Installing PowerApps

[grseach]

My employer has asked me to investigate whether the Power Platform might be useful. I've never used it, so I'm hoping someone here might be able to answer my questions.

All my employer's computers run Windows 10 Pro and Office 365 (E3 subscription); all in a Windows Server 2016 Standard environment. The Power Platform apps are intended for that environment. At home, however, I run Windows 10 Pro (retail license) and my own personal Office 365 Family license; all in a Windows SBS Standard 2011 environment.

As I said, the Power Apps are specifically for my employer's environment, but it would be nice if I could run it in my personal (home) environment as well, for days when I work from home. The accounts for both environments are different (one belongs to my employer, whereas the other belongs to me).

QUESTION 1:
Can I install the Power Apps in both environments, and make sure that the account under which it is installed in my home environment works just the same as if it were installed in my employer's environment? I don't want to mix up (and thus mess up) my home environment. Do I need to install the apps in a special way for this to work?

QUESTION 2:
I've been specifically asked to look at Power-BI and Power Automate. Since our use case for Power Automate works on our filesystem which spans 3 geographically disperse servers, it appears to require a local Gateway (presumably one for each server/region). Is there an evaluation solution that would allow me to test those features from the office and from home (without mucking them up, as mentioned above)? I ask because I believe that to use Power Automate against a filesystem, we need the Pro version, which doesn't appear as part of the evaluation download.

Many thanks in advance,

Graham R Seach

(Access MVP 2001-2010)

[mdevaney · Accepted solution]

@grseach 
#1  PowerApps does not require any installation.  It is simply 'there' when you login to Office 365 in your web browser.  There is not any desktop version.

PowerApps built in your work environment cannot be accessed from your own environment.  You can download a PowerApp and import it into another environment.  But only the PowerApp itself gets imported: not the datasource, the assoicated Flows, etc. unless you package it as a solution (a more complex Application Lifecycle Management feature that I've not really used yet).

#2.  There's no such thing as an evaluation download.  Just start a 30 day free trial of Office 365 E5 Enterprise and conduct any tests you wish.  It comes with all the apps you wanted to test.  Just don't expect to be able to take any progress you've made with you once the trial is over.  https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/microsoft-365/business/office-365-enterprise-e5-business-software?ac...

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