New PowerApps and Flow Licensing coming October 1, 2019

[Pstork1]

If you haven't seen the announcement yet about the Licensing changes that are coming to PowerApps and Flow starting on October 1, 2019 you really need to read the following Blog. This announcement was originally made at Inspire this year, but has undergone a number of significant changes.  Make sure you read this and understand what it means to you and your organization.

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-licensing-options-for-powerapps-and-flow/

[PaulD1]

Time for a mini-rant.

Earlier this week I have spent considerable time and effort porting an App from D365 to CDS connectors (prompted by the banner in the designer) only to discover there is a known bug with the CDS connector with no resolution other than to keep deleting and recreating galleries until you get lucky and it works (for a while, then you have to go through the process again).

Yesterday in trials of an App, saving an image to Azure Blob Storage from PowerApps takes a couple of seconds on Web and iOS and a couple of minutes on Android - still investigating but very much seems like a platform issue.

This morning the behaviour of Explicit Column Selection has been changed breaking existing production apps used by hundreds of our users.

MS thinks this platform is mature enough to charge $10 per App per User per Month?

[Anonymous]

@PaulD1  well put, I totally agree that its not ready to be charging at this level and stand up to the competition. 

I could build a case for this in our business but in the back of my mind I am worried about the bugs that I am aware of that I know would hold us back - they did this a year too early I think. One can only hope that any new funds that they get as a result of the licence change quickly results in massive input into the platform which will resolve these issues fast. I hope that MS do this becuase I love the Powerplatform and I want to see it help businesses reach their potential! 

[pulsebeat]

@Anonymous  

"I could build a case for this in our business"

I would really like to know what that is. I just don't see it, no matter how many ways I work the numbers, no matter what color tinted glasses I put on, no matter how much I squint my eyes.  Maybe I have missed something - some magic coefficient that makes the case.  If you know of one, please do tell.  Like you, I really love the Power platform but at .5 million, I'm now back on the market looking for love in a new relationship.  

[DirectorMumbles]

@pulsebeat only thing I can see at this point is small one off apps. Nobody would use this at any scale anymore.  If I need an app for one or two people, not a big deal. Scale that out to 100 and I might as well not use the platform at all because the ROI is no longer there.

[Anonymous]

@pulsebeat  hey man I am with you and totally agree, I just got skills in my case building is all - I jest, I jest.

In the specific scenario it does stack up against suppliers, when you are at scale, nothing is cheap, apart from cheap crap. what I agree with is that Powerapps is not the best platform you can get for you money, so building a case, yes, going for it in production - maybe not so much.

besides, if case building was that difficult, marketing wouldn't exist : ) 

[PaulD1]

Time for another round of grumbles (not a good week for me! 🙄)

Client wanted a minor modification to an existing Flow (that has run fine for months) that uses the v1 Outlook connector. Made the change, Flow reported it was running, I could see the emails being sent. However, turns out the emails were no longer being delivered to external (to the org) email addresses! Not even sure how that is possible but I have the evidence of dozens of emails if anyone wants to challenge this.

Reverted to a saved copy from before making the changes, but this had the same problem! Only option, change the Flow to use the V2 Outlook connector, but that does not support the 'Send As' functionality, so now all the emails are coming from the service account until we can put a work-around in place.

At the same time as this I was working on another App which uses D365 connector (we tried migrating to CDS connector but it is too buggy). Modified an entity, removed and re-added the connection to that entity in the App but started getting lots of runtime errors. Solution was to remove and re-add every entity connection, even though they had not been modified.

Even at the old price for Power Platform (i.e. most features free with O365) I'm starting to think that the total cost of development, maintenance and downtime (over the App lifecycle) exceeds the competition for any halfway complex app.

[monkeyclass]

So we took the consequence of the new licensing model and replaced our entire backlog of PowerApps projects, and made it into Django projects. We finished the first project within a month and now how it running it production (hosted as an app service on Azure). The project will also work as the template for the coming projects, which should decrease the development time. It took time to get flying but it seems like the right approach considering we can now develop real web-apps rapidly, and do not have to pay licenses to add extra users. Everyone is validated against our Active Directory and everyone is happy. Goodbye PowerApps.

[pulsebeat]

@monkeyclass  Thanks for the post.  This really  gives  me a good place to start with my PowerApps replacement program.  Best of luck to you.  

[DavesTechTips]

Hello everyone,

I can't seem to find the answer for this online.

a) The Power Automate Per Flow plan entitles us to use Business Process Flows. For a user to take part in a Business Process Flow, they need a Model Driven App. Can you access the Business Process through a Model Driven App if you only have Power Apps Office 365 seeded licenses?

b) The Power Automate Per Flow plan entitles us to use Premium Connectors, Custom Connectors and Data Gateways. Can you use a Canvas app (through an O365 seeded license) to access Flow who then in turn connects to all of these, or would you still need a PowerApp standalone plan?

Thank you very much everyone, have a great day.

[farhandsome]

@Pstork1 

What is the ruling for apps created prior to Oct 2019, but the SQL connector has been modified and changed after that date?