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

3. 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.

4. 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…

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

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

7. Big Picture

8. Business Application Platform Innovation
“New” big picture
Don’t forget PowerBI – that we’re not talking about today

9. 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

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

11. 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…

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

14. Microsoft PowerApps
Preview

15. 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

16. 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’

17. PowerApps Studio
Where you build

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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)

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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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?

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

29. 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 enabled lists to get through firewall

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

31. 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. 

32. Microsoft Flow
Preview

33. What is Flow?
Preview offering to automate workflows between apps and services
Start from a template or create your own from scratch

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

35. 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

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

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

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

39. Demo
Translate and Save Tweets

43. Triggers - SharePoint
Triggers

44. Actions - SharePoint
Actions

45. Actions - SharePoint
Actions

46. Templates

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

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

49. Scheduling Flows
Delay, Delay until Actions

50. Approval s
Not SharePoint approvals

51. Notifications Push notifications Mobile-centric right now
Expecting updates soon

52. Managing Flows
Web Interface
Flow Mobile App

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

54. Activity
View recent run statuses
View all notifications

55. 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!!!

56. Demo
MNBeerAPI

60. 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

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

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

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

64. Next Steps
And References!

65. 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

66. Next Steps Sign up for the preview https://powerapps.microsoft.com
Documentation, tutorials, reference content
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.

67. Next Steps Sign up for the preview https://flow.microsoft.com
Documentation

68. http://*.microsoft.com http://businessplatform.microsoft.com

69. Social @MicrosoftFlow - http://twitter.com/MicrosoftFlow
Flow Blog -
@PowerApps -
PowerApps Blog -