The Event
The SharePoint Conference is the premier SharePoint and Office365 content event – held in Las Vegas, NV May 19-21 and will include a TON of awesome speakers, sessions, workshops, and vendors. It’s the largest SharePoint conference around and a unique opportunity to visit with Microsoft folks that are building the software tools we use every day. It’s also typically an event where Microsoft makes major announcements on new features, new products, and more! Not only do you get the opportunity to hear those announcements first-hand, you can chat with Microsoft product team members to dig into details and provide your feedback.
The Session
This 60-minute session will dig in deeper than my 20-minute session on “7 Quick Wins”. I’ll be talking about opportunities within SharePoint and Microsoft Teams where extending the content, solutions, and interfaces with Power Apps enables users to be more productive and utilize more of the tools available to them in the workplace.
Why am I talking about this topic?
For years we’ve had SharePoint around and organizations have found varying degrees of success. In many ways their success depended on how invested they were with the platforms – how far adoption went in both breadth and depth. Some teams used document libraries instead of file shares, but never made use of things like metadata or views. Some organizations dug into SharePoint lists, built solutions, and took a few organizational steps forward, but rarely were platforms embraced holistically within organizations. Now, we have Microsoft Teams – which arguably is taking on the mantle of the monarch of the collaboration space. For organizations embracing Microsoft Teams it is becoming the one-stop-shop for where to work, where to find critical info or a path to other systems that maintain important information or functionality. One thing that’s been consistent is that there has almost always been a lot of functionality, capability, and ROI left on the table. This session is addressing some of that technical debt – helping people understand what capabilities are available or how those capabilities can be implemented for business benefit and ROI. In most cases that ROI comes from employee time, but it can easily extend into things like preventing or managing expenses or even preventing regulatory lapses or fines.
What will be covered in this session?
The Power Platform – Power BI, Power Automate (aka “Flow), Power Apps, and Power Virtual Agents all have a lot to offer, but this session will focus on what Power Apps brings to the collaboration space. From my perspective that means access to information – visibility or accessibility to information – getting the information from whatever source (we’ll be talking mostly about SharePoint list data) to whoever needs the data, in the form that they can best consume the data, and on the platform that makes the most sense.
- We can use Power Apps to build better SharePoint list forms
- We can build Power Apps using SharePoint libraries or lists as data sources, building better user experiences, connecting to additional data sources, and still surface the solution in SharePoint
- We can take SharePoint data solutions with Power Apps to the Microsoft Teams surface
- We can take data mobile with Power Apps
With SharePoint we’ve been building single-page and multi-page solutions for a long time by stitching together the out of the box list interfaces and SharePoint pages and then extending them by customizing views, forms, and other controls. When Power Apps was first integrated into the SharePoint and O365 space it was pitched as all about forms – something we’d been wanting and needing for years. That scenario is still valid and relevant – finally allowing list owners to build interfaces within the SharePoint context. As SharePoint itself continues to evolve, both form and view solutions enter a bit of a gray area as SharePoint features start to overlap with capabilities that Power Apps also offer. Power Apps allows us to build apps, using one or more lists (or other data sources) and continuing to present those solutions via SharePoint pages, though Power Apps can also be used directly in the browser as well. Those same apps are also available via mobile devices in either phone or tablet layouts.
With the addition of Microsoft Teams to our suite of choices, we have another surface to make apps and solutions available. Tabs within Teams allow both surfacing of SharePoint lists and Power Apps. Power Apps are, in fact, easier to add to a Team than they are to a SharePoint page (though neither are difficult).
The short story is that our toolbox as consumers of business data and builders of business solutions continues to expand within the Microsoft Office space by using Power Platform tools like Power Apps and its partner technologies.
Session Abstract
As SharePoint team sites move to Team sites, mobile workers demand solutions, and makers run into the limitations of lists, organizations look to Power Apps to deliver added value and capabilities to both traditional and emerging collaboration platforms. Explore approaches and strategies for Power Apps with SharePoint and Teams.
Still working in the cross section of Power Apps and other tools and platforms we’ve been working with in the collaboration space… SharePoint, Teams, O365
SPC Registration and Discount
Use code “PRESTON” when registering to save $50. (or click the image below)
Keep an eye out for more content and announcements on SharePointTV and the SharePoint Conference video page.