(gears whirring)
- Coming up, whether you're a citizen developer
or professional coder, we're going to take a look
at the latest capabilities for Power Apps
which allow you to build responsive
and rich app experiences around your data
and processes with zero to low code.
So, today, I'm joined by lead Power Apps Program Manager,
Clay Wesener, from the Power Apps team.
Welcome to Microsoft Mechanics.
- Thanks for having me, Jeremy.
- And thanks so much for joining us from your home today.
By the way, Power Apps is one of my favorite technologies
because you can really create new portable app experiences
quickly from your data or your processes.
- Right, and that's the idea.
It's about building modern and cross-platform apps
and making that accessible to non-technical
users through to developers.
We have hundreds of templates to help you get started,
and we see people on the front line in a variety of roles
spinning up apps to solve business problems.
In fact, separate to what we're going to look at today,
in this new era of COVID-19, we recently released a template
for crisis communications at aka.ms/CrisisCommsApp.
- Right, and a really big part of adoption
is the ease of development, so if you're new to Power Apps,
the experience here is kind of a cross between PowerPoint
and Excel, and now you and the team, though,
are doing a lot, though, beyond that to make it
a really great experience and improve it every day.
- Absolutely, there's a lot.
To further enable remote work scenarios,
we've done a lot around Teams integration.
We've simplified building apps with Canvas components,
which are a way to build low-code reusable parts
of your app like a header, or Pro Dev components
that allow you to bring in reusable code.
We also have several accelerators, which provide a template
to speed up development of industry-specific apps,
and on top of all that, we also introduced
Power Apps Portals that expand Power Apps
beyond your internal employees to external guests
or anonymous users on your website.
And of course, more and more every week.
- Right, and a lot of great new capabilities are coming,
but that said, I think there is--
A lot of people are still new to Power Apps.
Now, what's the best way, or what are the best ways
kind of to get started?
- Yeah, there's lots of different ways to get started.
I can start from a blank app.
I can leverage one of the hundreds of templates
that we have, or I can generate an app
based on data that I already have.
Today, we're going to create an app based on data
that I already have in the Common Data Service,
but I could've used data from any one
of our 300-plus connectors.
In this case, I'll create an app for project managers
in our company to see and update their project information
when they're working with customers.
As I already have a dataset the app can pull from,
I'll create a new app starting from data.
So, I'll click on Common Data Service.
I'll search for the Projects table in CDS,
select the table, and click Connect.
This creates a simple, three-screen app for me
based on my data schema that allows me to view, create,
and update project information.
I can already see the app is showing me data from the table,
and it's functional even in this edit mode.
I could start using this app immediately,
but first I'm going to quickly update the theme
and insert a corporate header that my organization
has already published.
To do that, I'll hit the plus sign
for insert and click Get More Components
and select my corporate header.
This makes it available to me as a component in my app.
Now, I'll drag the header onto my app,
and you'll see that it gets inserted.
Next, I can adjust the apps theme,
so I'll choose the red office theme,
which looks much better with our new header.
- Very cool, so now, you've got the Power App foundation,
and that's all built up, but where can you go from here,
then, to take advantage of some
of the new capabilities in Power Apps?
- Well, let's make this real.
Let's have a look at what Team Rubicon has done,
and I'll break down the authoring experience.
Team Rubicon are a volunteer disaster management
response organization who manage a network
of thousands of volunteers globally,
and they need to be able to mobilize their task force
to respond to different events,
and they rely heavily on recruiting new volunteers.
Let me show you what they can do in Power Apps.
Think of this as a continuation
to the simple app I just built.
Without the need for code, you can build a rich,
full-featured experience for project managers.
I'll click into My Projects, and here you'll see
that project managers can update and manage their projects.
And this will work on the web, mobile,
and directly in Microsoft Teams.
- Very cool, so what can I do,
then, to make the app even better
using some of the new capabilities?
- Yeah, there's so much more you can do at this point.
Let me show you how we can incorporate
not just low-code components like the header,
but bring in a component that was created
using code by a pro developer.
So, I'm back in the studio, I'll go back to the Insert menu,
and you can see in Code Components, I have a map component.
So, I'll drag that into my app.
This map control was created in VS code using JavaScript,
but it was easy to bring in my app in a low-code way.
I can set this up to use GPS on the device
with the Show Current Location option,
and you can see latitude and longitude
properties on the Pro Dev component.
Let me quickly show you this in a full-screen preview.
Now, you can see the app isn't just showing
you project data, but leveraging my device capabilities
to give project managers location data
and directions to their next project.
- Nice, so I know here in this example,
a lot of the project managers,
especially these days with COVID-19,
is probably happening in the context of Microsoft Teams,
and I know there are ways to embed those apps
in that context, but how can I do that?
