PowerApps project - a feasibility study and request for opinions

[si3po]

Evening all, i'm hoping to garner some clarity on the feasibility of a project i am looking to undertake in order to digitise and streamline a number of processes in the day-to-day role of my small section.

We, a small team of 4 persons (on shift rotation), maintain a critical logistics focal point for my our organisation locally. All critical demands come into, and are vetted by, ourselves and one manager (also a small team on shift rotation) after being initially vetted for completion of details, where they orders are then processed for acceptance and progression with industry suppliers by ourselves.

Currently our processes require a lot of 'paper pushing' between departments - from the customer placing the order, the hard copy order sheet goes to initial vetting by the main logistics team placed alongside the customer for investigation and completion of initial priority demands placement. It is then forwarded to ourselves for secondary vetting and management scrutiny, before being accepted/rejected. At which point, the hard copy sheet is copied into our bespoke (Excel based) priority demands tracking system and the hard copy archived for later recollection if required, and the demand is progressed/hastened from there until completion.

My initial thoughts were that an MS Form (or something else that gathers the required data) could be implemented within our PowerApp in order to replicate the current 'hard copy' Priority Demand sheet and then we use the PowerApp the perform a few of the various "paper pushing" actions we currently carry out (see below) but harnessing the power of Power Automate and Flows - is this possible? :

1. MS Form to gather all requirement information & take the demand from customer...
2. forward it to local logistics personnel for initial vetting - approve/reject option here to return it to customer for changes, or approve and put to next step
3. after initial vetting and acceptance forward to my team for investigation - approve/reject option, again, reject option goes back to previous step
4. if accepted forward to management for further scrutiny - accept/reject option, if reject, goes to previous step
5. if accepted by management, returned to my team for final acceptance
6. on final acceptance place the requirement into our Excel based demand register.

At all times, it would be desirable for a 'current status' indicator to be visible within the PowerApp to show current progression of the demand placement.

So, there's my big blue sky thinking picture, and i'm ready to be shot down for it, but i'd like to push it out to you folk and garner your thoughts as to whether you think something like this is possible within PowerApps and the MS SharePoint environment...

Over to you all, and my indebted thanks in advance for your thoughts...

Si3PO

[Tony_Bowes_BP]

Hi Si3PO,

In general Power Apps (especially placed onto dataverse with using model-driven apps and Business Process Flows) can handle this type of process pretty well. Here's some return thoughts:

 - The process itself is king. Make sure you dedicate time to map out the actual and desired process regardless of the pieces of paper or the final technology used. The process should dictate what technologies are viable, not the technology changing the process.  

 - MS Forms are a one-shot form (like a survey). There is no way to go back and edit the form once submitted. With this in mind it can be used for step 1 (Initial customer request), but quite poor for step 2 (returning to the customer for clarification). If the data is retrieved from the MS form and then placed into a SharePoint list or Dataverse to control the rest of the process, then the continuing customer conversation regarding additional information is generally guided by the internal personnel and they update the information directly into the database on behalf of the customer. 

 - When reviewing the process, pay specific attention to how a person will know that they are required to participate in the next step. Also focus on spaces (lists / views / dashboards / reports) where common tasks or 'work modes' are gathered so that you can be in the same decision-making headspace to process them, and have all the decision-making data ready at hand.

Good luck on your journey!

[si3po]

Hi Tony,

thanks for your views, very much appreciated.

i understand that i'll have to process map the whole thing and all permutations, and that's work that is currently underway. As for the form, i'm wondering if maybe we do away with the idea of a MS Form and instead the data input Form be built in the PowerApp itself and all data there stored somewhere - i'm not totally comfortable with Lists on SharePoint, however there are some functions of the SharePoint system that i know have been turned off, i believe that Lists may be one of them so i may be in need of a different solution for that...

[Tony_Bowes_BP]

If all the 'customers' are internal staff that already have an Office365 license, then completely bypassing the MS Form and building it into the app is fine (possibly recommended if they need to be involved in the process later on). 

However, if the customers are outside your company, MS Forms allow them to provide information formatted in a better method than just email (which can be seen as a submisison form with 3 fields: sender, subject, description). This also relies on the customer being able to articulate all the complexities required of the form. If that's unlikely, then leave that part of the intake process as email / phone and have an internal staff member enter the information directly into the App with the right options and questions answered. 

If there is nothing holding you to SharePoint, I'd recommend totally skipping it and build your app directly onto Dataverse. It will pay massive dividends down the track for building and deploying enhancements, and opens up the possibility of model-driven apps with business process flows.