What is Power Apps?
Power Apps is the part of Power Platform. It is a low code/no code application platform that allows enterprises to digitize business operations by easily building line of business applications, customizing existing Dynamics 365 and Microsoft/Office 365 applications and delivering a comprehensive low-code extensibility platform for Microsoft Teams.
An “app” is a combination of Power Platform assets that solves a specific business scenario. There are two type of applications – Canvas Apps and Model-driven Apps.
Noted that Power Pages (formerly Power Apps portals) operates on its own licensing model, which will be discussed in a separate article.
Canvas Apps: Design and build a business application from a canvas without writing code in a traditional programming language. Design the application by dragging and dropping elements onto a canvas, the designer has complete control over app layout.
Model-driven Apps: Design is a component-focused approach to app development based on data model and business processes. Unlike canvas app development where the designer has complete control over application layout, with model-driven apps much of the layout is determined for you and largely designated by the components you add to the application.
Microsoft Dataverse (formerly Common Data Service) is required to store your data, and that structured data is the basis for the model-driven apps. Dataverse is designed to be used in any application and includes additional security features such as auditing, sharing, column level and hierarchical security.
Power Apps can connect to any types of data source through a connector. You can leverage a set of built-in actions and triggers of the prebuilt connectors to build your applications. There are four kinds of connector.
- Standard Connector: Data sources within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Examples: Excel, Outlook, SharePoint, LinkedIn.
- Premium Connector: Business systems beyond Microsoft 365. Examples: DocuSign, Zendesk, Jira Software, SQL.
- Custom Connector: To support more tailored scenarios, users can build custom connectors with their own triggers and actions. Example: Services that are not available as prebuilt connectors.
- On-premises Connector: Accesses on-premises data using a gateway. Example: Microsoft SQL Server.
How to license?
For general purpose, full Power Apps capabilities are licensed on a standalone basis. Additionally, limited Power Apps capabilities are included within select Dynamics 365 and Microsoft/Office 365 licenses.
Standalone Power Apps plans
- Power Apps per app standalone plan allows individual users to run one application (or access one Power Pages website) based on the full capabilities of Power Apps.
The Power Apps per app plan is best for businesses that want to license users for each app (or website). Customers with the per app plan typically start with 1-2 leading use case scenarios before adopting the platform more broadly.
The Power Apps per app plan is an attractive licensing option for licensing end users that run only a few apps (and/or access only a few websites). - Power Apps per user standalone plan allows individual users to run unlimited applications based on the full capabilities of Power Apps.
The Power Apps per user plan is best for businesses that want one license for users, regardless of the number of apps they need to run. This plan allows licensed users to run unlimited custom applications (and access unlimited Power Pages websites). - Power Apps per app pay-as-you-go plan allows individual users to run one application. This plan is best for businesses that want to pay-as-you-go for only the users who access a Power App one or more times in a month. In other words, Pay-as-you-go allows organizations to share Power Apps and Power Automate flows with any user in the organization and then only pay if and when they are used without any license commitment or upfront purchasing.
Remember that the model-driven app is only relevant with MS Dataverse as the data source. For example,
| Data – What source? | Connectors (Standard or Premium/Custom?) | Type of App? | Add Power Apps license? |
| SQL | SQL connector (Premium) | Canvas app | Standalone Power Apps plans |
| MS Dataverse | Dataverse connector (Premium) | Canvas app or Model driven app | Standalone Power Apps plans |
Power Apps use rights included with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft/Office 365 licenses
- Limited Power Apps use rights are included within the same environment(s) as the licensed Dynamics 365 application(s) to allow users to customize and extend Dynamics 365 applications.
- Limited Power Apps use rights are included with select Microsoft/Office 365 licenses to allow users to customize and extend Microsoft/Office 365 for productivity scenarios, and to deliver a comprehensive low-code extensibility platform for Microsoft Teams.
For a complete list of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 and licenses that include Power Apps, please refer to Appendix B of Microsoft’ s the licensing guide.
With the limited Power Apps use rights are included with select Microsoft/Office 365 licenses you are only able to build the canvas app with standard connector and do not have to add any license. For example,
| Data – What source? | Connectors (Standard or Premium/Custom?) | Type of App? | Add Power Apps license? |
| SharePoint (included in O365) | SP connector (Standard) | Canvas app | No |
Power Platform subscription add-on licenses
This kind of license allows you to increase Dataverse capacity or the limit of number of API requests.
- Dataverse Database capacity add-on
- Dataverse File capacity add-on
- Dataverse Log capacity add-on
- Power Platform Requests add-on
