Installing Power Apps and Environments

1. 45. Introduction to Power Apps, incl. canvas and model-driven apps

Hello, And now we have finished with Power Bi. We're going forward and having a look at PowerApps. And in the next video, we're going to be signing up for PowerApps and going into this interface. However, before we do, I thought it might be useful to have a look at some of the terminology that we will be using, particularly canvas apps, model-driven apps, and portal apps. And what is the difference between them? Well, let's have a look at some of the apps that we'll be creating in this course. We will be creating them usually from data and the computer will then assist us. So this is the equivalent, in other places, of using an expert.

So first of all, we've got this canvas app. So a Canvas app allows me to say, okay, this is a screen size and this is where everything goes. So we've got quite a lot of customization available. You can see we can customise the size of the font depending on, for instance, the value of the background or lots of things. And then we can go from one particular section, so the gallery section, where we can see lots of people and have a look at the details of individuals, for instance. So with a canvas app, you are looking at pixel perfect screens. I want everything exactly where I want it and I start off with some idea of the data, but I design the layout exactly how I would want it. Then we've got model-driven apps. So this is based on data that we've got in something called the Data Verse, also known as the Common Data Service. And with this, the layout is a bit secondary; it's adaptive. So I'm not trying to get pixel-perfect everything exactly what I want. Because of its responsive design, it may mean that things are resized, so it'sdata first rather than the layout first. This can make for a simpler user interface.

However, behind the scenes, the business process can be a lot more complex if I want it to be. For instance, if I click on somebody, I can get a lot more details. I can create these forms, I can create views, I can create graphs, I can create dashboards, and I can even integrate canvas apps into my model-driven apps. So I'm hoping you can see from this very high level introduction the difference between canvas apps, which we'll be looking at first, and model-driven apps. Then we've got portals. Portals are completely different; they are web pages. So it's a sort of similar thing to WordPress. I can create my own website, but I can also use data from the Dataverse or CDs,the common data service, as part of it. For instance, I have submitted a new contact and now I can see the information on my website. Obviously, if you're creating a real website, you'd be worried about authentication and so forth. And we'll briefly touch on this. Now, in the next video, we're going to be creating our access to get into PowerApps, and from there we'll be creating some sample data and so forth. We might just have a brief look at the pricing before we do that. The way that I will be doing it,we'll be looking at a trial package. So you don't need to enter a credit card for a 30-day free trial. If, however, you want to continue after this free trial, you can do so for $40 per user. That is for unlimited apps per user. If you don't want unlimited apps, then you can pay $10 per user per app per month. And it's not actually per app.

You get the Canvas app and Amodel app included in the price. If you want to continue using portals, then this is a bit costly at $100 per month for an unauthenticated version of the portal and $200 a month for an authenticated version. We'll be looking at AI builder much later on in this course, but as you can see, it's about $500 per month for a standard number of units. Now, suppose you just wanted to experiment with PowerApps rather than licence them fully. Well, there is such a thing as the PowerAppsCommunity Plan that you can do and that allows you access to Powerups and Power Automate. The only thing you can't do with it is And the reason why I'm using the other model for this course is that you cannot share. So this may be a better option for you if you simply want unlimited access to your skills, Power app, and Power Automate and have no plans to share them with others. If that's the case, just go to PowerApps Community Plan and start your installation. In the next video, however, what we will be doing is installing the trial version of PowerApps, and then we'll be creating our very first canvas app. We will be looking at environments; the area that you're working in, and then the data verse, also known as the Common Data Service, which is the sort of database that all three of these apps (Power Automate plus) offers can connect into. After that, we will continue our study of the Canvas apps. But first of all, let's get a free trial of Power apps.

2. Signing up for PowerApps

In this section, we're going to have a look at PowerApps. So I'm just going to Google PowerApps and you can see them on PowerApps Microsoft.com. PowerApps, the world needs great solutions. Create your own quicker law court apps. Apps, or indeed, no code apps as well, are available. So you can see the sort of things that we are looking at. So you can create an app that shows different types of vehicles. Clicking on each one, you can see we've got a certain workflow that could happen. Continue inspection. And you've got connectors to lots of different types of data. I'm going to say over 200 different types of data. Online it does say 200 or 270. So I'm just going to stick to the loss of that number 200. PowerApps, as you can see, are part of the Powerplatform, which includes Power Bi, which we've just had a look at, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agent. So we're now looking at Power apps.

