Citizen development platform where everything looks like Excel Tim Anderson Tue 2 Mar 2021 // 16:30 UTC Share Copy Ignite Microsoft today introduced Power Fx, a low-code language for its Power Platform, but it is not altogether new, being extracted from the existing formula language for what the company calls canvas apps. The company has long been in search of some equivalent to Visual Basic for the cloud, that would allow non-programmers to piece together business applications. Microsoft settled on Power Apps as its primary solution. Power Apps is a composite of several pieces. The heart of it is Microsoft Dataverse, formerly known as the Common Data Service, which is the data platform for Dynamics, supplemented by custom data and connectors to other sources such as SQL Server. There are three kinds of Power Apps: model-driven apps, which look very much like forms built on Dynamics CRM; Canvas apps, where the developer starts with a blank sheet; and Portal Apps, which are websites built on Dataverse.