The Creator’s

Manual
The innovator’s guide This how-to guide will take you from building
and deploying your first app, to scaling solutions
to low-code throughout your organization with a robust
governance and adoption strategy. There are no
limits, with Microsoft Power Apps you can innovate
at the speed of your creativity.
The Creator’s Manual

Welcome Creator!
Power Apps is a journey. This manual will guide you through the journey, or rather adventure, of learning about and leveraging
Microsoft Power Apps, to implement a digital culture in your organization. It goes beyond looking

It’s your journey. at technology features. Here you can explore how to have more impact across your organization by
starting with your knowledge of how your company gets stuff done and then understanding how to
take advantage of modern tools and practices. IT pros, citizen developers, pro developers, every role
and department within your organization has a part to play in turning bright ideas into brilliant apps
and embracing a digital culture across your organization.

You are already an expert in your business. Power Apps gives you the tools to act on that expertise and
solve business problems.

By breaking down the process into Ready, Set and Go phases this guide will take you step by step
through building your first app on Power Apps, to establishing and scaling your first team, and then
scaling teams within your organization as you develop a Center of Excellence.

This is not intended to be a technical manual, but rather a guide, that in conjunction with the CoE
Starter Kit (aka.ms/coestarterkit) and the detailed kit on planning your first Power Apps solution
(https://docs.microsoft.com/powerapps/guidance/planning/introduction), will help you be
successful with this technology and help a digital culture thrive throughout your organization.
The Creator’s Manual 3

Ready Set Go
YOUR DIGITAL CULTURE
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS POWERED BY PEOPLE 05 SET 29 GO–THRIVING DIGITAL CULTURE 47
THE POWER PLATFORM 06 PEOPLE 30 PEOPLE 48
MAKING 08 IDEAS TO SCALE INVOLVEMENT ACROSS YOUR ORGANIZATION 31 SKILLS DEVELOPMENT 49
WHAT CAN YOU MAKE WITH POWER APPS? 08 LUNCH & LEARN 31 GO TEAM 50
WHAT WILL YOU MAKE WITH POWER APPS? 09 APP SHOWCASE 31 PROJECT 51
READY: YOUR FIRST FEW APPS 10 HACKATHON 31 PLATFORM 52
SET: MISSION CRITICAL 10 TECHNOLOGY AND IT INTERNSHIPS 32 AI BUILDER 53
GO: END TO END PLATFORM AND APP MODERNIZATION 10 SPONSORSHIP 33 COGNITIVE SERVICES 54
READY 12 COMMUNITY 34 MACHINE LEARNING 54
PEOPLE 13 SET TEAM 34 PROCESSES 55
TIP FOR IDENTIFYING YOUR CHAMPIONS 13 PROJECT 35-37 DIGITAL GUARDRAILS 61
TRAINING 14 PLATFORM 38-40 GO CHECKS 62
APP IN A DAY TRAINING 14 BUILT IN MANAGED DATA PLATFORM 38 YOU’RE GOOD TO GO 63
ADMIN IN A DAY TRAINING 15 PROCESSES 41-45
SPONSORSHIP 16-17 SET CHECKS 46
PROJECT 18 YOU’RE ALL SET 46
IDEATION 19-20
MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT 21
PLATFORM 22-23
PROCESS 24
DIGITAL GUARDRAILS 25-27
READY CHECKLIST 28
YOU’RE READY! 28
The Creator’s Manual 4

Your Digital Culture

Digital transformation is not just a buzzword. It is a way to empower every person to achieve more. More than 500 million apps are
It is about creating a digital culture within your teams and organization. going to be created in the next
five years. That’s more than
all the apps than have been

37%
created in the last 40 years.
of organizations are still using paper to manage critical business processes

That scale of application development means that

65%
we need to think differently about how we build
apps. Most organizations say that accelerating
digital innovation and transformation is the number
of organizations report an app development backlog
one reason they embrace low code application
development. Microsoft Power Apps, a low code
application development platform, empowers

69%
everyone with a foundation for application
development that is scalable, secure and compliant.
of organizations say that accelerating digital innovation & transformation is
Low code application development empowers
the number 1 reason they embraced low code application development
everyone to take part in digital culture with the
agility to respond to changing business needs.

Forrester, Q1 Digital Process Automation Survey (for process improvement efforts 2 years from now); Dresner Advisory Services,
The State of Business Intelligence, 2018 (critical responses only).

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Citizen Developer
Digital transformation According to Gartner “A citizen developer is a user who
creates new business applications for consumption by others
is powered by people using development and runtime environments sanctioned
by corporate IT”. Citizen Developers may not be familiar with
For modern businesses to compete and progress coding language, but are problem solvers who leverage low
with their digital transformation journey, we need code tools, like Power Apps, to develop and build web and
more developers. Just as the traditional approach mobile applications for their organization, in some cases in
to building applications is evolving, so is the partnership with pro developers.
type of skills developers have! Some developers
predominantly use code supplemented with tools
to build apps, and some developers use low code
tools and epic problem-solving skills together
with specialized knowledge of the business to
build solutions. When the coding expertise of
pro developers meets the domain expertise from
the business, the result is greater innovation and
Pro Developer
more problems solved. In fact, Gartner predicts A pro developer is someone who can extend the platform
that by 2023, there will be four times as many to carry out unique scenarios that implement proprietary
“citizen developers” compared to pro developers processes and techniques owned by the organization, usually
in enterprises. through coding using various programming languages. They
may develop custom connectors or reusable components
This new group of problem solvers are needed to that citizen developers can use, or interfaces that are needed
handle an increase in software, application, and to serve a distinctive requirement of the organization.
database development required for the modern
enterprise to support growing business demands.
So, what exactly is a Citizen Developer and a Pro
Developer?
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The Creator’s Manual 6

The Power Platform

While Power Apps is the focus of this guide, understanding the broader Power Platform family that Power Apps belongs to will be useful.

01
Power Apps
02
Power Automate
03
Power BI
04
Power Virtual Agents
enables everyone to start building helps everyone build time-saving empowers everyone to find and enables everyone to create powerful
and launching apps right away using workflows, with a no-code guided share actionable insights, reporting, chatbots that interact with people to
pre-built templates, drag-and-drop experience. Automate everything dashboards, charts and visualizations create personal experiences allowing
simplicity, and quick deployment—then from individual tasks to large-scale so that everyone involved can interpret people to get to the information they
roll out continuous improvements. systems with seamless integration the data and make informed decisions. need quickly—without the need for
to data sources using hundreds of developers or data scientists—by using
prebuilt connectors. a guided, no-code graphical interface.

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The Power Platform

05
Connectors
06
Common Data Service
07
AI Builder
08
Portals
to on premise data sources facilitate is a one-of-a-kind fully-managed data allows you to build AI models quickly enables anyone to build no code
seamless integration with the most platform of computing and storage and without code, enabling anyone responsive websites with customizable
common web services and 1st and 3rd technologies that enables scalability, who wants to uncover patterns in their portal templates and themes that
party systems, including Salesforce, resilience and data integrity with built- data to inform decision-making or give internal and external users secure
Oracle, Workday, Twitter, Cosmos DB, in-security, business logic and rules. drive productivity. access to your data either anonymously
SAP and Service Now. or through commercial authentication.

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What can you make with Power Apps?

Making is ...enabling ...replacing ...creating

the creators of digital transformation paper-based systems, with their digital digital experiences that delight
with the tools to empower change. equivalent. customers and employees.

...building ...owning ...re-defining

intelligent systems, that understand your digital transformation. the jobs of the future.
patterns and provides insights.

