to building custom applications and automation processes. The platform offers seamless Microsoft integration and diverse data connectivity to streamline operations. While limitations exist, Power Apps remains a valuable tool for driving efficiency and innovation when its strengths and limitations are well understood.

Curiosity is the key to innovation. Experiment with Power Apps and discover new solutions for your team!
Explore PowerApps at https://make.powerapps.com/.