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General question about what Power Apps can do - developing an app for a company as a student

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Posted on by Malvia

Hi all

I'm a student at the IT University of Copenhagen and I'm taking a course, where we have been briefly introduced to the concept of Microsoft Power Apps. We need to collaborate with a company that wants something developed through an app, and before we have more technical knowledge about Power Apps, we need to figure out their needs, and whether they are realistic. This is hard when you don't know much about Power Apps yet, right?

Hopefully, you can help me with this.

We have met with the company and they really want an app that makes everything more convenient and easy when it comes to communication among 3 departments that work on huge projects together.

The company wants the app to serve as a room for thoughts and notes that certain profiles/users can share with each other if they are working together on a project. They also want the app to have certain features like checklists/questions that need to be filled out throughout the project. And furthermore, they want the app to come up with reminders about what the next step is like "remember to reach out to the customer this week".

The reason why the 3 departments cannot just use their computers is that it will mostly be salesman/project leaders on the run, who only have the phone with them and always forget the important stuff when they finally sit down and open their computer. Therefore they have requested an app, where they can deliver information to the 2 other departments.

Even though many solutions could be made elsewhere, the company is part of a Nordic Concern and is therefore not allowed to integrate this app with Sharepoint, Teams etc. or other systems that all companies in the Nordic Concern use. It is therefore important that the app can stand somewhat alone (perhaps integrated with Microsoft Outlook).

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Building Power Apps

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Malvia 2 on at

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So my question is: Do you think this is possible to do? Within a couple of months as a rookie? And if so, can you share links to any tutorials/do you have any recommendations on where to start from here? Thank you so much.

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iAm_ManCat 18,228 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @Malvia

There's lots to unpack here, but let me start with the learning resources - this collection is maintained by the Power Apps team and contains everything from beginner to expert level.

Microsoft Power Platform: Learning Resources | Microsoft Power Apps

If you prefer videos, I would suggest to look at the YouTube channels of Reza Dorrani, Shane Young, Daniel Christian

In terms of your query regarding the App, you asked if it was realistic... this is an unrealistic expectation IF they are expecting you to only use Outlook, as your problem will be "Where is the data". If they are happy to use either Dataverse or SharePoint or some other datasource to store the data, then I think it can be done yes.

The first problem, is that you said they can't integrate with SharePoint/Teams/etc, but you will need to have somewhere to store your data. Yes it is possible to integrate notifications via Microsoft Outlook, but you will still need somewhere to store data to meet the other requirements (reminders need to have something to check to know when to remind, checklist answers need to be stored somewhere, etc.)

If they are willing to pay for licensing then you could store it within Microsoft Dataverse which is its own database designed for use with the Power Platform, and if they are not willing to pay for license then you will likely end p using SharePoint as it falls under most basic Microsoft licensing(E3 or higher) so they will likely already have access to that.

Despite what I've said here above, I would advise you to start looking at the learning resources so that you are able to confidently say whether or not you will be able to do this with the time you have. You should factor in the time it might take you to learn the platform as well as to build it.

I would suggest starting with the Canvas Apps paths on Microsoft Learn as this covers the basics of what you will need.

List of suggested learning paths here in order:

Introduction to the Microsoft Power Platform

Create a Canvas App in Power Apps

Navigation in a canvas app in Power Apps

How to build the UI in a canvas app in Power Apps

Use and understand Controls in a canvas app in Power Apps

There is also the PL-900 certification learning path which covers a lot of the technologies you'll need to build this requirement - PL-900: Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals - Training | Microsoft Learn

Anyway, I know this will likely be information overload at this point, but do try start on one of the first links/modules and that should help you understand the platform a little better 🙂

If you get stuck with anything, post questions on the forums here and most times it will get answered fairly quickly 🙂

Cheers,

Sancho

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