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The Creator’s Manual 9

What will you make with Power Apps?

Whatever your goal, this guide will take you Making, can be a solo activity, but its best
step by step through the phases from building when it’s done with a team! As we take you
your first low code application to establishing through these stages, we’ll help you think about
a thriving Center of Excellence that manages how you identify and bring the (dream) team
your entire low code application portfolio, together. Your team will start small, it might just
empowering a digital culture across your start with you and that’s ok, but it will grow as
organization. you progress through these phases.

This guide breaks your low code journey (or

we’d like to say adventure!) into 3 core phases–
READY, SET, GO! You won’t want to jump ahead!

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Ready Set Go
Your first Mission End to end platform and
few apps Critical app Modernization
Power Apps enables everyone to build applications. Once you have had success creating initial solutions with Over time as organizations evolve, they add applications to
In the Ready phase you will learn how to gather an Power Apps, the Set phase is all about taking your digital carry out discrete tasks. Every new application comes with an
initial team and select a use case that is simple but also culture to the next level. With Power Apps, organizations overhead of training, support, updates, as well as the need
professional grade, and one that will positively impact your can build mission-critical applications that can use data to adhere to changing security, privacy, and compliance
organization by using out of the box functionality, that will residing in back-office systems or external data sets from requirements. Many organizations, when considering a low
help you demonstrate the value of this technology and outside of the organization. These solutions tend to need code platform, do so because they want to rationalize their
ROI from this type of rapid application development. For more complex permissions and data strategies. You’ll learn software applications on a platform basis. In the Go phase,
example, if your organization has checklists to complete, about the expanded expertise you might need at this stage, you’ll learn how organizations can leverage Power Apps to
either in a spreadsheet or paper on a clipboard, this and key governance processes you will need to begin prioritize which applications to migrate to take advantage of
could be rapidly built as a Power Apps solution and the establishing a Center of Excellence. a platform that delivers a standardized experience for staff
data captured over time could be used to inform future while achieving best in class security, privacy and compliance.
decision making by uncovering patterns in the data. You’ll learn how a low code platform, like Power Apps, can
be leveraged to not just solve one problem or automate one
process, but enhance and modernize hundreds of processes
across your organization at scale.

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How is each phase structured?

There are People

Identify who you need on your team and
Platform
What parts of the platform do you want to learn

4 stages to
assemble your dream team. Expand your team to about and leverage? Build on your Power Apps
help you scale impact and ensure everyone has a knowledge and skills as you progress through
clear vision of the digital culture the organization the phases.

each phase
is moving toward.

Project Process
Look at the parts of the business you work in This is the most important stage. As you
that will have the highest impact if you could grow, make sure you have admin and
digitize them. As much as possible, you want security governance processes in place. Drive
the first app you build to have a wow factor. creativity but do it with IT in control. Ensure
Regularly review your projects to assess what is you have a robust enterprise structure in
driving your successful projects and what best place before scaling.
practice can be replicated across your other app
development teams.

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Ready
To start, you want to get the right foundations in You are at the beginning of a world of possibilities.
place and build your first Power Apps solutions! In At the end of this phase, you will have everything
this phase you will begin by identifying champions you need to make an app that has high impact to
in your organization who will be key players in your your organization, proving the value of low code
Ready team. Once assembled, you will work together application development.
to ideate and assess project ideas that meet initial
app requirements of delivering organizational impact,
while not requiring a complicated solution that
causes you stumble at the first hurdle. Instead you
will focus on creating a ‘minimum viable product’ and
establishing the process and platform governance
that will set you up for long term success.

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People
It is time to assemble your dream team for your first app. Select people who
will work well together, but also come from different roles and competencies
with various skills and experiences. Having a balance of people with
knowledge of the business and customers and people from IT is a good place
to start! Individuals who are proactive, enjoy learning new skills and problem
solvers are who you are looking for! As a minimum, in the Ready phase,
you probably want to have at least two people in your team, someone from
the business and someone from IT. You might want to bring in professional
developers, people with specialized knowledge of a process or task, as well as
people who may have design and creative skills to help with the user interface
design of your apps, but you don’t have to in phase 1.

Tip for identifying your champions

If you have Microsoft 365 in your organization, it is possible some
individuals have already discovered Power Apps just like you have.
Check analytics in the Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC) or
install the admin components of the CoE Starter Kit as this will
show you everyone in your organization who may be building or
using Power Apps already and you can reach out to them directly.
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Training

App in a Day Training

Microsoft has created an App in a Day training course. Once you have identified your team, if some of
This is a great for team members, whatever their them are new to Power Apps, you will want to get
role, who want to extend their skills to learn how to them powered up! To get your new team skilled
create apps with Power Apps. Once you have people up, consider the following training courses. You can
in your team that have attended one of the in person find more links to training in the resources section
or virtual App in a Day events, you could adapt the at the end of this guide and at aka.ms/mylearn
course materials to align with your organization and
run them internally. Remember, everyone in your There are many training resources available, from
organization is an expert in something. Teaching them the training days already mentioned to online
to build Power Apps helps them harness their skills resources such as forums, documentation, and
into solutions that benefit the organization. eLearning. Additionally, there are community
events such as user groups, conferences, and
happy hours to connect and share ideas outside
your organization with like-minded people.
https://powerusers.microsoft.com

Take a look
at our App in a Day training to get
started today. appinadayka.ms/

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The Creator’s Manual 15

Training

Admin in a Day Training

Microsoft has created the Admin in a Day training You may want to go over case studies from other
course specifically for IT Pros. It allows them to learn organizations that have started their own app
the skills needed to implement digital guardrails, development teams. Microsoft has a range of case
standards, governance, privacy and security on studies if you need one. Consider showcasing apps
Power Apps. Once team members have been trained, built by different teams or organizations to give
they can transfer these skills to others inside your your team perspective of what is possible with low
organization. code app development.

As you assemble your team, discuss the vision for

what you want to achieve and review the tools that
are available and how they can be used in the app
making process. At this point, you are looking to
get quick wins that will help you validate your ideas.

Take a look
at our Admin in a Day training to get
started today. aka.ms/admininaday

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The Creator’s Manual 16

Sponsorship

As you create apps and start involving more people in is to highlight the positive impact the project
from across your organization, you are going to need could have for different stakeholders. For example,
to get buy-in from various stakeholders. you might show an executive projections for cost
reductions, a reporting line manager might be
Citizen developers will come from all parts of your more motivated by the time that solution may save,
organization and will not traditionally sit in IT. As and an individual may be excited by the learning
these people have “day jobs”, they will report to opportunity.
people that will need to buy-in to the transformation
you are bringing using Power Apps. You may need Culture change can take time, and it is important to
to empower people from time-to-time to take address people’s concerns and how it may impact
time from the “day jobs” to be involved in the their part of the organization both in the short term
app making process. Consider how you will get and the long term.
executive buy-in, reporting line manager buy-in
and individual buy-in. An effective way to gain buy-

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Sponsorship

Your first project needs an executive sponsor who Who’s on your dream team?
understands the vision and benefit of developing a
digital culture in your organization and will help you
scale your success to future projects.

Who do you need to get buy-in from to be a sponsor and what do these sponsors care about?

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The Creator’s Manual 18

Project

Product
When considering your digital transformation journey, As we talked about, for executive sponsorship, owner
you need to look at the parts of the business you being able to demonstrate cost savings and
work in that will have the highest impact if you could productivity gains is super important. Keep track
Specialized Citizen
digitize them, automate them and ultimately reduce of the before and after time and effort and try to skills developer
the time and effort involved, not just for yourself but measure and track any cost savings!
also for your work colleagues. As much as possible,
you want the first app you build to have a wow factor.

