Use the power of PowerApps for fast data updates

We continue our series of blog posts dedicated to a large pharmaceutical company that required a broad range of infrastructure monitoring services. In this chapter, we will focus on the application that helps their sales team comply with the company rules.

The customer created an iOS and Android app that stored compliance policies for regular activities of the sales team. Their sales agents are using the app to find information on regular activities. For example, they could clarify the company’s budgeting policies for organizing conferences and gifts, as well as check out the company’s information disclosure rules.

The challenge of inconvenient updates

Company policies were dynamic and they changed their budgeting rules, as well as data disclosure guides, from time to time. Besides, the customer expanded their business globally, and policies in different regions could differ as well. However, the architecture of the app did not support instant and independent updates of data in compliance policy files. To change anything, the customer had to ask software developers for help.

That brought numerous troubles:

• Too much time and effort for updating information in the app;
• Costs spent on hiring developers to update the app;
• After all updates, the customer had to go for annual app updates on AppStore, and such re-deployments took extra costs and time.

The ABCloudz team comes with a solution

The customer decided to find a software development company to design a more convenient application with an updated logic. The ABCloudz team brought the perfect solution.

Our solution was to rewrite the application from scratch. We used PowerApps to create a brand new mobile app that displays constantly updated information from SharePoint. Here is its architecture.

The customer uses a computer, a tablet, or a smartphone to access PowerApps, which interacts with the app. PowerApps makes the app display information from two sources of content:

• SharePoint, which servers as a database and stores all the basic content;
• External links that drive the user outside of the app to external online sources.

Management website for the app

We also created a management website that connects to SharePoint. The customer can use it to update the policies. The website includes the following:

• Management pages that help searching for content over regions and check for updates;
• Table lists that store all the information;
• Libraries are being used for storing PDFs, photos, icons, and pictures;
• Custom forms that provide more customized interactive lists.

A challenge of protected PDFs

PowerApps PDF reader could not read protected PDFs with limited access permissions. This was a big problem because the customer used protected and confidential PDF files to update the app’s libraries.

Therefore, we created a custom PowerAutomate background flow that:

1. Receives the file uploaded to the libraries’ section;
2. Takes a short processing pause;
3. Determines whether it is new to the system;
4. Initializes a variable;
5. Converts the PDF file into a binary string that is readable to the system and is updated in a hidden field.

See the scheme for this flow below:

The flow is available only from the customer’s service account.

Key benefits of a new application

The benefits that our customer received:

• Ability to update app information without developers’ help;
• The app’s look and feel remained the same, so the customer did not have to provision it to the AppStore annually;
• Use of SharePoint data management functionalities enhanced the customer’s ability to secure and share files across the company.
• The customer has a multifunctional management site that allows them to modify and manage data 30% more efficiently.

Embrace our expertise

We can utilize and appropriate the practices from this project to the needs of any customer. Take advantage of our SharePoint and PowerApps expertise for the most efficient data solutions. Contact us now and see how we can help.