Building Real Software using PowerApps with Luise Freese

How does a PowerApp become a fully-fledged software application? Richard chats with Luise Freese about her experience of taking a PowerApp built by an individual through the "onboarding process" of becoming a complete software application, including requirements, tests, deployment pipeline, security, user training, and more. It's easy to create a prototype of an application with PowerApps, but once you move beyond the basics, there's a significant amount of work that's essential to the long-term health of the app. Luise discusses how often PowerApps utilizes "free" data sources, such as SharePoint lists, rather than the underlying datasets that require a license. This hinders performance and reliability; it's better to work with the right APIs and data sources. It's also an accomplishment, as what started as an individual's automation is now a part of the suite of applications that a company depends on!

Links

• Power Apps and Power Automate
• Luise's Blog Post
• Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit
• Entra ID for Power Apps

Recorded June 27, 2025