Microsoft PowerApps roadmap promises broad, 'no-cliffs' app building experience at all levels

Microsoft's marketing communications team for the Business Applications group is gaining traction with standardization of product names. The term Power platform (with upper case and lower case 'p' as shown here) is one such success to describe Power BI, PowerApps, Flow, and the Common Data Service. The more consistent use of Dynamics 365 for <area> and Dynamics 365 AI for <area> for current and future solutions is another example.

Naming may seem like a small victory to some, but planting that flag also helps Microsoft product teams to talk in more expansive terms about what the products can achieve together. For PowerApps, that vision and roadmap now covers a broader range of custom application development scenarios based on principles that include:

• The use of the Common Data Model with application connectors (standard or custom)
• A roadmap that will play to both power users and real developers, and
• A promise of greater access to insights via BI and AI tools working against those common data sets

Eighteen months after its launch, PowerApps now has two million monthly active users, reported Charles Lamann, Microsoft general manager for PowerApps. In a roadmap session at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, he noted progress in delivery of native connectors for Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure services, as well as over 230 connectors to third party services, including many of the biggest enterprise software vendors.

Microsoft intends to push PowerApps further into the company's other products, said Lamanna. "If there's going to be one thing to ...