Executive Creative
sponsor design skills

Pro
developer

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The Creator’s Manual 19

Ideation

Once you have got your team assembled, we Start with an idea that can be iterated on. It is
recommend running an ideation session to identify important to first have a clear understanding of
which project you should start with. Consider the the organizational process that you are looking to
apps that are small enough to be built in less than a improve. For example, moving paper HR forms to
month but that have a high positive impact on people digital or digitizing an inspection process for health
in your company and your end users. This session and safety. Below are some critical questions to
should involve subject matter experts (SMEs) from consider when choosing your first project:
across the organization, developers, and members of
your leadership team, including an executive sponsor, • What is the current process?
to identify as many possible use cases. This executive • What procedures are necessary for privacy or
sponsor will be key to scaling the success of the first compliance reasons?
project. It is recommended to start with a project that • What approval processes or escalations need to
will deliver value to the business, but one that is not be considered?
the most complicated on the list from your ideation • Look at any business process that is done
session. You will learn a lot on the first project and repeatedly. If it could be automated, will it save
having a running list of ideas will ensure you maintain time, make people more productive, and remove
momentum after the first project is delivered. mundane work from people’s day to day jobs?

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Ideation

Create a list of your ideas of processes to digitize Top 5 ideas and their organizational impact.
or make more efficient, this will be the start of your
backlog. While you will ultimately settle on one idea
to begin with, once you have created that first app
this backlog of ideas will form a roadmap of what to
do next.

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The Creator’s Manual 21

Minimum Viable Product HAVI is a great example of a simple process that once
automated can have a massive impact. HAVI is a
global logistics organization working with some of the
world’s largest brands. With nearly 10,000 employees
across the globe, many of whom are freelancers with
So, you’ve settled on an idea for very short-term contracts, they needed a better way
your first app, what next? to manage these contracts and move from relying
on error-prone manual entries to a more modern,
There is a concept when designing new things where ask ‘what if’ questions, ideas will start to evolve. One automated process. They decided to build a custom
rather than aiming for perfection right away, you set out idea is the catalyst of another. An MVP might simply app to automate the entire registration process. The
to first create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The be a board with four wheels, which answers the app allows new hires to complete paperwork online
idea is to define the minimum requirements to solve the faster part of the brief. Your next evolution may be and then automatically uploads it to HAVI’s backend
problem and focus first on delivering just that. a handle for steering. With each improvement, you HR system.
move towards a more efficient and safer product
Let’s use the concept of transportation as an that provides greater utility. From there, follow-up actions are automatically
example. Walking, simply putting one foot in front assigned to the other departments—like Payroll and
of the other, is the original transportation option. We want to take the same approach to create IT—and it is all coordinated through Teams. Not only
However, you have been tasked with producing a apps. Look across your organization for a process has this slashed HAVI’s document processing times, it
way get from A to B that is faster and safer in various or procedure that when it is digitized you will has helped ensure that every new employee has what
weather conditions. In the ideation phase, you save time, provide better results and can be easily they need on their first day of work—from access
would brainstorm how to achieve a more consistent, repeated. This is the starting point of your MVP and badges to software licenses to compensation—and
repeatable outcome with less effort. As we start to first app. what used to take 4-5 hours (or more) to complete, is
now done in under 40 minutes.

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The Creator’s Manual 22

Platform

In phase one, you want to keep it simple! Build The same goes for your “backend”–where your
on your Power Apps knowledge and skills as you data for your application will be stored. Many first
progress through these phases. Depending on the app builders will use a SharePoint list to store their
nature of your first app, you should plan to build data for their first solution as a Minimum Viable
it utilizing mostly canvas based components, or Product. As you get more advanced, and so do
even build the solution from one of our pre-built your apps, you will want to leverage the low code
templates which can be found in Power Apps. With data platform that comes with Power Apps.
350+ prebuilt connectors, the world is your oyster,
but many organizations start with 1st party non- When using a platform like Power Apps, you
premium connectors that are included with Microsoft need to consider how to model your data so
365 to get going (like Microsoft Teams), as this will that it can be easily used for design, reporting,
make the guardrails that you need to put in place machine readability and reusability. You will want
easier while you get familiar with the technology and to consider the architecture of your data, what
build your skills. relationships exist in your data, and more. When
designing your new data collection, consider
For example, most organizations wouldn’t connect to the data lifecycle–input, output, reporting, and
external social media connectors, such as Twitter or integration.
Facebook, until robust data and security policies have
been put in place to ensure that company data is not
accidentally leaked externally.
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Platform

For example, if you were creating an app for a your At this point, you will want to decide on the
HR team for onboarding new employees, you may experience you want to create and the best way to
have an entity that has a list of all the onboarding model this information for reuse. It can be helpful
steps that new employees need to complete and if you have someone on your team that has worked
another entity that has all the documents and the with relationships in Excel or other databases to
details of what an employee needs to complete help design how the data will work on the platform.
at each step. You would then map a relationship Power Apps includes a rich interface designer for
between the steps and the documents. Part of creating experiences and many data connectors
excellent app development is choosing the right to connect to another system to exchange data.
experience based on how people will work with Email is a crucial communication channel used in
the information. Will people work with the data on many organizations, and the apps you create can
mobile devices, desktops, outside your network or in take advantage of this using the synchronization
remote locations? Will other systems need access to between Power Apps and Microsoft Outlook.
the data?

Tip
If not head over to Microsoft MyLearn

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The Creator’s Manual 24

Process
To start with, focus on delivering an app that brings To foster trust across the organization, it is important to implement digital guardrails so that people working with
a lot of value to the organization without needing an organization data follow patterns that prevent data leakage, as well as meeting corporate guidelines for design,
overly complicated build. This is especially important usability, and supportability.
while your teams are developing their skills working
with Power Apps. As their skills evolve, so can the As with many IT initiatives, setting up digital guardrails and governance is not a single step. It requires focus on
sophistication of your apps. multiple aspects:

Look for quick wins and processes that have been

a source of frustration that you can solve in a short Secure Monitor Alert
amount of time.
• Define your environment • Review out-of-box • Automate policies using
strategy analytics management connectors

• Apply the layers of security • Configure audit logs • Onboard new makers,
empower champions and
• Set up data loss • Extract telemetry for foster best practices
prevention policies ad-hoc reporting

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Digital Guardrails

These aspects are the core concept of how to think about governance and how to practically apply it.

Secure–you can also think about this as your setup. This is where you think about your
environment strategy, your data loss prevention policies and your layers of security.

Monitor–once your environments are up and running and your users are building
content and resources, you want to have the ability to go and monitor how the system
is being used, who is creating what resources and who is using them. Capabilities in the
Admin Center as well as Office 365 Audit Log support you with those activities.

Then we look at alerting–once your development gets more sophisticated and you have built
up your policies, you can automate these policies, set up alerts or be notified when certain
conditions are met, meaning you don’t have to go to a dashboard and monitor, but can still react
to certain behavior.

