Microsoft’s low-code Power platform is an important part of its business suite. By sitting between Microsoft 365 productivity tools and Dynamics 365 business line apps, it’s a way to build custom workflows and add your own user experiences. As an added bonus, you get access to Azure Cognitive Services for AI as a service and connectors that link to third-party applications.
The result is a quick way to deploy code as needed, filling in what is often referred to as an “enterprise application gap”. Power Platform’s tools are ready to use even for users who need apps, but there’s nothing there to fill that need and professional developers need to quickly come up with a solution. Technologies such as the PowerFX language and Visual Studio Code support make it easy to bring the Power Platform into traditional development toolchains, enabling the development of cross-disciplinary and cross-functional collaborative teams to design, build and application deployment.
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If you created an app in Excel or Access, you can create an app in Power Platform, specifically using its Power Apps tools. There are three ways to build Power Apps apps: use the Canvas app to drag and drop controls onto the design surface, attach code to them, or use model-driven apps to go straight from data to code . Canvas apps give you the most flexibility because they can be used to create many different types of apps using different types of data. They are also how you can host mixed reality in your low-code application.
The foundation of strength in the metaverse
One technology that is receiving a lot of attention at the moment is mixed reality, or as it is known, the metaverse. Microsoft has extensive experience using 3D content in virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), with built-in tools in Windows and Azure, and mixed reality content support for Android and iOS devices use their augmented reality SDK (software development kit).
Microsoft’s early experiments with enterprise mixed reality were support tools, providing frontline workers with access to real-time support with peers seeing through their eyes. (or at least theirs HoloLens camera) and annotate the world to them or provide examples of equipment for training and planning.
Those concepts are part of Microsoft’s approach to mixed reality in Power Apps—More of a tool than a gimmick. That’s not to say they can’t be used as part of a marketing app, but there’s a lot more to how Microsoft sees technology.
The benefit, of course, is that using Power Apps reduces the expertise required to build a mixed reality app. So instead of having to learn Unity or a similar 3D development environment, all you need is a Canvas app and the right controls. That makes building a prototype a matter of minutes, no matter what device you’re aiming for.
Add Mixed Reality to Power Apps
Power Apps Mixed Reality controls based on the work of the Babylon.js team. A tool for building 3D images on the web using JavaScript, now available integration with React Native for use on mobile devices outside of the browser. Microsoft already uses the React Native framework to provide Power Apps Mobile controls, so it makes a lot of sense to use it to deliver mixed reality content.
Work must be done to integrate the Babylon’s Native release with React Native as well as with iOS’s ARKit and Android’s ARCore. For PCs using the Power Apps web engine, there is integration with the WebXR toolkit.
While you don’t need to understand the back end to build Mixed Reality Power Apps, the resulting controls support the key features your app needs, including providing anchors to views as well. like hit check and plane detection. This now means you can test 3D mixed reality content with Babylon on PC before transferring it to Power Apps and using it across devices.
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Using the controls is relatively simple. Content is stored in your application and loaded as needed, where it is displayed using View in MR Power Apps control use the sizes you have set. Your device becomes a view into a mixed reality world, placing objects on the floor or on the wall for you to move around.
You don’t want to use this tool all the time; it will most likely be a way of taking an item from the catalog and displaying it where it can be used. Maybe it’s a piece of furniture in the home, or maybe it’s industrial equipment on a factory floor. Users click a button in your app to launch a mixed reality view that replaces the view they’re currently using.
Bring together Power, device sensors, and AI apps
In addition to using Power Apps to add items to augmented reality, you can use mixed reality tools to measure their surroundings. This can be useful if you are building an application to help calculate construction costs.
More Camera control measurement allows the user to select a starting point and then rotate to measure the space, with an overlay showing current measurements. This uses the built-in depth sensors in most modern phones; you’ll get the best results if your phone has a LIDAR or a similar exact sensor. Combining measurement tools with view controls can help with equipment installation planning, indicating where it can safely fit.
Things get even more interesting when you combine these tools with Power Apps AI Builder. Here you have low-code access to Azure Cognitive Services, mixing pre-built models with custom capabilities.
For example, you can use Power Apps camera controls and its object recognition features to detect which device versions need service, automatically loading the appropriate mixed reality model to compare. The app can then launch Dynamics 365 Tutorials to assist with maintenance, use an AR phone or, more usefully, a hands-free HoloLens. One spear from Azure’s developer support team shows how you can use the tools to identify different hardware.
Building the future of app development with Power Apps
Building complex mixed reality apps like this used to be difficult, requiring a lot of developer resources. By using Power Apps, businesses can leverage its ability to quickly connect disparate applications, using the device’s camera and cloud services with a simple workflow. .
The result may not be as pretty or full-featured as a specially designed app, but it will do the job and do better. And more than that, you can have something working in a matter of days as a proof of concept or a quick way to solve a problem.
