Power Apps

Power Apps is Microsoft's low-code application platform, part of the Power Platform. It supports two types of apps: canvas apps, which are free-form drag-and-drop apps built for tablet and mobile front ends; and model-driven apps, which generate forms, views, and dashboards from a Dataverse data model. Dynamics 365 CRM-side apps (Sales, Customer Service, Field Service) are themselves built on the model-driven framework. Power Apps connects to hundreds of data sources through standard and premium connectors, and is licensed per user, per app, or bundled with Dynamics 365 licenses.

In practice, the canvas-versus-model-driven choice is the first design decision on any new app: canvas apps give pixel-level control over layout and work well for a focused, task-specific tool (a driver's delivery-confirmation app, a shop-floor scanning screen), while model-driven apps generate a full, consistent CRUD experience from the data model with far less design work, at the cost of less visual flexibility. A Dynamics 365 CRM app extended with a custom entity and a custom form is normally a model-driven customisation, not a separate canvas app — canvas apps are the right tool when the need is a purpose-built, narrow-scope experience rather than "one more screen on the CRM."

The licensing line is where most confusion happens: using Power Apps functionality that's genuinely part of a licensed Dynamics 365 app (extending the Sales app's own forms, say) is covered by the Dynamics 365 licence, but building an unrelated custom Power App against the same Dataverse environment typically needs a separate Power Apps per-app or per-user licence — "we already pay for Dynamics 365" does not automatically cover arbitrary new Power Apps.