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Digital Guardrails Driving Adoption with Teams

It is also critical here to think about your end goal–you want to set up digital Once you have built your app and have ensured that foundational
guardrails to empower your makers, to enable subject matter experts and to processes are in place for privacy, security and governance, it’s time to share
unlock digital transformation opportunities. your solution with your end users, the individuals in your company who
will be using and benefitting from the app. Depending on your end users,
It’s crucial to involve the IT Pros on your team in setting up your you may need to drive awareness and promote your solution, or give them
organization’s digital guardrails. IT professionals are necessary to manage training on how to use the app on their device. A great way to gain broad
and maintain the apps that are built. They oversee corporate guidelines and distribution of a solution and make the app easy to locate and use, is to pin
requirements such as security, privacy, data integrity and compliance. They the application within Microsoft Teams. Canvas apps can be embedded as a
provide ongoing support for the apps that are built to ensure their integrity is tab in Teams channels or conversations. These apps can also be published to
in line with the organization’s goals and objectives. Teams to make them discoverable in the Teams app store and can be added
to the left-hand Teams app bar by either tenant Admins or individual users.
By placing these apps in context of where users are already working (e.g., a
channel devoted to a specific project or business department) and/or where
users can always easily access them (i.e. the Teams app bar), the app creator
can drive awareness and adoption of their solutions. Regardless of where
or how these apps are added to Microsoft Teams, they will retain the access
permissions established in the Power Apps studio.

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Digital Guardrails

Teams Admins also play a critical role in driving You can track usage of your apps within the Power
adoption of these solutions. Admins can establish Platform Admin Center, and remember to also start
granular policies to dictate which apps their users tracking the time, cost and productivity savings from
are permitted to find and install, including custom your solution to demonstrate its value.
apps uploaded from Power Apps. In the Teams
Admin Center, they can set permissions policies
under “Teams apps”. Additionally, Teams Admins
must establish setup policies that enable custom
apps to be uploaded, and they have the option to
pin specific apps to the Teams app bar for their entire
organizations–which can be very helpful to drive
adoption.

• For additional details on administering Power Apps

in Teams, see the “Power Apps+Teams” whitepaper
at aka.ms/powerappsteams_whitepaper.

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2.6

Ready Checklist Ready Checklist

Identify your champions and future Citizen This is the start of a journey. The first app will create learning for all involved. Depending on the level of digital
Developers literacy of the individuals, this may be a quick process or one that involves more start-up learning on the part of the
Assemble your team, securing the sponsorship of team members. One person with the desire to create positive change can assemble a team of change agents and
key stakeholders champions to develop the next big idea for your organization.

Brainstorm ideas of app you can create that would

Reflect! What did you learn and what might you have done differently?
add value to the organization
Share with us via Twitter @MSPowerApps as we would love to hear from you!
Select your first project and setup your team for
your first app
Focus on creating a functioning MVP
Consider the digital guardrails that should be put in
place to avoid data leakage
Identify data that may be needed from internal
systems–cloud or on-premises
Finalize the device you will be using and have one
available to test
Share and promote the app to drive usage and
measure the impact
Celebrate and reflect on your progress
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The Creator’s Manual

Set
It’s now time to scale up what you are doing and delivered consistently and through standard together like-minded people with similar business
expand on your earlier wins. You can start to tackle processes. A CoE, led by IT, will manage low code goals to share knowledge and success, experiment
more complicated mission critical solutions by solutions across the organization, and through and encourage each other, and provide standards,
leveraging elements of Power Apps, such as 3rd party detailed in product telemetry and governance consistency and governance to the organization.
data connectors, model driven functionality, pro dev processes, will eliminate any Shadow IT, which is IT
integration and tools and the built-in low code data projects and apps that are built or managed in the In summary, a CoE can be a powerful way for an
platform. At this point, you will want to build on your shadows, i.e. that IT are not aware of and therefore organization to align around business goals rather
foundations and guardrails and establish a Center of can’t manage and maintain, ensuring appropriate than individual department metrics.¹
Excellence. Your Center of Excellence may start with data and security policies are applied.
just you or it may begin with a small team of like- As you and your organization learn from making
minded change agents. As people start to see what is Establishing a Microsoft Power Platform CoE means apps and more people get involved, more
possible, you are sure to see the growth that leads to investing in and nurturing organic growth while departments, more teams, more challenging
opportunities. maintaining governance and control. A CoE is business processes can be tackled with apps,
designed to drive innovation and improvement, automation, intelligence and insights transforming
A Center of Excellence (CoE) is a coordinating and through its central function can break down the way you do business.
function which ensures that change initiatives are geographic and organizational silos to bring

¹ Stephen Jenner and Craig Kilfordc, in Management of Portfolios.

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People

As your CoE grows, you may need to expand your As you create more complex apps with a larger
team to help you scale impact. Seek out senior team of creators, you may need to include trained
leadership in your organization who will sponsor the project managers who have project management
growth of your team. You will need architects who experience related to application development.
understand the applications and data you already Where increased integrations and perhaps
have within your company, so that they can provide bespoke connectors are needed, you’ll need to find
guidance in connecting that to the wider goals of the individuals who have the skills, or the willingness to
organization. Whereas citizen developers and pro learn, to deliver on these more complex projects.
developers focus on individual apps, the role of the
architect is to assist in ensuring that individual app Establish product owners as you build more
creation fits into the broader organizational digital apps and as more people get involved in the app
objectives. The architect ensures the right digital development process. It’s important to have an
assets are used, and organizational outcomes are owner for each app product. Depending on the
achieved. solutions you build, you will also want to expand
your team of citizen developers and those with
specialized knowledge.

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Ideas to scale involvement across your organization

Lunch & Learn App Showcase Hackathon

A great way to spread the word inside your If you want to create a serious buzz in your A hackathon is a fun way to engage lots of people
organization is to run regular lunch and learn organization and inspire more people to join your within your organization around a digital culture of
sessions. This is an opportunity for individuals to Power Apps community, an app showcase is where change. The key objective is to develop sample apps
come together to share what they have learned you do it. Teams meet to demo what they have and cultivate ideas to drive digital transformation.
about creating apps and automating processes. built, show problems that they have solved and Teams come together, at the line of business or at the
Sometimes people don’t want to or can’t set aside demonstrate the impact they have created on the global scale, from different roles and departments
a full day to learn something they know very little organization by the apps they have made. It is an to compete and create apps that address an
about. Often it just takes igniting the spark for leaders opportunity for other teams and makers to come organizational need. Each team should be resourced
within the organization to rise-up and inspire others. together with their creations and learn from each with Power Apps and Office 365. The more variety
Hosting lunch and learn and show and tell sessions is other. of skills and roles represented, the better. One or
another great way to form and nurture a Power Apps more facilitator should be involved to organize the
community. It provides an environment for teams to How could Power Apps impact their teams and hackathon, define the teams and the rules for the
share resources, guidelines, and procedures. Lunch enable the digital culture to spread and impact all hackathon.
and learns should be fun and occur regularly. As more parts of the organization?
people across the organization become interested, Successful hackathons often include the following:
they will have a place to see if this is something they team colors, prizes, food, music, laughter, competition.
want to get involved with and a path for them to start
skilling up on Power Apps.

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Ideas to scale
involvement across
your organization

Technology and IT internships How are you going to scale within your organization?

Some organizations that have truly embraced a digital

culture, have instituted what we would call “digital
internships”. Employees within the business, whether
that be in sales, facilities, HR or management, spend 3-6
months within IT completing a digital internship. This is
a big commitment of time and learning on both sides,
but it can have fantastic impact. The intern has detailed
knowledge of the business, customers or their department
and function, and while in IT, they learn about digital
transformation, Power Apps and a CoE. IT and the intern,
as a part of the Power Apps community, jointly collaborate
on digitizing processes within the realm of the digital
intern’s business. This fosters greater understanding and
collaboration between IT and the business and leads to
innovative and creative problem solving.

