New PowerApps and Flow Licensing coming October 1, 2019

[Pstork1]

If you haven't seen the announcement yet about the Licensing changes that are coming to PowerApps and Flow starting on October 1, 2019 you really need to read the following Blog. This announcement was originally made at Inspire this year, but has undergone a number of significant changes.  Make sure you read this and understand what it means to you and your organization.

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-licensing-options-for-powerapps-and-flow/

[pulsebeat]

Powerapps, for us - and probably for many - is (was) a great tool for developing spot solutions that significantly improve manual, admin, paper-based processes.  For example, in the past our employees would request reimbursement for attending a conference by completing a form and emailing it to Finance.  Using Powerapps, this can now do this online.  Flow sends out alerts, tracks approval status, etc.  The data is saved in SQL rather than in a binder and can therefore be used for many other purposes. 

Very nice and clearly an improvement.  But how much of an improvement?  What is the dollar value of that improvement?  We have perhaps 20 of these solutions now, with more in the works.  Everything from identifying employee skills, to assigning desks.  But what is key here is that none of these are business related or critical in any way.  None add to our revenue or materially help our revenue generators do their jobs better or more efficiently.  And to be frank, our leadership is not all that concerned about the few minutes of admin time these apps save.   When we do need a business critical solution, we do what everyone else does.  We buy it or in rare cases, we unleash our crack team of programmers to build it.  Using Powerapps to build core business apps would be a very bad idea – it’s buggy, slow, limited functionality, on and on. 

So imagine what it was like when I went to leadership and said, “hey, you know those cool little apps that allow people to register for conferences, include CPR as a skill, and update their address….well they will now cost you a quarter million annually to run. “    I literally had to pull up the Microsoft licensing page to convince them I wasn’t kidding or insane. 

[Anonymous]

Not that I think anything will come from it, but I thought I would add to the discontent.  I have been casting vision over the last year for how PowerApps could work into a microservices architecture that is being developed.  We were talking about employee portals that would have an app catalog with access to all of the relevant services.  I have been loving PowerApps and Flow and the idea of citizen development.  I've been actively promoting these in our company.  If I am understanding this correctly, this change is going to cost near a million dollars a year for our company.  As much as I love PowerApps, the only obvious choiced is to completely scrap everything aside from the most basic SharePoint list replacements and move into another tool.  I'm really disappointed by this. 

[Pstork1]

I understand the sentiment, but for the record there is more included in the seeded license than just the list replacement forms in SharePoint.  Any standalone App or Flow that uses SharePoint or OneDrive as a data source is also included. I suspect your ananlysis is still true since the kind of services architecture you are describing probably includes custom connectors and those just went from $7 per user to $40.

[FredericForest]

You have a hard job @Pstork1 (especially since it's not an "official" one !). But kudos on keeping the postive side on ! 🙂

Cheers !

[tarinalees]

I FEEL your pain. Thiscould be a killer for our plans as well. There's just no way to justify this cost. I was in LOVE with this solution and platform and we were 100% on board and cheerleading this solution. Also using Azure SQL, 12 apps so far, with many, many more in the pipeline. 

[seanbrogan]

Well I've sent my weekend working (Thanks for that too btw Microsoft!) on moving our existing app over to Sharepoint Lists, since I hadn't seen the 5 year grandfather clause. I've managed to get it working for the most part but one thing I have learned is that SP will not be suitable for the further apps we have planned. The non delegable tables are almost impossible to work with.

That kills Powerapps completely for us. There can be no further development on the platform. Such a pain since I sold the whole concept to the company myself and it had been a really big hit up until now.

I will now be recomending the next app, and the current app, are outsourced to a third party. At this point I don't even want Microsoft handling my emails. 

[Anonymous]

I do see that the seeded license is still going to have a fair amount of functionality, but only for small scale apps.  There are two things that are really hurting me here.  One is that they are moving SQL into a paid connector.  This kills my ability to interact with any other enterprise level applications without going into custom connectors and hitting the same wall.  The other thing that is hurting me is that they are pulling PowerApps licenses out of the D365 licenses.  (This is my understanding from the cryptic information I have read)  We have thousands of those licenses and use them when needed to get the P2 plan.  So we'll keep building apps, but they'll target small groups and not be able to connect to enterprise data.  I had really hoped that we would be able to make PowerApps a true part of our application infrastructure, but not for a million dollars a year.  We are feeling the same thing from the flow side of the house.  We were about to start creating some pretty cool workflows, but it just isn't feasible now.  

To add an attempt at being constructive, I resonate with the folks that would prefer a pay per use type approach.  We deploy apps to over 3000 users.  Because we create micro-apps some of these apps may be used 2-20 times per day, but they have to be deployed to the whole company.  I wish there was a way to let everyone have access but not be carrying a $40/user/month price tag if they don't engage with the tool.

[sscarcella]

Does anyone know how long Microsoft will let us use BCS to connect to Azure SQL?  This connection works in PowerApps but I am afraid to re-create my apps using connections to external lists until I know how long its going to be around.  I know they have said no further development is being done but they have articles written this year showing how to use it in current SharePoint online version.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/manage-business-connectivity-service-applications

Does anyone know if there is a time bomb on this as well?  I cannot use Azure Sql if its only going to work until 2024...

Still looking for a workaround for this that doesnt cost $40 per user per month...

@Audrie-MSFT 

[WLAS_Almighty]

Wat I don't get is why only allow 2 apps on the first-tier model ($10/user). What is that about? You cannot build too complex apps in PowerApps like you can with Visual Studio. We have built many small apps to tackle the business needs for the company accessing their SQL database. With the P1 license, even though you paid $7.00 / user, you had access to all the apps. So now my users can only access two of them? Why?

And that reaises a question: Can I then pay $5.00 / user under the Office365 Business license so my users can have access to all apps and the $10.00 /user on the powerApps side will take care of the SQL connector? If that is so, why would anyone buy the $40.00? and if that is not so, why would anyone go from $10.00 to $40.00 just to access different apps within the organization?

[Pstork1]

Most of the D365 plans still include a seeded license that covers the premium features, that hasn't changed.