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Microsoft power apps were brought to existence to assist the institutions in creating applications quickly. While other traditional app creation techniques revolved around technical and complex coding chunks, the Microsoft power apps came as an intuitive platform to build custom apps with a simple drag and drop feature. Microsoft power apps belong to the Power Platform stack that lets businesses drag and drop components and create impeccable apps.
Both the Canvas App and Model-Driven App are the types of apps available for designing with the Power apps. Along with curbing the dependency on the manual coding of technical expertise to create the app, the platform speeds up the app development process with maximum convenience. Two sorts of apps are available with Microsoft power – canvas and model-driven apps. In this write-up, we will be sharing the significant differences, benefits, and every bit of necessary information that you should know. So, stick to the end of the article and learn about the no-code power-packed apps.
Canvas App
The Canvas app is very easy to be visualized on a tablet or mobile app after being embedded in the dashboard. As per the solution name, canvas apps offer you a blank canvas to drag/drop the components and create an app of your expectations. You even get to move, resize, and reformat the components where you need them to design the website. As you’re done with the design and functionality outline in the canvas app, go ahead and start integrating the same with more data sources. Excel holds prominent value in the integration process of the canvas app structure.
Pros of a canvas app
1. The canvas app is easy to use and has a more intuitive experience.
2. These power apps stay away from huge coding or technical specifications. All you need to know are excel and PowerPoint to get started with the canvas power apps development.
3. The canvas app allows you to be more creative than other power apps. To be precise, you wouldn’t find any two power app designs similar to each other.
4. The apps can have multiple user roles, and no need to allow the total usage of the Microsoft tech stack to everyone involved in the project.
Cons of a canvas app
The key disadvantage with the canvas app is that it is way beyond the responsive design. You can avail of both portrait and landscape orientations. The canvas app can be designed with a manual shift in the components, but that is a very tedious process. To make them fit for multi-screen-sized devices, you need to invest a lot of time and effort, even for simple component control in the application. There are even chances of other responsive looking distorted while taking care of the next one.
Model-driven app
A model-driven app is a reasonably quick application development solution with drag-and-drop components like charts, dashboards, survey forms, etc. You get to integrate a lot of functionalities flexibly. Hence, it is focused on the data and is also known as a data-driven application.
In simple words, all this means that the user interface components are as per the available data. Being stored in the database (CDS) can be easily accessed whenever the application demands.
Pros of Model-driven apps
1. These are handy apps if you need to tap into complex business logic. Since the model-driven apps focus on the significant data portion, they can be of great help in various scenarios.
2. These apps allow users from multiple teams and processes to be part of the end-to-end solution.
3. Model-Driven App will render themselves to comply with the device of your type. These apps are highly responsive.
Cons of Model-driven apps
The model-driven app is very rigid in design and with no flexibility. Model-Driven App can be limited to a certain extent. Since the UI components are based on the data, the design process has a minor level of customization possibilities only.
Canvas App vs. Model-Driven App: Which is better?
To be precise, choosing between the Canvas app and the model-driven app is quite a challenging task. Both power apps have their potential and are better suited to deal with specific functions that others can’t achieve. A canvas app is handy for role-based solutions, while the model-driven app is perfect for end-to-end solutions. But, for the maximum benefits opting for both types of apps is the right decision.
You should be identifying the areas where a canvas app & model-driven app is useful. Check in what ways they can complement the multiple business processes. Additionally, you might have thoughts about if these apps can be switched along too?
The answer lies in the data structure created along the process. The entity/table can be reused in either of the apps. However, the model-driven app leads the race here. Its interface allows seamless integration of the tables and boosts the timeline and productivity of the app development tasks. On the contrary, the canvas app is all about placing components in specific locations, making it slightly typical to convert into a model-driven app.
Final Word: Canvas App vs. Model-Driven App
As per my recommendation, the choice between the two power apps purely lies in the required scope. As if you require it for sales operations like collecting user entries from the browser, a model-driven app is the best go-to option. If you wish to embed the application with anything related to your mobile phone/tablet, the canvas app is the best-suited option.
Hopefully, the above-listed details on the Canvas app and model-driven app serve value to all readers. Feel free to mention your choice in the below comments with your viewpoints.
Also, check the difference between canvas and moodle.