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Sponsorship

As you look to establish your CoE and scale app To gain buy-in from your leadership team,
creation across your organization, gaining the demonstrate the impact from your apps built in the
sponsorship support of your leadership team is going Ready phase, share other customer success stories
to be critical. Management and leadership play a key from the Powerapps.com website with them, or direct
role in facilitating change in digital culture when they them to the Total Economic Impact report of Power
understand that doing so can have material impact Apps, conducted by Forrester, which outlines the
on the success of their organization by enabling faster time, cost and productivity savings of Power Apps.
time to market and more robust security. When they
lead with a growth mindset, empowering individuals
to be involved in app development projects that
are not part of their original role or job description,
the CoE is more likely to be successful. Enabling
individuals to contribute as citizen developers leads
to an increase in productivity, efficiency and insights
resulting in digital transformation.

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Community Set team Product

Owner

At the heart of growth is a community, a place for people to collaborate,

share ideas and discover new ways to apply technology to achieve more. App in a Project
Day Trainer Manager
Some organizations have called the individuals that make up this community
Power Rangers or Power Champs. It is a safe place to ask questions, to
share tacit knowledge and to expand skillsets. Organizations that experience
massive adoptions create a digital culture that fosters an environment of
ongoing learning as well as provides tools such as forums, regular events and
speaking opportunities. They make sure that every person in the organization
Microsoft
can come together at regular intervals to socialize, share their knowledge and Citizen
Certified Team
explore new possibilities. Leaders who want to create a digital culture will put Developers
Members
a framework in place for the community inside their organization to break
down geographic and organizational silos.

Specific Pro
Skills* Developers

*Integration, Connectors, Specific Interface, creative

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Project
As your CoE begins to form, you will often return to Microsoft Power Apps lets organizations make
that initial backlog of app ideas. At this point, as you applications that meet their specific needs; these
expand the team, it is a good idea to keep adding to applications can be referred to as Line of Business
that backlog by regularly running ideation sessions. (LOB) applications. Applications empower employees
As a Ready team you will have already built apps that to do more and address the day-to-day requirements
solve for straightforward challenges, such as digitizing of the organization by applying the intellectual
paper processes, but as you build out your CoE during property of how your organization functions.
this phase you’ll want to deliver more mission critical Microsoft has designed the platform in a way that
applications. At this stage, aim to develop line of allows you to spend the minimum amount of time to
business (LOB) solutions that have an exponentially get the maximum value from the effort you put into
greater positive impact on your organization’s staff, making apps. Microsoft has built the foundations of
customers, and profit. A LOB solution is one that your app creation, by designing a secure, scalable, and
would be described as vital within your organization. trustworthy platform for app creation at scale.
Trustworthy

Scalable

Secure

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Project

Examples of LOB solutions would be a Sales solution, such as Dynamics 365 for Sales, or a Define Insights
sophisticated Finance solution, such as Dynamics 365 for Finance, but there are thousands of other Set up goals Review how the
off the shelf LOB solutions like these. These solutions automate and digitize lengthy and complex and expected power platform
processes making it more efficient, and easier to surface and act on the data and insights. For outcomes. is performing
example, a Sales solution digitizes, automates and streamlines identifying, managing and closing
sales opportunities.

Northwell Health, New York’s largest healthcare provider, is a great example of a line of business
solution that was built when there wasn’t an off the shelf solution that met their needs. With the
new practical and financial realities of the modern healthcare system, Northwell Health needed Compliance Accelerate
to streamline processes and operations across the organization while prioritizing data privacy and Administration Nurture allows
security. To achieve this, they created an app to provide one consistent view of data that gives leads to for the ability to
physicians, nurses and administrators visibility into the tasks that each team needs to complete— governance accelerate and
everything from fulfilling a request for an extra blanket to making sure the patient gets a needed capabilities like grow adoption.
x-ray. The success of the app and the implementation of the Common Data Service for Power Apps auditing and
have set the stage for more exciting app developments at Northwell. compliance.

Map your line of business solution ideas on a matrix based on their potential impact and complexity.
This map will help you prioritize which line of business solutions to invest in.

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Project

Once you have identified your line of business Automation is key to creating a digital culture. To create a data-driven culture, you need a low
solutions, you can focus on how you will design these No one likes copying and pasting data across code platform that has insights and analyses built
apps. When designing these apps, there are a number applications. No one likes keying data into multiple into its core.
of elements to consider. software applications because the data is not
shared. No one likes doing tedious, mundane work Questions to ask are:
In creating a digital culture, people need the right when it comes to data capture, moving data around
1. What visualizations do we need to make sense of
app for the specific work they are doing; they need to within software applications, or doing repeatable
the data quickly?
have apps that create an experience that allow them work that requires zero thinking. All processes that
2. What is the best format to represent this
to perform at their optimum. This means the right require little to no human decision making should
information, based on role?
app for the environment they are working in, that be considered for automation.
3. What format should be used so that the
considers the device they are using and the methods
information can be used practically? This may
they can use to interact with the app. Questions to ask are:
include dashboards, reports, or real-time
1. What apps need to share information, and how can notification of trends.
Questions to ask are: this be automated?
1. What end-user experience should you make? 2. What process do we have that we can automate?
2. What device will be used for this experience? 3. What procedures or steps could be partially or fully
(desktop, tablet, phone, interactive screen) automated?
3. Will access be from inside the corporate network or 4. What legacy applications could we connect to and
outside the corporate network? gain more value from the data these applications
4. What level of compliance is needed? store?
5. Have accessibility requirements been met? 5. What checks or approvals could be automated?
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Platform
At the Set phase of your use of Power Apps, the sophisticated built in data platform, premium
connectors and pro developer integration is what will allow your teams to expand your app
development use cases to cover more complex solutions.

Built in managed data platform

At the core of the platform is a fully managed intelligent data platform, made of compute and a
range of data storage technologies, with built in business logic, business rules and security. Apps
built using the Power Apps data platform access data via an API which is an application program
interface. It is enterprise scalable, secure and comes with a range of tools that allow you to manage
your data, report on your data and gain insights. Data is stored within a set of entities. An entity
is a set of records used to store data, like how a table stores data within a database. The built-in
managed data platform includes a base set of standard entities that cover typical scenarios, but
you can also create custom entities specific to your organization and populate them with data.
App makers can then use Power Apps to build rich applications using this data. This data platform
enables you to build model driven components for your app, which forms the foundation of your
complex line of business solutions.

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Platform

The ability for Power Apps to integrate with Empower business users with Easily take advantage of
professional developer tools like Azure and Visual
Studio is becoming more important for our customer’s
custom UX controls built by existing data sources and
success as their implementations continue to grow. To pro developers business logic
continue to accelerate the growing trend of low-code
With Power Apps, citizen developers can quickly Power Apps provides access to more than 350+
and code-first “fusion” projects, Power Apps, Azure
start building apps through a wide array of out- data sources out-of-the-box, to systems like SAP,
and Visual Studio are designed to work seamlessly
of-the-box UI components using low-code ServiceNow, Workday, and Salesforce. However,
together. This allows professional developers to
techniques. These apps can continue to grow in if access to a data source where no built-in
effortlessly mix and match low-code platforms, like
sophistication, and developers can use familiar connectivity is available is needed, customers can
Power Apps, with code-first capabilities, like Azure
tools like Visual Studio Code to extend these easily develop custom connectors and leverage
Kubernetes Services or Azure API Management.
applications with custom client-side components. Azure Functions or Azure API Management to
Solutions that blend low-code and code-first
The Power Apps Component Framework (PCF) unlock access to any external data source. Native
platforms empower developers to solve digital
provides the flexibility for developers to create integration with Azure API Management allows
problems quickly and with their preferred tools and
any UX component to support a fully customized for seamless distribution of custom connectors
languages in their existing development environment.
app experience. Components are reusable and to dedicated Power Apps environments for easy
solution aware, thus easily sharable and can plug discovery and consumption.
right into any number of Power Apps. These custom
controls can be built from scratch in JavaScript
and Typescript or leverage common development
frameworks like React.

