Power Platform | Low-coders taking over

Microsoft past week hosted the very first developer focused virtual conference around the Power Platform called the POWERful Devs Conference. You can find out more on http://aka.ms/powerfuldevsconf if you couldn´t join it. Beside tons of great content shared from developers community, one thing that I keep telling stories about within my customer talks is:

Certainly Low-coders are not taking over. This Power Platform is a toolset for everyone. Everyone can be a developer these days

And in fact same as #ProCodeNoCodeUnite became a tag inside Twitter for all Power Platform enthusiasts, same importance is to understand the value around this. So let me explain a little bit more.

As CVP Charles Lamanna outlined with a visual like that, it is pretty important to understand that every developer can benefit from the low-code toolsets provided by Power Apps, Power Automate or Power Virtual Agents and its surrounding capabilities, but furthermore, it is important to understand that they can easily extend the low-coders tool-set by offering them extension based on pro-code.

As an example take an inspection low-code app that has been created using the native device capabilities in terms of taking a photo and uploading it. Let´s say with the help of images taken, a warranty case should be processed. Therefore it is extremely important to keep the image quality as for some situations, inspectors needs to zoom-in those images to get into the details. But of course this app uses the default (native) capabilities of smartphones or tablets these days, the issue is around the image size. When uploaded and stored inside database, during synchronization process this can become a time-consuming and cost-intensive task.

With the help of a pro-coder, an Azure function for instance now can be implemented, that optimizes the image size, while remaining the quality of the image pixels to ensure zoom-in experience. You could now ask, why a function like this isn´t offered as out-of-the-box capability, but in fact there´s no one-size fits all for this use-case.

Sitting together with clients, another visual I am using to highlight the importance of low- and pro-coders coming together on a single platform is the one to the right. It shows a couple of typical pro-coders Azure & Office services used on the left-hand side as well as their (in many cases) favorite toolsets containing of Visual Studio, VS Code or GitHub + on the right-hand side their additional tools that can be either used by them or the low-coders side only. In the center, I highlight some of the main components where both their work comes together.

PCF Controls is one of them which should be seen as the extension framework of controls that currently not yet exist, but are needed to generate a better user experience. Same as in other languages, where you could use KendoUI, Telerik or other frameworks, based on React you can extend the existing controls landscape for every developer inside your company. And because it´s based on React, you can integrate it across all three types of applications that can be created with Power Apps. Canvas-, model-driven or web portal based apps that can leverage your control benefits or you could think of using some shared via public developer platforms, such as GitHub.

If you do want to see more examples, I encourage you to watch the whole POWERful Devs conference, which is now available here. Or, if you´re like me first of all interested in the robustness of this Power Platform, have a look at what Charles Lamanna added as kind of an „out-take“ to this conference starting here.

You will see a lot of already existing, shortly upcoming or long-term (6-12 month) upcoming improvements to the Power Platform that should outline the overall opportunity of this platform, that no one else in the market is currently capable of. The combination of powerful toolsets, really made easy for everyone to be used and ensuring digital transformation at almost every level.

If you´ve seen me adding examples of the manufacturing industry in my last article, here´s to outline that it also works in other industries. This time by offering you another set of inspirations from the retail industry.

All these examples are based on pro- and low-coders unite and build powerful business applications that ensure the digital transformation, but furthermore – based on the rapid application development and strong maintenance and governance capabilities can ensure easy profit margin growths and business value.

Nothing has influenced the digital transformation stronger than COVID-19 pandemic. Those companies that early adopted the low-code development as additional strategy for their company are now performing stronger than ever.

As always: Comments, notes, feedback – please share either here or via Twitter. I am sure this #ProCodeNoCodeUnite just started and we´re going to see tremendous success over the next couple of month based on apps needed for managing the return to work or as some call it – the return to the new normal situation.

Until next time…