Microsoft PowerApps & Flow Overview and Integration Points with SharePoint Wes Preston & Raymond Mitchell

Abstract Microsoft PowerApps and Microsoft Flow We’ll look at two new offerings for Office 365: PowerApps – Custom apps for business needs Flow – Automated workflows between apps and services We’ll give an overview of each product and walk through creating example solutions – with a focus on SharePoint integration as well as other data sources.

Disclaimers Both PowerApps and Flow are still in ‘Preview’ Client updates to PowerApps Studio and mobile apps released every 2 weeks (twice a month). The service gets updated every week. Literally a ‘big’ announcement Monday… about new data management…

Raymond Mitchell Independent Consultant Owner of IWSPACE, LLC Specialize in SharePoint & Information Worker Technologies SharePointing since 2001 www.iwkid.com www.iwspace.com @iwkid linkedin.com/in/iwkid

Wes Preston Independent Consultant Owner of TrecStone Platform architect Information Worker: No-code/low- code business solutions SharePointing since 2003 www.idubbs.com/blog www.trecstone.com @idubbs linkedin.com/in/wpreston

Big Picture

Business Application Platform Innovation “New” big picture https://businessplatform.microsoft.com Don’t forget PowerBI – that we’re not talking about today

Business Application Platform Innovation Discussing PowerApps and Flow today Power users build “no code” solutions Connect to services and data already in your organization Primarily cloud today, on-prem developing

Business Application Platform Innovation Not talking Power BI today! Also not talking about Brexit or Pokemon

Business Application Platform Innovation Enterprise Developers and IT pros Extend capabilities for power users Rich platform services with power of Azure App Services, Service Fabric, Azure Functions, Logic Apps, API Management, BizTalk…

Roadmap Microsoft Common Data Model (CDM) Just announced More info later

https://powerusers.microsoft.com

Microsoft PowerApps Preview

What are PowerApps? Stand-alone apps Targeted at mobile platforms: Phones and tablets Notes: NOT made exclusively for SharePoint NOT a replacement for InfoPath (*yet) Not made for SharePoint, but they are talking… Teams are working together on deeper integration

PowerApps Web Portal Where you manage This is where you start… after you log in. The site has great documentation to get started… Click on ‘Learn’

PowerApps Studio Where you build

PowerApps Mobile Client Where you execute Apps available on iOS and Android (Windows Mobile on the backlog) Individual PowerApps can be pinned to the home page

Demo PowerApps Web Portal Walkthrough Waffle menu – for some reason PowerApps and Flow are not currently showing up. Seems inconsistent Download links for apps and studio Left nav Learn – to the tutorial and documentation Expand the left nav items Connections Click ‘New’ to see all the options Gateways – covering during the Flow side My Apps List view Details Versions - restore Sample apps – great for seeing examples and how they’re built Create an app from data PowerApps Web Portal Walkthrough

Demo PowerApps App Walkthrough It’s really just an app launcher Can pin to desktop Can share Swipe to right to close an app Show Grab Bag demo Hardware tools: GPS Camera Show From SharePoint demo Three main screen types: Browse Display Create / Edit Made button bigger Conditional formatting Tweaked which fields to display and in what order PowerApps App Walkthrough

Demo PowerApps Studio Walkthrough Open – similar to portal, but not exactly (no versions, etc.) New – Create apps from data SharePoint Online – we’ll come back and do it shortly Blank app – both phone and tablet available App templates – great for getting into as examples to see controls, connections, etc. Connections – actually brings you back to the web portal to manage Look at Grab Bag demo Can run in the studio How easy GPS was Navigation links Look at Demo SharePoint Added a ‘landing page’ – no real valid reason :P Controls View -> Advanced – more like a dev environment User().fullname Button OnSelect – formula for navigation Three main pages Browse page Conditional formatting formula Detail page or Edit page Cards Conditional formatting Create an app from SharePoint Online data See the differences from my actual app Default pages that are created Fields that are displayed Viewing ALL data in the list Search works slick Action - Flows PowerApps Studio Walkthrough

Sharing NOT public-facing Can be shared and accessed across the organization Can be shared with all, or specific users For example: audience-targeted apps (users or managers)

Connections and Gateways Connections: Work with services and data LOTS of connection types available Gateways: Allow access to on-prem data (SQL for now) https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/connect-to-your-on-premises- data-sources-using-on-premises-data-gateway-from-powerapps/ More in Flow section… More on gateways later…

SharePoint Integration Connections: As a data source Integration with new list experience (future) Connections : Office 365 Office 365 Users Office 365 Video OneDrive OneDrive for Business Outlook.com Project Online SharePoint Online Reference: PowerApps and SharePoint https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/powerapps-and-sharepoint/

The ‘modern list experience’ Available for libraries, not for lists yet Create a PowerApp from within SharePoint (not yet available) Displayed as a view Web-based capabilities to do what PowerApps Studio does now

Formulas Perform calculations (like Excel) Change appearance – Yep. Conditional formatting Navigation Validation Saving and updating data Note: Can do more than one action This is where the power really is in building the apps… This is also where the learning curve is

Controls and Properties Very InfoPath-like feel when dragging and dropping controls on a screen Advanced view: More Dev-like view of properties Will the formulas hold up to the business rules like they did in InfoPath?