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Platform

The Power Apps data platform is easy to manage, easy to secure, easy to integrate, and easy to
import. It includes rich metadata and contains logic and validation. You can use productivity tools
like Microsoft Excel to access and work with your data.

If you’ve ever had to bring data from multiple systems and applications together, you know what an
expensive and time-consuming task that can be. Without being able to share and understand the
same data easily, each application or data integration project requires a custom implementation.

The industry standard Common Data Model simplifies this process by providing a shared data
language for business and analytical applications to use. The Common Data Model metadata system
makes it possible for data and its meaning to be shared across applications and business processes
such as Microsoft Power Apps, Power BI, Dynamics 365, and Azure.

If needed, you can also enable external access with Power Apps portals. Empower anyone—either
inside or outside your organization—to interact with your data using portals. If you need to provide
access to customers or stakeholders that are not employed by your organization, Power Apps portals
will allow you to do this.

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Processes
At this point in your journey to creating a digital culture, you will have implemented systems that
allow you to scale within your organization. Where apps replace existing internal processes, it’s
As an administrator you should:
important to run a robust change management process to help staff adjust to the changes and
ensure the solutions are not only deployed but also being utilized. Watch overall adoption by monitoring
insights into how much the apps are being
IT pros should have set up the tools allowing for monitoring of the apps that are being built and used and when
ensuring the correct authentications are in place. They would also oversee the governance of any Check out app launches in terms of being
connectors employed as part of the solution to meet your organizational security requirements. used in browser or via mobile player version
and on which platforms. Following your
One of the key principles of administering the Power Platform is having full visibility into how your device strategy, you could ensure users are
organization is using Power Apps. Insights into your adoption will help you govern and secure the using the latest player edition
platform, identify patterns and enable you to nurture your makers to accelerate adoption.
Regularly monitor overall service
performance to ensure user run-time
The Admin Analytics that are part of the Power Platform Admin Center provide you with
experience when interacting with the
environment-level analytics based on your usage for the past 28 days.
platform services

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Processes

Additional to the out-of-the-box capabilities, IT pros should also provide the following resources and train makers on how to use these tools
Management and Admin Connectors offer the ability to build better apps as you scale:
to use the platform’s own tools to manage and
monitor your Power Apps adoption. Part of the rich • Monitor–debug apps
connector eco-system are admin specific connectors • Power Apps test framework–UI automation and testing
that allow you to further monitor your inventory and • Solutions Checker–app validation
usage, as well as establish and automate your admin • App Checker–app accessibility and formula checking
processes.
IT pros should build dashboards to monitor apps created inside the organization, including the following:

• Environments
• Apps per environment
• Role details–maker, date created, description, who is sharing the app, connectors (APIs) used and permissions
• Number of apps created
• App volume over time
• Number of connectors used

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Processes

Support systems for the apps, including training and knowledge bases, should be implemented.
End-user training for the apps being made should be designed and implemented. You should start
to see a change in the way people look at streamlining how they work, how to use apps to improve
their jobs and create a better working experience. Think about the progression of your makers, and
be sure to offer beginner, intermediate and advanced training—this could be through leveraging
content from the fantastic external community and curating link lists with blog posts and YouTube
videos, as well as hosting internal training events to run App in a day, Advanced App in a day or App
in an hour. Many organizations use either a SharePoint Hub site or Teams to share resources, best
practices and learnings with their makers. Additional to training resources, be sure to also share your
success stories–highlight app makers and their stories, as well as the business value they have added
through their apps to inspire other makers to do the same.

Using the Power Platform Admin center IT pros can monitor and provide guidance to app makers;
they can support the apps that are published for use by other people in the organization. As
mentioned in the Ready phase, IT pros can also implement data loss prevention (DLP) policies to
control what connectors are available for app makers.

You or your Admin will want to use the insights you get through monitoring your usage to drive
action–such as identifying critical, orphaned or unused resources.

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Processes

Some typical assessments an admin would perform would be:

Identify overshared apps

• Resources shared and used by the entire organization might need a stronger support model or be
moved to a dedicated environment
• Sometimes apps are shared with the entire organization or a large number of individual users—if the
app is for a dedicated department, job role, or group of people, you can help the maker by setting
up an AD group to share their app with. Otherwise (a) your entire org will see the app even if it’s not
relevant to them in the Power Apps mobile player or on make.powerapps.com and (b) if the user
does not have access to the underlying data source but only to the app, they will receive an error
message upon trying to launch the app which can cause an increase in support tickets and confusion
• Apps shared with a large number of individual users pose a different risk—if the app is for a specific
job role or department, should an end user move departments or job roles they would still see the
app if it is shared with them and would be able to access the information. Therefore, it would also be
recommended to share the app with an AD group that is tied to a movers/leavers process instead.

Identify suspended flows

• Flows will be suspended due to using a combination of connectors that conflict with the company
data loss prevention policies or billing restrictions.
• Find those flows and work with the maker to identify if the flow is still needed, and if so, what policy
violation they’ve encountered. Educate the maker, modify the DLP policy or create an environment
that permits the connector combination for scenarios that are useful and secure. Your Digital Ready Set Go
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Processes

Identify orphaned apps or flows Communication is key to success; it doesn’t matter

• Orphaned apps, where the app owner has left the org, will still work for end users but changes or how great your work is unless you are sharing
bug fixes can only be made by an owner. It is therefore important to identify orphaned apps and find that work across the organization in a way that
a new owner for them or work on a retirement plan for those apps. generates positive buzz. Be mindful of the dynamics
• Orphaned flows, where the flow owner has left the org, will stop working. It is therefore important to between functions and have clear processes for
identify orphaned flows, check if they are still needed and find a new owner. change management and scaled learning. Stay
focused on delivering value to your organization,
Implicitly shared connectors showcasing your success, and inspiring the next
• Some connectors, like the SQL Connector used with SQL Server Authentication are shared implicitly generation of citizen developers.
with users.
• Identify apps using the SQL Server Connector, ensure the end users is aware of the risk and
help them mitigate it by enabling AAD Authentication for SQL or moving the resource to a new
environment with restricted maker access.

An admin will also want to clean up unused resources and remove or archive them from their tenant.
One of the reasons for this is that unused resources that are still shared with users would still be
accessible through the maker portal or mobile apps and lead to an untidy and unorganized user
experience. There’s a variety of factors to take into consideration when looking at deleting resources;
such as when was the app last used or modified, does the app include a non-production word such as
demo or test in the name or has it likely been created from a template and never been modified since.

