How to enable your functional Power Apps portal as a Progressive Web App

As internet users, we face a lot of challenges when using web apps because of low internet speed. Waiting for web content to load can be quite annoying and many times the user might abandon the site out of frustration with its speed.

While native apps tend to perform better, their main problem is their multiple code bases. Each type of device has its own version of the app, which increases the development cost as it requires additional developers to build and manage a code base for each platform. Developing native apps is a time-consuming process and also requires upgrades over time. Also, native apps do not offer flexibility.

The benefits of a progressive web app

Microsoft recently introduced a major improvement to Power Apps to support creating apps that can be developed once and used across the web and mobile devices. With these improvements, makers can now publish their canvas apps as standalone mobile apps. And in the latest release wave (2021 release wave 2 | October 2021 - March 2022), Power Apps brings us an exciting update called ‘Progressive Web App’, which will help Power Apps Portal makers to convert their functional portal as an app within Power App Portal Studio.

When used with Power Apps Portals, progressive web app technology allows creation of multi-platform portals-based apps that work on Android, iOS, and Windows. Microsoft has made it so convenient that you can convert your functional portal into a multi-platform app with a simple click. Yes, it's that simple!!

Getting started

To begin, we just need to open our functional portal in Power App Portal studio: