When should I use Model-Driven Power Apps?

what's the use case for model driven app when would you use a model driven app it comes down to this very simple requirement I need a database for my business you either don't have a data source or you don't have a data source that's working well for you so this starting point here perhaps you've got stuff sitting on Excel perhaps you've got something sitting in a legacy database that you can't configure or perhaps you've just got stuff everywhere on paper and you don't have a data source these are the types of reasons why you would start with a model driven app if you already have a wonderful database or you have a SharePoint list that's serving you well and it's not at capacity and it's all good then model driven apps are probably not going to be the answer we've got canvas apps that we can connect to all of those existing data sources model driven apps is where we're in these kinds of scenarios for instance I need to organize my customer data and perhaps you've got it on a spreadsheet I come across a lot of people who are still in this scenario you've got your list of your contacts the people that you work with and then those people are associated with organizations so you'll have another Tab and you might link those up and now you want to track activity and then you want to track products associated with what you're selling them and where this is starting to get tricky on a spreadsheet also I want different people to have access to different things and now we're all over the place so Excel not a database not necessarily a data source that's serving you well beyond any kind of basic list this is a classic use case for where you might consider a model driven app here's another one I need to manage my health and safety and I've started off on a SharePoint list and it's going so well I started off with a health and safety checklist everyone's filling that out it's going great on SharePoint and then we have some new compliance requirements that come in and suddenly this is a whole business process this needs to capture the whole organization not just my department and now it needs to be audited I need to know exactly who's updated what and when and we need really complex security over this because managers should be able to see this part and the staff should only be able to see that part and we also need to manage like an end-to-end process to to make sure that everything's oh boy we're starting to push the limits of SharePoint we can't do all of these things there so this is an example of something that's perhaps outgrown the data source you were using it's no longer serving you well I see this a lot too where people start with SharePoint for something that's quite basic awesome and then it grows to be something bigger and people come to me with oh now I've got 10 000 records a day being created or I need to do these kinds of things so that idea of it's not serving you well any longer here's another one this one is actually a database this time Microsoft Access or perhaps even SQL server and you've got something that you've been working with for a long time you've got the data sitting in a place that's a database but I need to manage permit applications and now what happens is we need to modernize and we want to make this self-service situation where we can expose that data out to customers who can come along and make their own applications and see where things are up to and uh how we're going to do that so something where you might need to put an external portal or some kind of front face on it is also a good reason to consider a model driven app perhaps you are still on paper this happens a lot too I've got a grant management process that I need to manage I've got funds coming in I've got disbursements going out and that's all sitting in lovely ring binders on my shelf you really probably want to get a database to help you handle those things and track and report on all of that kind of stuff or perhaps you're working with some kind of Legacy system for instance I've got an HR System for onboarding employees that we've had forever and I Can't customize it or if I want to customize it then it's going to cost me a fortune or it's just inflexible and it doesn't match our process and our way of doing things so these are all examples of where model driven apps can come in and can be useful and and why you would use them and at the heart of all of this when we're talking about a model driven app we are having a conversation about databases so let's talk talk about databases which one of these two is a database neither one Excel is not a database SharePoint is not a database you can do database like things with them you can create lists and link them up but when you want to start getting into more complex data relationships all these kinds of things imagine you know customer relationship type scenario back to my original example on Excel here where suddenly you've got lots of different types of data tables that are relating to each other so you might have for instance a list of your customers and then the accounts they're associated with and those activities and then products and then e-commerce system plugged into that and then what are the orders and we're going from an order to a quote to an invoice and we've got a whole product catalog with products in different families and things and so you start to have lots and lots of different data tables that are related to each other one account can have many opportunities associated with it and so on you really need to work with relational data set up in the right way to be able to achieve those more complex scenarios a spreadsheet or a SharePoint list is never going to get you there the core concept here around model driven apps there are two Core Concepts to get across first one is Microsoft dataverse which is the thing that is sitting underneath model driven apps and it is the data source that you'll be using if you go down the path of model driven apps it's a database more than a database stick with me but at the first instance here it is a database where you can create and easily structure your data you can create those tables and the different attributes that you want to have on those tables link them together in relationships of one to many many to one many to many and so on but there's so much more going on here than just those data tables we can also enable business process and business logic so this idea of taking the user step by step through a guided process from the beginning to the end of something with all of the different steps they have to create a on the way and business logic about things that might become for instance mandatory based on something else that goes on and that's driven from the data source we can have really complex security so where you're starting to look at a use case where you have multiple personas different user roles so for instance a manager should have oversight of all of the health and safety inspections and an HR Manager should have oversight of some of the more confidential information that's going on there whereas an individual should only be able to see their own things that's all to do with that security model and you can have those different types of user roles and enable all of that kind of stuff as well as full auditing capability on all of those things this scales this Microsoft like to talk about planet scale this will go you know right to the limits of where you need to go we can get into terabytes of data going on over here as well and so that you're not going to kind of cap out at a point where you hit a few thousand records you can really go as big as you would like to and the types of storage that are underneath here this is all stored in the cloud in Azure there's different types of storage going on that are optimizing for the different types of data that you're storing but you don't need to know about that or worry about it you just start creating those tables and spinning it up in here and all of that is taken care of on behind the scenes and last but certainly not least is this idea of connecting to other applications so dataverse sits right at the heart of Microsoft Power Platform if you're driving other things around process automation if you want to connect up other applications and go end to end adding portals for users outside bringing in reporting and so on then you've got a whole lot of things going on there that can vary easily be connected in you can bring AI into the equation as well and so then what is a model driven power app we start with Microsoft dataverse that's at the core of it we're creating those data tables and we can easily set up and structure all of those things from there you're building your user interface on top of that with no code this is a drag and drop experience a click and point experience that brings those forms and Views and things to allow your users to access your data in your database it is without any effort on your part or any thought on your part at all fully responsive and accessible you can view it on a mobile device or on any kind of web browser and it is fully connected to the rest of the Microsoft 365 stuff so you'll find in there again just by creating a model driven app that you're getting export to excel import from Excel connections to power automate flows the ability to track emails and tasks and activities and all of those kinds of things so let's have a quick look at what a model driven app is if you haven't already seen one this is what it looks like you'll start with some kind of dashboard we'll have down the side here all of the different data tables that you want people to access this is an example of one that's designed for sort of an HR onboarding type of process and if I go in and have a look here we've got a list of the onboarding records that we're working with we can sort these in order of when they came through we can filter by different type things that are going on in here as well and if I click through into one of these this is giving us a display of the record that's happening so we can see we've got this guided process flow across the top we've got a summary of everything that's going on here and visibility into related records this is an idea of where onboarding this particular person and we've got information about that person to this particular role and we've got some information about the role all of these things at the top here are just completely built in when you create a model driven app I haven't had to configure or build any of those things the way that I'm putting this together is setting up these data tables and then putting components on the screen these different sections with headings and so on if you would like to know more about how to build all of this check out my tutorial here for complete beginners but this essentially is about building a data model and putting these forms a nice clear user interface over the top of it so when would you use a model driven app when you need to create a database for your business you don't have a data source or you don't have one that is serving you well if you already have one that's serving you well check out this video on canvas apps and how you can connect to your existing data source or this one here on model driven apps versus canvas apps I hope that gives you some clarity on that question thanks very much for watching

Channel: Lisa Crosbie

Views: 8,486

Keywords: power apps, model driven powerapps, powerapps model driven apps, model driven app, model driven power apps, model driven apps, power platform model driven apps, model driven app example, microsoft dataverse, learn model driven power apps, lisa crosbie, learn with lisa

Id: LZUs90PE4e0

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2022