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3.6

Set Checks You’re all Set

1. Meet regularly as a community of likeminded people to foster informal At this point, the systems you put in place will lead to scale and repeatability
discussion and ideation. as well as opening opportunities for more and more people to get involved.
2. Run regular lunch-and-learn sessions to foster community, sharing of ideas The success of your complex line of business apps will demonstrate the
and learnings. significant impact low code development platforms can have. For the
3. Identify and expand your app creation team—consider including architects, individuals involved in building the CoE and your Admins, you will start
specialist project managers, and people skilled in integration and to see a change in people’s self-confidence. People who would not have
connectors. considered themselves technologists start to realize that they can create apps
4. Apply the project framework to your app development process. even complex ones; they can automate the repeatable parts of their roles
5. Collaborate with solution architects in the app creation process to lead and those of others. They see the data that their organizations work with has
strategic insights concerning data, systems, and governance. meaning and patterns and insights that can be used to inform decisions. At
6. Work with IT to ensure systems have been configured for data loss this point, you’ll see digital culture emerging in your organization that will
prevention and that the right governance is in place. open new opportunities, new possibilities, and new directions.
7. Take management on the journey, ensuring their sponsorship of your
Center of Excellence. It’s that time again–Reflect! What did you learn and what might you have
8. Map and measure the impact of your LOB solutions. done differently?
9. Undertake typical admin assessments and drive action.
10. Celebrate as a community and reflect on how far you have come and how Share with us via Twitter @MSPowerApps as we would love to hear from you!
your team has grown. #Teamworkmakesthedreamwork

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Go
Thriving Digital Culture
At this point, you can achieve massive organization- At this point, you will want to consider how you will
wide change. You need to seek out problems that you scale your app maker production. The Go phase will
can solve, not only at scale but also at speed. help you learn how to take your fledgling Center of
Excellence to the next level, turning it into the heart
One of our customers once said “We needed to really of a thriving digital culture so you don’t just support
enable the portfolio and not solve just one business and manage one app, but thousands of apps. You
problem. Our business problem became how do we will also understand the platform capabilities to
build a thousand apps at scale, not how do we build create thousands of apps that solve a myriad of
one app?” Up to now, you’ve been learning to solve business challenges, in a sustainable and secure way.
individual business problems. Be that from digitizing a
paper process to streamlining a complex process in a Lastly, we look at how you can start to build on
sophisticated line of business solution. Now, we start your digital culture, with a data digital culture, and
to gravitate from “solution” to platform. It is at this find and leverage insights in and across your app
platform phase that organizations truly understand portfolio.
the impact and business value a platform like this can
add to an organization once embraced at scale.

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People
Rapid app development can only happen at the speed that operations, such
as IT, can support the apps created. For this to work, all teams need to have
a clear vision of the digital culture the organization is moving toward and be
aligned on the model. To get the maximum value form the apps created, they
need reliable support, governance and maintainability, regardless of which
model you adapt. As technology evolves, updates will need to be made on
the apps to keep them current. Having not only an awareness of change, but
a plan is a key to successful apps

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Skills Development Look for people with skills and strengths in the following roles:

Citizen Developers: continue to bring their day to day experience of how their job is done and provide the right
tools and training so they can create apps to drive value
Pro Developers: will design advanced interfaces using PCF as well as building complex relationships or integrations
with other applications, when the out-of-the-box limits have been reached, and the app needs to be extended
Growing your pool of talented people should be
front and center at this point in your journey. You Trainers: are necessary to train others on how to use the apps that are built and made available across the
will have observed that the citizen developers of organization, as well as providing training on how to build apps
yesterday become the technologists of tomorrow. Change Management Owner: critical for organization-wide adoption of changes to software, systems and
As their appetite to learn grows, they will become procedure that impact people
the leaders and trainers of your future citizen
Program Owners: will own multi projects, they will have a strategic view of organizational priorities and will focus on
developers. Some may go on to specialize in specific
outcomes and engagement of everyone involved in app making
areas on Power Apps, learning excellent technical
skills that enable more advanced problem solving Product Owners: will own specific apps, they will be focused on user experiences that delight and apps that create
across your organization. Across the whole team, tangible value for all stakeholders.
talent gaps need to be identified and filled. Formal Architects: will understand the strategy that the organization wants to achieve as well as using the best technology
training programs should be implemented. You to achieve organizational outcomes. They will understand the big picture from a technology perspective and will
need to identify what skills are required to solve the provide guidance and technical leadership
challenges your organization is facing.
QA & Testing: needs to be part of scaling app creation; quality and reliability will be expected.
IT Pros and Admins: lead the governance, compliance and supportability of apps across the organization.

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Go Team
Pro Developer Every Developer
(Code First) (Low Code)
Shared

Stability and maintaining momentum are a risk that Visual

Studio
VS
Code
Power
Apps
you need to be aware of at this point. There is a need
for robust governance that allows adherence without Azure and Office services
PCF Controls
being burdensome. It’s a juggling act that needs to
be managed. Many people come to the table with
Experience and business process
strengths and skills to contribute to the app creation API
Management
Azure
Functions
AKS Cognitive
Services
Connectors
journey and are positive about what can be achieved.
Some people may feel vulnerable and worry that
their current role is evolving, and the way things have Azure DevOps
Build UX with Departmental Process
Microsoft SQL Azure SQL Data Cosmos DB components integration reengineer
always been done no longer applies. You should be Graph Warehouse

aware of these factors. If handled well, they will allow

you to accelerate your growth, just as the alternative Governance and management
is possible if not handled correctly.

Distribution Best practices Center of Continuous

excellence improvement

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Project
You will most likely have a long list of new apps you want to build by now. Regularly Now you already know how to build simple productivity driven apps and complex line
review your projects to assess what is driving your successful projects and what best of business solutions. This is the time to review all your legacy apps and software and
practice can be replicated across your other app development teams. determine which solutions you can modernize and replace with Power Apps. Power Apps
can now become an integral part of your integration, API management and infrastructure
What lessons can be learned and applied for the not so successful app projects? strategy. This is a great opportunity to streamline your portfolio and save on costs.

Are there efficiencies that can be realized, are there patterns that lead to high Whether you need to provide access to new or existing data that lives in the cloud or on
value and impact? premises, you can leverage Azure Functions and Azure API Management to create custom
connectors to unlock access to any external data source. Native integration with Azure API
If you have been celebrating your new app launches across the organization, you will Management allows you to seamlessly push these custom connectors to dedicated Power
have created interest and buzz in other teams that want apps designed for their part Platform environments for easy discovery and consumption in Power Apps. Customers
of the organization. Your list of app projects will have grown considerably, and you will can realize quick value by leveraging existing systems of record and APIs by simply
need to continue sorting your project backlog on several factors. publishing them as Power Platform connectors for Power Apps developers to leverage in
their solutions. This will allow customers to utilize their microservices strategy and data
• Business impact estate to simply build UX answering the age-old question about what solutions include
• Time to value and how the experience will be built out.
• Resources available

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Platform
Intelligent systems are becoming part of life; we expect more from apps and
software than ever before. We demand more from our data. As the amount
of data we create and produce increases, we need better ways to understand
the patterns that the data reveals. We need better tools to allow us to focus
on the things we should be focusing on to create the change we need to
see in our organization, to future proof ourselves and take advantage of
the new opportunities it can uncover. In Ready and Set you learned about
the core elements of Power Apps, and now you can explore ways to harness
insights and act on them within your solutions and drive a data digital culture
throughout your organization.

