Introduction to Microsoft Power Apps

- [Narrator] What is Power Apps? Power Apps is a set of tools that allows business users who don't write code to create business applications. And it's important to understand that when we use Power Apps, we are in this world of business applications. These are systems and apps that are used by organizations of all sizes for things like managing customer data, managing customer service ticketing or complaints, ideas through to projects and innovation programs, finances, expenses, inventory and asset management, human resources management, employee onboarding, volunteer management, and so on. With Power Apps, we can create web and mobile apps for all of these kinds of scenarios and many, many more. Power Apps isn't for commercial app building. You can't use it to create the latest popular app to sell commercially on the Apple or Google Play Store. We are really working within this world of applications for businesses that are used by employees. So why use Power Apps? Power Apps means that people in the business, the subject matter experts who work with internal and external customers and business data every day can use drag and drop tools and Excel-like formulas to build their own apps and solve their own business problems. Now, this isn't new. Business users have been solving their own problems in this way with the tools they have for years. Excel, Excel macros in particular, but with Power Apps, we're giving these users a proper tool set that enables them to build sophisticated applications that are fit for purpose, while also giving visibility and governance to the IT department. There are two types of Power Apps, canvas apps and model-driven apps, which together make up a complete app building platform. Canvas apps allows you to create mobile or tablet apps connected to any data source, such as SharePoint or your CRM database, like Dynamics 365 or Salesforce, for instance. Building a canvas app is like using a hybrid of PowerPoint and Excel. You drag and drop components onto your screens, and then you control a behavior of the app with an Excel-like formula language called Power FX. The Power Apps tool set also includes a data platform called Microsoft Database that allows you to easily set up structure and build a data model for your business. You can use this platform to build web-based database applications, which are called model-driven apps. Again, drag and drop experience to build out the user interface. And here you can also build out a really sophisticated security model. Again, drag and drop, no code required. Power Apps is just one part of the Microsoft Power platform, which is a complete tool set for building applications, and we mean applications in the broadest sense of the word here, to include automated workflows, business process and logic, chatbots, analytics, and more. What applications do you need for your organization right now that you might be able to build with these kinds of tools?