United Training BlogNews and resources on the latest trends in IT training and professional developmenthttps://www.newhorizons.com/resources/blog10 innovation areas that are reshaping app development​https://www.newhorizons.com/resources/blog/postid/55/10-innovation-areas-that-are-reshaping-app-developmentGeneral,Microsoft,Modern Workplace,trainingMon, 07 Dec 2020 17:20:55 GMT<p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">From startups to enterprises, thousands of organizations around the world are using Microsoft Power Apps to build professional, custom apps to solve their challenges. ​</span></span></span></p> <ol> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>#LessCodeMorePower​</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">No matter who you are, Power Apps is disrupting business software development. Millions of new citizen developers are learning to create apps and professionals are doing more while focusing on the code that matters. ​</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>Modern intranet: Teams + SharePoint + Power Platform​</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Power Apps is built into the productivity experiences of Microsoft 365 as a deeply integrated feature of services, like SharePoint and Teams. Easily discover and start learning how to create apps.</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> <b>Uncommon power in the Common Data Service</b>​</span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The Common Data Service is a platform that sits under our most sophisticated Microsoft business applications, powering billions of dollars of global business every year. ​</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>Bring your best cloud with “no limits” extensibility​</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Beyond Teams, SharePoint, and the Common Data Service, hundreds of data sources and online services are connected to Power Apps in a few clicks. Anything that isn’t already built-in can be ​easily connected by building custom connectors.</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>Now, for everyone to use</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Power Apps used to be for internal apps to be shared with coworkers, but now it has expanded so you can share information and access data via portals and guests can have access as well.</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>Platform-wide innovation from AI to RPA to Virtual Agents and beyond</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The Power Platform is built to deeply integrate across Apps, Automation, Business Intelligence, and Power Virtual Agents.</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>The future is componentized</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">New capabilities can be easily added to existing apps through the components. Components are like reusable building blocks that makers can use quickly to assemble and build powerful apps. ​</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>Full-stack low code: the new quality assurance</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Power Apps is more than low-code UX—it also has high productivity data modeling, data integration, security, lifecycle management, and now professional-grade quality assurance tools.</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>Think in thousand app scale</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Organizations are innovating at the scale of hundreds or even thousands of Power Apps used in production. In the process, they’re forging new partnerships between IT leaders, coders, and ​citizen developers.</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>You are not alone</b></span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:disc"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The real power of the platform isn’t in technology at all – it’s the global community that has rallied together to forge a new way to innovate. ​</span></span></span> <ul style="list-style-type:square"> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">More than a million monthly active members in the Power Platform communities​</span></span></span></li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Nearly 100,000 members in more than 400 local user groups​</span></span></span></li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Twitter movements #PowerAddicts and #LessCodeMorePower​</span></span></span></li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-left:8px; margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">From tips and tricks to unblock citizen developers, to best practices managing Power Apps at scale, and everything in between, the collaborative energy of the Power Platform community is the driving force behind its growth.</span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"></span></span></span><font face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"></span></font></li> </ul> </li> </ol> <div><font face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">Want to get your team up to speed on the latest developments? Get in touch to find out more about our Power Apps training solutions. </span></font></div> 55What is Low-Code, and why should you care?https://www.newhorizons.com/resources/blog/postid/50/what-is-low-code-and-why-should-you-careGeneral,Microsoft,Modern Workplace,trainingTue, 17 Nov 2020 08:00:00 GMT<p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Low-code development platforms are on the rise, allowing businesses to develop custom applications more efficiently to solve their unique challenges. With developers in high demand and short supply, companies search for options that can reduce development costs and increase overall efficiency.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><span style="line-height:107%">So, what exactly IS low-code? </span></span></b></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Low-code platforms make it easier for business and IT professionals to understand and create application software through graphic interfaces instead of traditional programming. Building apps by dragging and dropping user interface components that replace code, automatically generating features based on the project's standard practices. A Low-code platform is a flexible and easy to understand design space that anyone can get creative in. They also reduced the time it takes to create apps significantly, meaning that they can be delivered quicker and from people who wouldn't typically consider themselves software developers.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><span style="line-height:107%">What does this mean for businesses?</span></span></b></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">For 2021, Forrester predicts an accelerated adoption of low-code platforms:</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>"During the pandemic, many organizations embraced low-code platforms to build and deploy new apps fast. These experiences will drive most development shops to adopt low-code tools and more. Expect to see new hybrid teams emerge, with business users and professional developers building apps together with low-code tools built on cloud-native platforms."</i></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">With the emergence of fast-paced digital transformation, low-code platforms can fill talent gaps and help developers become even more productive by cutting down development time. As a leader in low-code application development platforms, Microsoft is recognized by analysts, demonstrating a strong strategy, vision, and ability to execute. Discover the benefits of Power Apps, outlined in a recently commissioned study by Forrester Consulting:</span></span></span></p> <ul> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>188%</b> ROI over three years</span></span></span></li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>74%</b> reduction in app development costs</span></span></span></li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>4.3%</b> revenue uplift linked to an increasingly faster development effort</span></span></span></li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>3.2</b> hours/week average improvement in line-of-business employee productivity</span></span></span></li> <li style="margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>22%</b> of global developers reported using low-code platforms, and another 23% planned​ to do so within the year​</span></span></span></li> <li style="margin-bottom:11px; margin-left:8px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>132,000</b> worker hours saved from streamlined and automated activities (Year 3)</span></span></span></li> </ul> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Reduce costs, save time, and help your business thrive with Power Apps, the low-code development platform of the future. Check out how you can invest in your staff to conquer low-code projects for 2021.</span></span></span></p> 50