Flows Think SPD workflows… but the next step Can be used as an action in PowerApps

App Scenarios With or without external data (connections) Can be read-only, write-only, or fully dynamic With SharePoint – extend existing ‘solutions’ or just expand accessibility to current sites and lists User-targeted app Manager-targeted app Example: DPW application for collecting issues, requests, etc. In past, used email enabled lists to get through firewall

Projects Save to the cloud Save locally… Saves as a .msapp

What’s missing and/or on the Roadmap Documentation is really good for this point in the process… Support for all list data types – on the way, but not ready yet Since last time: Option/Dropdown controls now work. 

Microsoft Flow Preview

What is Flow? Preview offering to automate workflows between apps and services http://flow.microsoft.com Start from a template or create your own from scratch

Triggers Triggers are events that initiate a Flow First entry in a Flow Linked to Connections Services Data sources

Connections Connect to services Surfaces Actions, Triggers Can manage ahead of time or when adding an action Different from PowerApps – not just connections to data, also actions and triggers

Connections Different from PowerApps – not just connections to data, also actions and triggers

Actions Select an action Configure action parameters Grouped by Connection Configure action parameters

Actions Many actions have additional parameters you can configure by clicking on the … Can also configure which connection to use Useful if changing credentials

Demo Translate and Save Tweets

Triggers - SharePoint Triggers

Actions - SharePoint Actions

Actions - SharePoint Actions

Templates

Conditions Change actions based on conditions: Simple if/else branching

Scheduling Flows Recurrence Trigger StartTime: MM/DD/YYYY HH:mm

Scheduling Flows Delay, Delay until Actions

Approval Emails Not SharePoint approvals

Notifications Push notifications Mobile-centric right now Expecting updates soon

Managing Flows Web Interface http://flow.microsoft.com Flow Mobile App

My flows View all of your created flows Enable / Disable / Edit / Delete View previous runs

Activity View recent run statuses View all notifications

Custom Connections (external APIs) Documentation at powerapps.microsoft.com shows how to develop custom APIs Documentation at flow.microsoft.com shows how to develop for Flow (share your custom API with others) Connect to custom APIs (REST) Must be done from PowerApps web portal swagger file that describes your API icon !!!DEV!!! https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/get-started-flow-dev/ https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/register-custom-api/

Demo MNBeerAPI

http://mnbeerapi.azurewebsites.net/swagger/ui

Gateways (on-prem data) Works only with SQL Server (today) Run the gateway installer, register your gateway Must sign in using your organization credentials Create new Connection to SQL Server And specify that you’ll use the gateway

Gateways (on-prem data) PowerApps web portal shows connections (shared between apps)

Flow in PowerApps Interacting with controls in PowerApps can trigger a Flow Connections and Gateways can be shared between solutions

Real-World Business Use Cases… You have existing solutions Using email Manually retrieving data from services PEOPLE are the glue that makes the existing process “work” PowerApps, Flow, SharePoint

Next Steps And References!

Common Data Model Create centralized, secure business entities Import and export business data Bulk edit / analyze using Excel Use CDMs in PowerApps Preview planned in August July blog post announcement

Next Steps Sign up for the preview https://powerapps.microsoft.com Documentation, tutorials, reference content https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials PowerApps Community http://aka.ms/PowerApps-community Forum Ideas – Replaces deprecated UserVoice for PowerApps Feedback – Using ‘Ideas’ instead of UserVoice (now deprecated) ‘Tutorials’ is where all the reference articles are. TONS of good info on getting started.

Next Steps Sign up for the preview https://flow.microsoft.com Documentation https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/getting-started/

http://*.microsoft.com http://businessplatform.microsoft.com http://powerusers.microsoft.com http://powerapps.microsoft.com http://flow.microsoft.com http://powerbi.microsoft.com

Social @MicrosoftFlow - http://twitter.com/MicrosoftFlow Flow Blog - http://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog @PowerApps - http://twitter.com/PowerApps PowerApps Blog - http://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog