Many of you have probably heard me talk about the new Power Apps Per App Plans. At $10ea, I know a lot of people are inquiring about it from my Save 90% post a while back. It’s real, but it’s different. Until Jukka writes the definitive post on this, I will give you my thoughts.
Licensing
One thing that most everyone can agree on, is that licensing for the Power Platform is complicated. It was complicated enough when it was just user-based licensing to determine what license a user needed, for whatever it was they needed to do. Now we have “Capacity-based” licensing. The simpler examples are things like storage, where when you run out, you add some storage “capacity”. But capacity-based licensing is spreading it’s wings.
Would you like fries with that?
Addons are a model you will continue hearing more about from Microsoft Business Applications Group. In a way, it is moving from pure user-based licensing to more of a consumption model… sorta. We currently have five items so far that are offered as “Capacity Addons” for the Power Platform:
- AI Builder Credits
- Portal Logins
- Portal Page Views
- Flow per Business Processes
- App Passes
These $10 “licenses” I have been talking about, are the “App Passes”.
Taking a Pass
App Passes are not the same as User Licenses. First, they are assigned to an App; or more specifically to an Azure AD Group, more on this later. This makes sense as they are designed for accessing a particular App as opposed to just anything. Using App Passes is a three-step process: 1) Purchase, 2) Allocate, and 3) Consume. This sounds easier than it is, depending on what you want to do.
Purchase
To purchase App Passes Microsoft refers you to the licensing guide. According the guide, you can purchase these passes through all of the normal channels, so the same place you buy your licenses today should have them. While Microsoft refers to the Per App plan as a means for users to “Get Started” . I am sure many users will never go beyond them. I’ll discuss what you can do with these passes in a moment.
Allocate
This can get a little tricky. Once you have passes available and allocated to your environment, you can allocate them to users by simply sharing a “Canvas” App with other users. While Canvas apps certainly have their place, the real goal is to use these passes with a model-driven app, in my opinion. So how do you do that? First, you have to create an AAD group, then you would assign the “PowerApps Per App Baseline access” to the group, you can get that here. After that, add your users to the group. Are we done? Not yet. The next step is to generate a Canvas app from the CDS environment that you plan to use the passes with. You can use the automated app generator for this, as I don’t think you will use this canvas app for anything later, here’s how. Now assign the security role to the group who will use the Model-Driven app. Then share the Canvas app with the group, and finally share the Model-driven app with the same group and assign the security role for that. Wow! They are not making this $10 pass easy to use. Stay tuned for Jukka’s much more detailed step-by-step that I will suggest that he write.
Consume
You will need to indicate for which apps you want to allow Per App Passes to be assignable. Here’s how to do that.
Is it worth the effort?
This will depend on how you plan to use apps in general. Instead of “Per App”, you could opt for “Per User” License. Per User Licenses are assigned in the traditional way, and have the advantage of being able to use any Power Apps that are created, instead of being tied to a single one. However, that will cost you $30 more per user ($40 total). An “App” in the Per App plan can include a Single Model-Driven application, plus a single Canvas App, plus a single Portal. (You can use as many embedded Canvas Apps as you want in your Model driven app.) Power Automate is also available within the context of the App. So you can build a pretty robust business application within this framework, particularly of you spend some time up front on architecture. Once you have done the work up front on the AAD group etc, adding passes and users should be a pretty simple process, so it’s more of a one-time effort. Saving $30/user/month may not be that significant if you only have a small number of users, but it could quickly add up for larger teams.
BTW, Microsoft has told me that they plan on making this process easier for Model-Driven Apps. Details to come.
Architecting for Per App Passes
While Microsoft advocates the Per App plan as a way to “Get Started” with Power Apps, we have seen some customers solve some pretty advanced business problems with a single Model-Driven app. Add the ability use a Canvas app and a Portal to that, and you can build a complete business solution for a small to midsized business, or a department in a large enterprise. I wrote a post a while back on Architecting for Power Apps here.
Let me know how this “Per App” approach works out for you!
Thanks for the awesome blog post.
I am a little confused in that if I am a user and I create an App using the App Plan, can I share that App with multiple additional users in my organization?
The way I understood it was that I would have to license each user to use the App?
I have the exact same challenge. The licensing model does not make sense at all. Back in the days I could produce whatever numbers of forms in Infopath and publish them without worrying about the cost, since the onetime license was already in place.
Did you ever get answer to your question?
I am implementing my first Per App (Modeldriven) solution, but it’s blood, sweat and tears, I must say. Despite all effort and info of our MVP gurus, still hitting the License wall with Microsoft Support. Have not been able to add the license to Security group in AAD, have been able to get the users (one by one) in, though. Allocation is done. But now I am not able to use the PowerApps CDS in a Flow (can’t even save the Flow) as I do not have the adequate service plan for a non-Standard connection. Microsoft support says, I should buy a Flow Plan to be able to use a premium connector. What?!?
Interpretation of the license guide is a challenge, apparently. Jukka confirmed that we should be able to use the CDS connector with our own CDS database within the Per App license. So falling back to classic workflow, now. π
Hope things get better soon. Appreciate all updates on this.
I was inspired by your ‘Architecting 101’ post and just migrated an insanely custom CRM 2011 to a shiny new model-driven app using the Per App plan. After a dozen years working with Dynamics, licensing was the hardest part – cheers to Jukka and other helpful community members who saved me via Twitter – but wow, thinking of App Passes as a way to “Get Started” I hadn’t anticipated the pain π
I have been promised that the pain will be eliminated imminently!