PowerApps, the Developer Story: Build an API to Integrate Corporate Data

Editor's Notes

• #3 Developing customer software to if often privileged for a handful of business apps, as building customer applications to meet enterprise requirement has its own challenges : Time consuming : developing of a customer mobile app can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months for a single project, depending on the app complexity (source ADT magazine).  This becomes challenging in situation where LOB wants to respond and implement improvements quickly Cost prohibitive : driven by a shortage of specialized resourcing : 94% of the enterprise organization have a shortage of App developers, as a lot of App developers still prioritize consumer facing Apps (Source ADT Magazine & Vision Mobile). 180K first time development, changes and iterations Off-the-shelf SaaS can only solve so many problems Most ‘off-the-shelf’ SaaS solutions are targeted as solving specific problems` and often come with their own mobile App. These apps provide a mobilize experience of these specific SaaS solutions. However, the onslaught of information from these individual often disconnected SaaS services will virtually make it impossible for workers to follow everyday business processes. More and more business process will span multiple applications and SaaS services. (Source: eWeek)  
• #4 When building Line-of-business applications there two different requirements sets that need to be addressed, but can often cause friction between.   On one side, requirements set by IT organizations on: Security - for example Apps can only provide access to the line-of-business data the person is entitled to given their role in the organization. Scalability - ensuring the applications can be use by a large enough number of people in a performant way. Managed - making sure application updates can be easily distributed, for example not dependent on an OS-related AppStore Integrated - To reach their full power, Apps need to use existing data sources and systems and can't live in isolation Compliant - the app need to follow any policy compliancy guidance set by the organization While on the other side the line-of- business sets requirement around: Fast - speed at which a new application can be built to meet the minimal requirements from business. There is no time to wait 6-12 month for a new app to be available Iterative - how quickly and easily can iterations be implemented? Eg business processes continuously change, line-of-business apps need to be able to keep up with these changes through quick iterations Cross-platform - applications been to be used on the devices and platforms of our choosing Beautiful - consumerization of IT set increased requirements on the look and feel of Apps, as users transpose their experience of their consumer apps onto enterprise apps. Easy - easy to use application that do not need any end-user training   In the past, these two sets of requirement often conflicted with each other and have kept companies back in innovation and speed of business.
• #6 MSFT PowerApps is a SaaS service for creating and using custom customer business apps across different mobile and web platforms It connect to excising enterprise systems and data sources you already have allows you to build LOB apps that utilizing the investment you’ve already made in your existing enterprise systems, without have to duplicate data and thus keeping a ‘clean’ single version ‘of the truth’ PowerApps enables you to build Apps without have to write code. It enables you to build Apps declaratively. With PowerApps, business experts can work more efficiently together with their counterparts in IT and consulting partners, literally on the same page in a visual designer—or solve problems on their own. Through an integration with Microsoft Flow, you can trigger flows right from within apps. The Apps can be published instantly to co-workers across web, tablets and mobile devices for easy sharing and consumption within your organization. Now – lets drill into each of these a bit more
• #7 Building useful line-of-business apps without have to write code is, some of the key highlights through the PowerApps Studio : A visual designer with a familiar user experience that enable you to build the screens you need to power your App. You can build validation rules and business logic right into your screen using an Excel-function inspired expression language. Take advance of the devoice specific sensor capabilities like cameras, GPS and Pen Controles to improve context awareness of the app and build even more powerful apps
• #8 Microsoft PowerApps ships with an every growing list of 115 connectors to most common used services from common Office 365 services like Outlook and OneDrive to popular collaboration services like Slack and market leading CRM SaaS offerings like SalesForce.com and Dynamics CRM. In addition, more sophisticated flows can be created with for example connecting to the Azure Service Bus or register a custom APIs through simply providing the Swagger end point definition A full list of the most recent connectors available can be found here: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/connections-list/
• #10 Power Suite / Power Tier: Power BI + PowerApps + Flow Common Data Model Security Model: who can access the data based on roles, who can add, modify data Real time sync: get data into the platform from both cloud services and on-premises data (gateways) Operational Data Store: automatically create the operational data store to use in Azure Analytics (Power BI) Data API: pro development tools based on SDK
• #11 An operational data store (or "ODS") is a database designed to integrate data from multiple sources for additional operations on the data.
• #17 The Azure API App project template is equivalent to choosing the Empty ASP.NET 4.5.2 template, clicking the check box to add Web API support, and installing the Swashbuckle NuGet package. In addition, the template adds some Swashbuckle configuration code designed to prevent the creation of duplicate Swagger operation IDs. Once you've created an API App project, you can deploy it to an API app the same way you saw in this tutorial. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-api-dotnet-get-started/
• #18 https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/register-custom-api/#quota-and-throttling
• #23 Use the Common Data Service: Only Plan 1, Plan 2, not O365 Premium connectors like Azure Event Hub, Salesforce, MailChimp, DB2: Only Plan 1, Plan 2, not O365 Create custom APIs (per user): Only 1 in O365, unlimited in Plan 1, Plan 2 Is there a plan for developers? Yes, we are working on a free plan for developers. Details will follow soon. Source: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/
• #24 MSFT PowerApps is a SaaS service for creating and using custom customer business apps across different mobile and web platforms It connect to excising enterprise systems and data sources you already have allows you to build LOB apps that utilizing the investment you’ve already made in your existing enterprise systems, without have to duplicate data and thus keeping a ‘clean’ single version ‘of the truth’ PowerApps enables you to build Apps without have to write code. It enables you to build Apps declaratively. With PowerApps, business experts can work more efficiently together with their counterparts in IT and consulting partners, literally on the same page in a visual designer—or solve problems on their own. Through an integration with Microsoft Flow, you can trigger flows right from within apps. The Apps can be published instantly to co-workers across web, tablets and mobile devices for easy sharing and consumption within your organization. Now – lets drill into each of these a bit more