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AI Builder

Bring AI to your apps with AI Builder. Enhance your Here are a few examples of AI Models that can be
apps and business processes with AI that is easy to leveraged:
build into apps and configure within Power Apps. AI
builder allows everyone to get up and running quickly Binary classification uses historical data to predict
with artificial intelligence. The starting point with AI whether new data falls into one of two categories.
in the past was a Data Science degree, not anymore.
Text classification tags any snippet of text based
Now it’s possible to use the data you already have,
on the historical data you provide.
select an AI model, tailor the model to your needs and
begin training the AI model on your data. From there, Object detection lets you count, locate, and
you are ready to start using your AI model insights in identify selected objects within any image.
your apps. Form processing identifies the structure of your
documents based on examples you provide to
extract text from any matching form.
Sentiment analysis can detect positive or negative
sentiment in textual content.
Key phrase extraction identifies main points in a
text document.
Language detection identifies the language of a
piece of text.
Text recognition extracts text from images. Your Digital Ready Set Go
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Cognitive Services Machine Learning

To take the next step in your AI journey, you can If you want to go further with AI, you can advance to
extend what is provided in AI Builder by using Azure machine learning. Azure Machine Learning provides
Cognitive Services. Cognitive Services bring AI within enterprise-grade machine learning service to build
reach of every developer, without requiring machine- and deploy models faster. Empower developers
learning expertise. All it takes is an API call to embed and data scientists with a wide range of productive
the ability to see, hear, speak, search, understand, and experiences for building, training, and deploying
accelerate decision-making into your apps. machine learning models faster. Innovate on a secure,
trusted platform, designed for responsible AI.

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Processes
At this point, your app delivery velocity should have stabilized, and have a level of predictability
based on past experiences that should influence your decisions.

When it comes to what type of process you can improve on or automate you should now be familiar
with the more than 350+ that allow you to connect to microservices. That way you will know where
you need to create your own connectors to extract value from existing data sets via application
programming interfaces (APIs).

In some situations where legacy software is still in use but does not have APIs, you could consider
how to enhance your process by using Power Automate Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Data can
be extracted or updated using UI flows, saving staff hours and hours of time—keeping data in-sync
across back-office systems—not to mention eliminating human error in these repeatable processes,
leading to better data quality.

Depending on the size of your organization, you may want to formalize your governance approach
by implementing a structured model. You should consider the following ways to structure your team
and decide what is the best fit for your situation and organization. There are a few models to choose
from, or you may find that a mix and match approach works best for you.

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Starting the digital transformation:

De-centralized Model

Begin the digital transformation by solving single needs quickly through

low-code for immediate value in departments, or lines of business. Most
likely, based on the Office seeded plans, many departmental solutions will be
built across a customer’s organization allowing multiple solutions to be built
simultaneously using data sources in Office like SharePoint and Excel. As the
number of these solutions grow, typically IT teams will begin to engage and
start to apply some high-level governance to ensure corporate compliance.
These may include things like DLP governance, connectors management,
and license management to ensure users and developers can safely build and
release solutions with minimal intervention from IT, while keeping the data
estate safe and compliant. This is a great self-service option.

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Growing the digital transformation:

Matrixed Model

While continuing to grow the numbers of departments and lines of business

included, customers can begin to undertake more transformation with a set
of CoE analysts and developers that cover the organization’s needs holistically
to drive long-term value throughout the organization. This will include some
level of IT oversight since often those intra-departmental solutions include
shared datasets from systems that require CRUD data. That is usually the
tipping point for an IT team to be called in to help a team of analysts and
low-code developers form rules of engagement across departments. This
team should also consider the notion of a Center of Excellence to manage
their data estate and deploy solutions with guidelines for everyone. This
works well for self-service and small cells to deliver options quickly with little
IT engagement.

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Creating a Center of Excellence: Centralized Model

Once the organization has reached the need to create The Center of Excellence model is the most
a Center of Excellence, there will be many things to effective way to drive change across your
consider. In this model, you create central teams of organization and is the best to deliver any type
product owners comprised of business analysts and of application. Here is a digital briefing from
business owners, citizen developers that own the Schlumberger depicting this type of model having
low-code delivery of departmental solutions from grown through both de-centralized and matrixed
around the organizations business units, professional models. Let’s visualize it on the next page.
developers owning code-first solutions working in
tandem with the business to deliver in a shared model,
architects that own the middle tier and services, and
IT owners that own the licensing and systems in which
everyone operates. With this model, you create a
central team that can pick up development of apps
based on organizational properties. Additionally, as
they would have foundational expertise in Power
Apps, your team will include members who specialize
in specific parts of the Power Platform such as Power
Automate, Power BI, and the Power Apps Component
Framework, or they could specialize in third party
integration and artificial intelligence.

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Creating a Center of Excellence: Centralized Model

Type of Application Delivery Build Time of Lifetime of the
Examples IT Engagement
delivery model type the application application

Self-Service Any 1-2 weeks 6-12 months Small, departmental or LOB solution.

Decentralized IT
Matrixed/
Small teams 3-6 months 6-24 months Small teams working to deliver medium solutions or multi-dept solutions.
Centralized

Multi department or Matrixed/ Large matrixed teams working to deliver medium and large solutions
3-6 months 6-24 months
large LOB solutions Centralized or intra-dept solutions.

Large product deliveries across an enterprise leveraging a mixture of

Large scale
Centralized 1-2 years 5-7 years low-code and code-first Power Apps solutions along with vendor and Centralized IT
product delivery
1st party solutions.

Surround strategy for a 3rd party system of record and support framework.
Large enterprise
Centralized 7 years 10-15 years E.g. SAP implementation and surrounding it with a mixture of low-code and
vendor delivery
code-first solutions in Power Apps and other 1st and 3rd party integrations.

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Creating a Center of Excellence: Centralized Model

How will people find these great apps that you are One way to solve this problem is to build an
creating? internal app marketplace for people to find apps
and access training on how to use them. Develop
App discoverability is essential when you are at the Go a plan for how you will make the apps you create
stage. Not everyone can be at every app launch party; discoverable by the right teams, roles and people
maybe new people have joined since the apps where across your organization.
created, how will they find the apps you have built?

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Digital Guardrails

A Center of Excellence developing thousands of apps at scale will require more robust guardrails
than at earlier stages. Initially, your focus was on setting up and securing the platform through
establishing an environment strategy, setting up DLP policies and ensuring appropriate security roles
are assigned. As you scale, you will look at automating some manual tasks and driving actions based
on insights you gather from your adoption.

Here’s a few things you will be looking at;

• Automate the creation of environments for developers by building a request and approval process
for them to follow
• Implement Application Lifecycle Management by using the Azure DevOps Build Tools
• Automate the clean-up of unused environments, apps and flows
• Identify critical and production applications based on usage, and promote them to appropriate
staged environments (development/test/production) to ensure changes made in development do
not break end-users in production
• Establish an automated process for makers to provide more information about their apps, such as
business justification, impact of an outage and risk assessment to allow you to get a better picture
of what your makers are building
• Continue to measure the business value your makers and apps add to showcase the impact Power
Apps is adding to your organization

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Go Checks

Celebrate your wins visibly to inspire people Develop a plan for how the apps you create will
across your organization to get involved. be discovered.

Decide on the model that suits your business Learn about artificial intelligence and AI Builder.
needs.
Scope opportunities to expand your impact
Map out the skills and gaps of your team and with Machine Learning.
plan for growth.
Case study your successes, record videos,
Regularly review project impact, you can learn see if you can make it go viral inside your
more from failures than successes. organization.

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You’re good to Go

You are now a mature app creation team; you are agents of positive change in your organization. By
this point, the many people that have been involved in the various apps you have created will hardly
recognize how far they have come. They may have started out in roles within your organization that
were not involved in building software; now they are leading teams building apps. Like many, they
have become technologists. They have developed skills that will enhance their careers for years to
come. They may have developed their skills so much that the value they bring to the organization
means they are rewarded more than they thought was possible. That’s the beauty of Power Apps, it
allows people to embrace a digital culture and build amazing apps that create massive impact, and in
the process find that they have learned skills to set them up for a future in app making.

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You’re good to go

Powerapps.com

Congratulations on working through the innovators guide to low code and

bringing innovation, change and a digital culture to your organization!