So let's click on Start three. So I'm going to enter an email address,a work email address, as opposed to one that's got Microsoft.com or that sort of thing. You can see it's asking me to verify my identity. So I'm just going to put my phone number in and click "Text Me." So now I typed in the number that came through mymobile. Did I get to my email address for my company? So in other words, it must not be acomma or something else that's generic like Outlook.com@gmail.com. So yes, I'm going to say yes. And a verification code has been sent to PowerApps, my email address. And in my case, it gets sent to my junk email. So if you don't receive it within a few minutes, make sure you check your junk email. So after this, I need to put in my name, create a password, and confirm the verification code that's come up in my email, and do I want to receive information, tips, and offers from Microsoft? So now, just click Start, and you're on the Power apps home screen. In the next video, we'll be creating our very first app.

3. Creating our first canvas Power App

In this video, we're going to have a very quick creation of our very first canvas app. Though in later videos we'll be doing things a lot more slowly, I think it's best to just start and get our feet running. So in this video we're going to be creating an environment. So it's a big container concern container.It's going to contain a database, and then it's going to contain our first app. What I'm going to do now is go to Datatables and I'm going to create a new environment. So in this environment, I'm going to call it PL 900, see if that's allowed. Region Europe Each environment can only be in a particular region. And then you've got an environmental type. In this case, trial or production So I'm going to have the trial environment type. So let's create this environment. And so we can see at the top, creating your environment. And you can see we have a trial environment. It will expire in 29 days. It actually expires after 30 days. It's just rounding down and is only for a single user. You will need to convert it to a production environment afterwards. My environment now includes access to the common data service. This is the old name for the Data Verse. So I need to create a database to start using it. So I'm going to create a database with my environment. So what currency? As a result, I'm going to use US dollars. I'm going to use English as my language English.And this is the crucial bit. I'm going to include sample data. So I'm going to click to create my database. So you can now see Creating Your Database on the database. So now on the left hand side, let's go down under Data. Let's go into tables. And if you're seeing that there's no database created, then you're clicking a bit too quickly. Maybe just wait a moment. And then again, we'll go to Data Tables.

And here we have lots of tables. And if we go into account, and if we go into data, we can see some sample data there. I'm now going to go home. I'm going to click on Start from Data, CommonData Service, or Data Verse as it will be updated to create a connection to the Common Data service premium connection. I'm going to choose a table. I'm going to choose this account that we just had a look at. The computer is now making a canvas form. So here is my form. If I click on this play button at the top,we can see that we now have sample data. But we are also able to look at the data. We're able to edit the data if we so wish and so forth. So click on this X on the top right to close this, then click OK. And I'm going to now close this screen. I am going to save the changes. I'm going to call this my first app. Click Save and go back into my original screen and just click refresh just to see if there are any changes. So we've had a quick tour of power apps. We've seen that we are able to create something called an environment. We've created a database in the common data service,or data verse, and we've created a canvas app that allows us to see the data that's in it. So there's a lot of questions that you're going to have and we're going to be breaking this down bit by bit. So in the next video, we're going to start where we originally started to ask ourselves, what is an environment?

4. 14. Describe Environments

In this video, we're going to talk about environments. And perhaps one of the best ways of talking about environments is by looking at the Admin Center. So you can see some things about the environment. And if you just click on the environment, you will just change the environment. You can see that we've got the default environment and then this new environment. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on the wheel, I'm going to click on the Power Apps Admin Center, and you can see this new environment has been successfully created. And I'm just going to click on it. So what is the environment? Well, an environment allows you to store, manage, and share data within the Power Platform data.So we created a database that allows us to store apps and allows us to store flaws. It also allows us to have portals that are part of Power Apps as well as Dynamic 365 apps. Now, each environment allows the creation of one database database. So that is what we have created. An environment is created. It's part of Azure Active Directory. So if you hear that it's part of an Azure ad, then it is actually created in Azure. And the power platform communicates with Azure. It is a tenant. So it is a company. It is an organization. You can see that I created it for Europe. Each environment is bound to a geographic location. The database that I have created is also bound to that location as well. So what does this mean?

