When to use and when not to use PowerApps.

You Can Build High Productivity Apps You Need for Your Business with a Rich Set of Tools. It allows you to create low-code sophisticated apps from data.

For one app I was considering Power App as best solution, just need to brush up my PowerApp knowledge. My friend was working on some PowerApp-based solution designs on the Azure cloud. He need some help so I explored a little to gain more knowledge and tried to help my friend in following scenarios:-

1. Creating polling trigger for FTP
2. Calling Stored proc with power app
3. Connecting with Blob storage

PowerApps enables businesses to build custom apps with

1. Pre-built templates

2. Build from scratch

Benefits

1. Improve productivity
2. Low-code app development platform
3. Save time with decision making by implementing approval workflow.
4. Never miss an event
5. Reduce Costly Human Errors by automating repetitive task.
6. Accessible Anywhere.
7. Can be integrated with a variety of data sources such as SharePoint, Dataverse, Excel, and Dynamics 365

Possible use cases
– Employee onboarding

– Contract management

– Approvals

– Document management

– Invoicing

— Industry wise use cases

Power Automate

Connect to data sources

Data sources

1. Set reminders/alert feature that send you email reminder.
2. You can create Schedule flows, Automated flows, Instant Flow, UI Flow, Business process flows
3. Build an approval process and notify colleagues via email.
4. 600 is the limit on the number of flows that Power Automate can create.

Power App Vs Power Automate

When you start working on it there are some points to note. Don’t assume Power Apps is easy. Take care of delegation errors as its difficult to troubleshoot. Do you have large dataset? then process it in the data source rather than doing the same at app level. Do testing.. Its different from code testing, its type and ways to resolve. You must know that there are 3 types of connectors- Standard, Premium and custom.

Now something about licensing 😕

Power App Licensing

According Microsoft following are plans and licenses

Developer Plan
Its for developers and its free for them to learn.

Pay-as-you-go
It is like other Azure resources, you have to pay for what you are using. It is per app plan.

Subscription plans
1. per user/app/month
2. per user/month

PowerApp Alternative?

SPFx

The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a page and web part model that provides full support for client-side SharePoint development, easy integration with SharePoint data, and extending Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Viva.

More detailed comparison is here

After looking at its various capabilities I looked at some architecture diagrams and related toolset interaction.

Limitations

1. You can’t use Microsoft Excel as the data source when the file is stored in Azure Blob Storage.
2. Power App can become costly when users increases and if you are using Premium connectors. Even SQL server connector is premium.
3. FTP triggers now return only metadata or properties, not file content. To get file content use Get file content action and it can read or write files that are 50 MB or smaller.
4. FTP triggers work only on the specified folder, not subfolders. There could be delays if files are recently added or updated.
5. There are some limitations while using stored proc.
6. Here is the complete list of known Issues and resolutions by Microsoft.
7. Power Automate only supports sequential workflows (A to B to C). You cant go back one step. Loops can be used as a workaround, but this requires additional work.
8. You can only use 500 actions per workflow. Wanna know more such limits — check this
9. A workflow cannot be changed, after you run it. You can switch between real-time and background workflows by toolbar.
10. Licensing can be difficult to control, especially when several employees in the company create workflows while using Power Automate.
11. Performance degradation when opening Power Apps Studio in China. Solution is to use 21Vianet.

References

Microsoft Power Automate | Workflow Automation

PowerApps Vs Power Automate - Understand the Difference

Five different types of Microsoft Power Automate Flows

Advantages & Disadvantages of Power Automate (Microsoft Flow)