News

PowerApps and Microsoft Flow Previews Released

• By Kurt Mackie
• 04/29/2016

Microsoft announced a public preview of its PowerApps developer tools solutions today, plus a new Microsoft Flow component.

Microsoft had first unveiled its PowerApps business developer tools late last year, but they were at the private preview stage back then. Now, anyone can try them by signing up at this page.

PowerApps
The PowerApps tools are conceived as making it easier for organizations to create business solutions. Prospective users include IT pros and company employees, as well as developers, according to Microsoft.

The tools, which include prebuilt templates and wizards, can be used to create Web apps, mobile apps, logic apps and API apps, according to a description by Scott Hanselman, a principal program manager for Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise Group. Languages such as .NET, NodeJS, PHP, Python or Java can be used, but Microsoft also describes PowerApps as allowing users "to build apps, forms, and workflows without writing code," per its announcement.

It's possible to "create applications from data" by using a PowerApps connector to software-as-a-service-type applications. Microsoft's list of applications that can be tapped in this way includes "SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, Dropbox" and others. If a connector to a service isn't available, it's possible to create custom APIs from any RESTful API, according to Microsoft.

Some cumbersome developer activities, such setting up data access permissions in applications, supposedly are more easily handled when using PowerApps. Microsoft's announcement explained that "Apps respect data source permissions at all times, so be assured that only authorized users can access data from any app you share."

Applications built using PowerApps will run in a browser. Alternatively, Microsoft has PowerApps client applications for Android and iOS mobile devices.

Microsoft has been enhancing PowerApps on a weekly basis. In the near future, it plans to add support for "SharePoint data types, look-ups, more connectors and templates, and performance improvements," per its announcement.

Microsoft Flow
Microsoft Flow is now available as a public preview release and can be accessed via signup at this page. It's a workflow automation solution that can be used to tap application and service data. Press accounts are comparing Microsoft Flow with IFTTT, a free service that lets users set up actions for data across services based on if-then statements.

Microsoft described Flow as a solution that "makes it easy to mash-up two or more different services," according to a blog post by Stephen Siciliano, principal group program manager for Microsoft Flow. It currently connects more than 35 services, including "OneDrive and SharePoint, and public software services like Slack, Twitter and Salesforce.com," Siciliano explained.

Microsoft Flow users can use it to send notifications, push data into Excel (such as Twitter posts), send OneDrive files to SharePoint Sites and create simple workflow approval tracking, he added.

Microsoft Flow is integrated with PowerApps, but Microsoft also carved it out separately. It can work without PowerApps. It previously went by the "Logic Flows" name, Siciliano explained:

If Microsoft Flow sounds familiar, that's because back in November we announced a private preview of the Logic Flows feature of Microsoft PowerApps. However, Microsoft Flow is useful for any business user, whether or not they want to build a PowerApp. To make this easier, we decided to make Microsoft Flow available without ever signing up and using PowerApps.

Back then, Microsoft seemed to use the term, "logic apps" to describe this capability, but Logic Apps is actually a different Microsoft Azure service, according to a Microsoft spokesperson:

Logic Apps is an Azure service available through the Azure Portal. It is targeted at developers that need to tackle more complex integration problems. It includes the great features available in Microsoft Flow, plus additional capabilities like integration with Azure Resource Manager and the Azure Portal, PowerShell and the Azure Command-Line Interface (Azure CLI), Visual Studio, and more advance connectors.

In general, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow appear to be a more simplified elements of Microsoft's Azure App Service offerings. For those looking for PowerApps documentation, Microsoft seems to be building it out gradually at this page.