If you're in Australia, for instance, and you want to communicate with my form, with my environment, with my database, then you're going from Australia to Europe and back. So there may be a bit more latency. So I would create your environment while your users are going to be using it, but B, bearing in mind any data governance rules that you might have. For example, in Europe, we've got something called the GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, which says that this is what you need to do with data. Here are some really important things relating to data. Because I live in Europe, it makes sense, therefore, for all of my data, even though I'm using sample data in this particular example, to be in Europe. If you're in North America,it makes sense for it to be North America. You can also create environments by going to this Power Platform Admin Center. And you could create a new environment by clicking on this new button. Why would you want multiple environments? Well, maybe you want to visit different geographic locations. So maybe you do have a big need for an Australian region. So you can see the sort of regions that we've got. It doesn't include Australia, but does include Japan. It does include Asia. Maybe you want a different environment because you've got a different type of environment that's needed. Now we have got a trial environment. For now, this environment is only for 30 days and it's only for one user.

So it's a very short term and it expires out of that. But you can convert it to a production environment. If you want that for permanent work, you need a gigabyte of available database capacity for that. Now, there are other types of environments. There is a sandbox environment, so that is for development and testing. It allows you a bit more, like, for instance, being able to use copy and reset. We've also got two environments which aren't here: the developer environment and If you've got a community plan license, then you would be on a developer type license. And it might just be useful at this stage to find out what we've actually signed up for. We have signed up for a 30-day free trial and we can see it's a 30-day free trial. Because if I click on the plan, if I click on this wheel and then go to plans, you can see this is a free trial. It's a 30 day free trial on the per user plan. After the 30 days, it will cost $40 per user per month. There is a cheaper plan, which is the Per App plan. So, if you only want to create a single app,then this will cost $10 per app per month. Actually, that's not strictly true. The Per App plan actually allows you two apps of different kinds.

A canvas app, a model-driven app, and a flaw in power automation But let's just stick with the idea that it costs for a particular unit. Now it may be that you want to continue with PowerApps after this 30 day trial,but you don't actually want to spend money. Or you could go on the Community Plan.This gives you the free environment I was just talking about. It's a developer's environment. But for this course, I need to be able to demonstrate how to publish and share an app. I can't do this in the Community Plan.The community plan allows for everything. It's fully featured with just one exception; you cannot share. So if I scroll down what's included, you get powerout to get power automated, and you get the data verse. It's designed for individual use; restricted for single users; no ability to share apps. That is the major thing, and it's not intended for production use at all. So we've got this 30 day free trial. So if you were using the Community Plan,then you would be a developer type. There is another one in teams called Microsoft Database for Teams. It's automatically created in teams if you're using this. And you can see when I'm creating a new environment, we've got the ability to create a database for this environment as well. There is one other type of environment, and that type is the default environment. This is the environment which is automatically created and, basically, do not use it unless you have got a very particular reason. It cannot be deleted. It cannot be backed up or restored.

All licence users will be automatically added to something called the Environment Maker Role, which allows you to create new resources and environments, including apps and connections, gateways and floors, but doesn't allow you to actually access the data. And one of the major drawbacks, apart from not having the database, the database that we've previously created,is that it is limited to 32GB of storage. So if I were you, I would create, as I just did, a new environment straight away. So environments allow you to store, manage, and share data, apps, and floors within the Power Platform. You can have a common data service or database. You don't have to have one, but you can do it bound to a geographic location. So you might want to have multiple environments for different geographic locations, and you might want to have different environments for development, testing, and production. So you can create new environments in the Power Platform. Admin Center, Admin Center by Wheel, and Admin Been Center And then you can create a new environment, including a trial environment, which expires after 30 days.

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