In this article our pro developers share some tips with budding citizen developers looking to start their journey with Power Apps.
Power Apps is Microsoft’s low code application development platform. It comes with 100’s of connectors and templates available out of the box, a simple drag and drop editor and a marketplace full of applications.
It’s the perfect tool for anyone looking to improve how things work in their part of the business. Here are our 5 pro tips to help your Power App project be more successful.
5 pro tips for citizen developers
- Get to know Power Apps first
The key message behind this tip is to spend a bit of time familiarising yourself with what’s possible. There are lots of training videos, workshops and learning paths available. The more time you invest in this upfront the more successful you will be
- Start small
Knowing where to start is key. You don’t want to attempt something to complicated. If you start with something small and in an area where you are a subject matter expert you are most likely to be successful. Looking for a simple but manual or paper process to start with.
- Consider the audience/users of the app
A key design approach is required, who will use the app? What are their skills? What do they need the app to do? Ensuring you think these things through from the get go will mean your app is more likely to get used.
- Think about the data
Data is a key component to any application. With Power Apps you can use Spreadsheets, Dataverse or even a SharePoint list as a database, but you must ensure you know what data you need. Where are you getting the data? How are you storing it, and is the quality of the data correct?
- Testing
Ensure your application is tested. By testing we do mean, putting a number of cases through the process, thinking about the different scenarios available and trying them out. A top tip is to get someone who didn’t help you develop the app to try it out and make sure they can use it.
These are our top 5 tips for citizen developers working with Power Apps. Power Apps are a great tool for any organisation and there are huge success stories from all across the globe of employees with no software engineering skills, making apps that to improve their organisation. Here are 3 great examples of Power Apps.
Are you ready to find out more? Check out our Power Platform guide below for more information. Or discover our full range of Power Platform services here.
