PowerApps Vs Native Apps

When should you use PowerApps? When should use the built-in mobile app?   

Let's start with the Dynamics 365 mobile application: The nice thing about this is it leverages existing configurations that you have on your web applications.  So in some ways it is just an extension of the way the user can interact with the Dynamics 365 applications.  It doesn't do a lot to bring in other applications.  You can bring in data from other applications, but that requires a developer resource to typically do those types of modifications.  So it's best when the focus is within the Dynamics 365 application.  Using security and other techniques, you can narrow down the application, let the application users see only certain things.  Another benefit it has that is very powerful is that it has full off-line support.  So if you need to support scenarios where the user goes into a customer that may not have public network access to where they can get back to the Dynamics 365 server, the Dynamics 365 mobile apps off-line capability can be extremely powerful allowing when they connect back up those updates to be synchronized back to the server.  

Building a PowerApps is best when you want to leverage the no code business application capability, so something a power user could build without having to go to a developer, without having to understand deep customizations.  They can start as simple as adding a few fields on a form.  They can always get some help when they get stuck, a good choice for task focused internal applications.  What do I mean by task focused? For example, a sales coach might show a list of opportunities.  You click on it.  It might give you some tips for working with that particular opportunity.  It might pull in data from other systems, so using the connectors this is where it's really powerful with the PowerApp where I can pull in data from other systems, whether it be Dynamics 365 Operations or SharePoint or other internal systems that I have built custom connections to.  But in both of these scenarios, I'm really focused on the internal user base.  

Native client apps: These are the ones that developers build.  They use all the native tools.  These are great choices for building external applications where you have external users.  They are not as good for internal applications because often times you have to invest a lot of time and effort to be able to do them.  They tend to be bigger applications that you want to invest in those.  So when you think about an application that you build with PowerApps, you could think I am going to spend a couple of hours today, a couple of hours tomorrow and have an application that works.  Whereas, with a native client app you have to have a developer.  They will probably spend a few days at least, if not weeks, getting the application up and running doing some basic things.  But it is good if you want a very nicely polished application that you are going to put in an external app store and go to an external audience.  That is when you would look to the native client apps.  PowerApps would be good for that quick, we have a couple of hours and we want to build an app for our upcoming conference and we want to collect some things from the attendees and be able to augment data that is in Dynamics 365.  That's an application we could build with a PowerApp in a relatively short time and have some good business value back from building that application.