We are excited to share that new geospatial features will be coming soon to Power Apps. With these new features, app makers will be able to quickly introduce location-based capabilities into their experiences and start to digitize workflows in physical space using tools they are already familiar with.

These new components are powered by Azure Maps services, but you don’t need to be a professional developer to take advantage of these features. You can add these components with the ease of drag-and-drop and low-code development.

Interactive Maps

 

Maps have been the best way to visualize and interpret location data for thousands of years and users have come to expect high quality, dynamic mapping experiences as they are common in our daily lives. With our new geospatial features, makers will be able to bring interactive maps into their Power Apps.

Binding a dataset containing addresses or latitude and longitude pairs will plot those locations on the map as markers. As you zoom out, the markers will optionally cluster to represent dense groups of data. The current location of the user can also be represented on the map on mobile devices or web experiences. The map component also supports road and satellite views.

Address Suggestion

 

Entering addresses is frustrating and error prone, particularly in mobile scenarios. With the new address input component, you can see dynamic address suggestions as you type. Using fuzzy matching logic, the component suggests multiple potential address matches that the user can select – making it quicker and easier to enter accurate addresses.

The component returns the address as structured data, allowing your application to extract information like city, street, municipality, and even latitude and longitude, in a format friendly to many locales and international address formats.

Understanding the spread of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone in unprecedented ways. Seeing an opportunity to create an app to inform the public of the Coronavirus, Reza Dorrani, a Microsoft MVP, created a Coronavirus Tracking App that helps people visualize data on the spread of the virus globally. Reza used the map component to show data from Johns Hopkins University on the number of cases in locations across the globe. Reza was able to create and publish this application in only two days using Power Apps. You can learn more about the app and geospatial features in Reza’s YouTube channel here.

Available in public preview

These capabilities are in public preview now with many more features to follow soon. You can start experimenting with these capabilities in your organization. Learn more in our documentation.

To learn more about these and other exciting new features on the Power Platform watch the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event.