F.A.Q

A: Data is stored in the customers 365 tenant suite on either Dataverse, Sharepoint or SQL

A: The Microsoft Power Platform is well established and growing in popularity. There are many developers both in New Zealand and internationally.

A: PowerApps natively integrates with all things Microsoft. It can integrate with third party software depending on which software it is. In some cases, this can be achieved with Power Automate and in others a API (Application Programming Interface) is required to communicate between the two.

A: That’s one of the beauty’s of the system, one app could access all the different lists/databases within the business or each app can be adding different parts for the data.

A: Some businesses already have Microsoft tenant accounts for admin or and managerial staff, but otherwise that would be the first step would be to sign subscriptions for staff that would need different levels of access to the apps which is currently $30~ per month. A small business with one account will often suffice. The cost of an app greatly depends on the complexity of the app and the database.

A: For some situations downloading an app from the App Store will be the perfect solution. But often there will be some aspect missing or it will be lacking integration capabilities or no ownership of the data.

A: Not to intentionally be an absolutist, but if your current workflows involve a lot of paper, then yes.  

A: Excel for example is both the interface and the data, Power Apps is a platform that allows business to utilise custom applications with a user-friendly interface. Databases, on the other hand, are structured repositories for storing and organising data. Power Apps can connect to various databases to log, manipulate, retrieve and display data within it sapplications, while databases are primarily focused on storage of the data.