Updated 9/7/2021
by James Townsend
If you follow this blog or have attended any webinars or other events where I present, you know that Microsoft Power Apps is growing like gangbusters and that many people are turning to Power Apps for their line of business solutions.
But where should you start? For some organizations, the best way is to choose a Dynamics 365 app such as Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise or Customer Service and roll it out for your organization. These off-the-shelf apps are built on Power Apps but are fully functional from the start. You can learn Power Apps by configuring and customizing them with your own new tables, fields, workflows and reports. This is the best scenario when you have a business need that maps closely to one of these apps.
Another way to start is to build a custom Power App from the group up, either as a canvas app or model-driven app. You can purchase Power Apps for all the users who need these apps and start with one which is simple enough to build quickly.
You can also start learning without purchasing Power Apps at all using the Microsoft Power Apps Community Plan. This provides a free environment for building Power Apps and Power Automate workflows.
You get a free environment for individual use including premium connectors, the Dataverse database, and custom connections to develop your skills on creating business apps and workflows.
- Power Apps: Create and run unlimited apps with Dataverse and premium connectors
- Power Automate: Automate workflows between applications and services/ Learn about business process flows.
- Dataverse: Build a data model that all your apps can use. Learn how to add custom fields.
- Connect Your Data: Connect to data sources using connectors or with Custom APIs
- Pick your tool: You can use Power Apps, Power Automate or the Dataverse SDK to create whatever solutions you need
You are likely to graduate to a paid plan so you can share your apps with others in your organization and run them in production, but the Community Plan reduces the barrier to get started on your Power Apps journey.
See related posts on Power Apps:
Microsoft Power Apps and Power Platform: Build Apps without
Limits
More on Microsoft Power Apps: Model-driven Apps, Canvas Apps
and Portals
Energize your Intranet with Microsoft Power Apps and
Customer Voice
Meet Power Fx: The Language of Microsoft Power Apps Canvas
Apps
Microsoft PowerApps and Microsoft Flow Licensing for
Beginners