- Now the app is published, it's pretty straightforward.
I'm going to go to my Project Tracking Team.
I'll click Add a tab.
I'll search for Power Apps, and it will show me
all the Power Apps available to me in my organization.
Now, I'm going to search for my Project Updates
app, select it, and click Save.
By adding it to Teams, users are able to use apps
completely embedded and part of the Teams experience.
- It's really great, I think, for highly mobile
frontline workers and also project managers,
but how do the projects in the first place
kind of get assigned for this app?
- Yeah, in Power Apps we also allow you
to use a model-driven approach.
So, this is something that Team Rubicon used to allow them
to build an app by defining the data structure and workflow.
This makes it also easier when we use industry accelerators
coming to give you ready-made templates,
including pre-built data structure, dashboards, and forms.
Team Rubicon used a nonprofit accelerator
to build their volunteer dashboard that you can see here.
This helps them see projects based on their objectives,
their delivery frame type, like a long-term program,
project, or action, and the allocated budget per objective.
I'll scroll down to my delivery framework
and click into the COVID-19 Relief Project.
Now I can see all the details behind it.
I'll click into Related and then Volunteers to ensure
I have the right volunteers assigned to the project.
This app, again, uses the Common Data Service,
so I'm looking at the exact same data
that my project managers out in the field are looking at.
- So, it's great to see this kind of Power App
and integration as well, but how would I go about
kind of customizing or building one of these?
- Model-driven apps are very data-focused.
They're built by defining the data structure
and the business process flow,
and then we generate your app.
If I wanted to add another field to this app,
I can open the form designer,
search for the data field location.
I'll drag it onto my form right here
under Scope, and then save my changes.
And now, back in our app, all I have to do is refresh
with the F5 key, and you'll see the location
field has appeared on the form.
The cool thing is making these changes
to the form didn't require any code,
just dragging and dropping in a field.
- Cool, so you're able to create back-office capabilities
with the same ease in which you kind of built
that frontline Power App that we saw earlier.
But you mentioned also the ability to extend Power Apps
to external users and logins and anonymous
users even, so not every volunteer,
I think, for Team Rubicon's going to have
a Microsoft 365 or Azure AD account.
How do I enable all this?
- Exactly. Team Rubicon is always looking to recruit
new volunteers, and it needs to be super-easy.
And as you said, it turns out a lot of volunteers
are using things like LinkedIn or Facebook.
They won't always have an Office 365 or Azure AD login.
They're able to extend their app
to their website through Power Apps Portals.
Here's the Team Rubicon volunteering portal.
Since I'm not an employee or a current member
and I want to volunteer, I can create an account
by clicking Join Now, and to register,
I can use my Facebook or LinkedIn identity.
I'll select LinkedIn, and that takes me
to a secure LinkedIn page, where I can enter my email
and password, authorizing Team Rubicon's site
to authenticate me via LinkedIn.
And once I've done that, I can add my Skills Certificate
and register for events as a volunteer.
So, as you saw, using Power Apps, Team Rubicon
are able to introduce rich experiences
for their project managers out in the field,
their back office, and even their external volunteers.
- It's really great to see, though,
the extension of Power Apps for external users
or anonymous users, but you also mentioned
that you were kind of holding some more cool stuff
up your sleeve in terms of things
that you can do with Power Apps.
What are some of the other capabilities that you can do?
- One of the things I'm most excited about
is bringing mixed reality into Power Apps,
so you can really bridge that gap between your app
and the real world, whether that's working
with geospatial controls, measuring spaces,
or viewing 3D objects.
If we go back to our Project Manager app,
I'm going to have it, open it up on a tablet,
and you can see in the same way I built
other experiences, I've extended this app
to add a Measure Site Dimensions component.
And so, once I open that up, what this is going to do
is I can show you my kitchen, and I can actually
start moving around here and seeing my app
interacting with the real world.
I'm going to go ahead now and start measuring out the space.
You can see my dog, Walter, in the background there,
having a nap.
I'm going to measure out a space in my kitchen.
The app is collecting all this rich data
about the space, calculating the area.
I can even save an image, and that all
goes back against my project.
So, you can see for Team Rubicon how they can leverage
this capability to survey a site quickly and accurately
without even needing to physically measure it.
- And this is really great to see,
and thanks so much for joining us today, Clay,
and really giving us the look at the latest Power App
and Power App Portal capabilities
and really how Team Rubicon
are leveraging them today themselves.
So, if you're watching this at home,
we really hope that you're inspired
to get started building your first Power Apps
with our free trial at powerapps.microsoft.com,
and you can get even more guidance on how to build
your first app today at aka.ms/PowerAppsGetStarted.
That's all the time we have for this show.
Thanks for watching; we'll see you next time.
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