Powerapps Development Duration

[barrymac20]

Hi all.

This is more of a discussion topic than a question.

I'm currently developing a pricing tool for my company using Powerapps. Its quite comprehensive and ive spent 6 or 7 weeks at it with another couple to go. (That includes teaching myself)

I'm hoping the time spent will be worth it in the long run and I'm also hoping that I'm not pushing Powerapps capability too far.....

With that being said I was curious to see how long have any of you guys spent on your apps and what were they for?

Barry

Barry

[Anonymous]

We use SharePoint.
There is no resistance as we've been using InfoPath and SharePoint Designer for years.
Based on those going away we are moving them to PowerApps and Automation.
In fact this was one of the first ones we "moved" from InfoPath/SPDesign to PowerApps. With no migration tools available the move to the new tools takes time. 

Likewise, as @WarrenBelz mentioned, we have a Service Account with a P2 license assigned to it that we use for connections and signing the flows.

[barrymac20]

Warren.

Sounds like Powerapps are a very important part of your business.

For developing and testing, do you have a second copy of the app that you use for Beta testing? I.e. to prevent all normal users from getting it when published.

[barrymac20]

What way does the Service Account/P2 licensing work?

[Anonymous]

Need the P2 license to connect to SAP and you should always use a service account once something goes to production.

If I leave the company, the flows would "break" as well as the SAP Connection if they were signed with my account.

[barrymac20]

Shane. That makes sense.

I guess I must subconsciously consider myself a lifer at my place!!

Would it be fair to say that we would already have a service account with a P2 or is that something you had to request specifically?

I guess you have full access to this account?

[Anonymous]

Unless someone else already request a service account for PowerApps/Power Automate then no, you probably don't have one. and you have to purchase the P2 license separately and then assign it to that account.

Since it is a Service account, we set it so the password never expires, make it extremely complicated ( talking 16 to 20 with letters, numbers, and characters). We also only share the information with two of us to use.

[barrymac20]

So technically speaking, if i don't leave the company, and don't need premium connectors I can run it off my account? Even in the short term?

[Anonymous]

Yes, technically there is no difference between your account and a service account. You will find however that if you have flows running and you don't force a "send as", all emails sent out will come from you. The other day I had someone email me a question and I was at a loss on how they knew to contact me.. Turned out I had made a change to the Flow and forgot to change the connection back to our service account so the email went out from me.

[WarrenBelz]

Nice discussion guys - I am probably on the other side of the world to you and will add a further small contribution.

@Anonymous's process pretty much mirrors ours, down to the Licence.

There are also ways of "triggering" smaller numbers of premium licence flows from PowerApps with data changes done by users with standard O365 licences and you need the licence to create Environments.

We use SharePoint and have seen no need to change this as it is also the repository for all documents numbering in the tens of thousands (we have over 35000 job site photos in one library). Delegation is probably the only annoyance, but this can be managed with the a bit of planning on the appropriate data structure. As an aside, we make extensive use of MS Access connected directly to SharePoint for reporting and bulk editing (via Datasheets).