How to Work with Power Apps Using your SharePoint Lists

Organizations make use of SharePoint Intranet Portal to collaborate, communicate, access and share content among themselves. The same goes for using Microsoft Power Apps that leverages SharePoint lists as the back end.

PowerApps has become a great tool for Businesses as it can integrate with SharePoint Online experience for customized lists and to create apps using web browsers.

What is Microsoft PowerApps?

This is for newbies who haven’t heard about PowerApps. It is a solution for users to create mobile applications without the knowledge of mobile custom development. It comes as a bundle along with your Office 365 Subscription (E3 Plan onward) similar to your OneDrive, Planner and others. Advantage of having PowerApps is that even business users can work on the mobile application without using a single code or hiring technical team (Limited to basic features).

Also, the good part is that PowerApps is a cross-platform service, so you will be able to run your apps using iOS, Android and Windows phones and of course, the web browser!

How’s PowerApps connected with SharePoint?

Although PowerApps is independent of Microsoft SharePoint, it is closely integrated to each other offering the perfect alternative to other mobile development platforms. Good part is that you can integrate it to various sources/external databases. Connect your PowerApps to your SharePoint Libraries, Lists or even OneDrive and get started! Social Media integration are also made possible within PowerApps.

Thanks to Microsoft for bringing up with latest updates like full read or write support for all SharePoint data types. This also includes Lookup, Multi-select options, Managed Metadata etc.

Is it the perfect choice for SharePoint Admins and Power Users?

Isn’t it great! Especially for workflows our clients ask for, we don’t need to dig into InfoPath forms and SharePoint designer anymore!

Since it is an in-house tool integrating with the back end, it provides transparency and access for our business users. Infopath is a good choice, however, it takes lot of time and efforts to get it done. PowerApps looks very promising and easier to use!