Alternatives for Excel as GUI for data collection

[doeked]

Dear all,

I am in a company where there are a lot of PowerBI dashboards that are built on Excel sheets.

This works okay when collaborating in this document with less people. But there are some excels that are less stable, for instance, people adding or removing columns, changing column names, or what happens most frequently is that the data is not filled out in a proper format (including blanks).

Currently we are reviewing manners to migrate to a new GUI for the employees to put their data in. We have been thinking about a Sharepoint list. Are there also any alternatives? A PowerApp also came across as one of the possibilities, but it is maybe overdone to create that for just update rows in a datasheet.

Added later: this is for me a temporary assignment, so I doubt that when I create a PowerApp, this will properly be owned after I leave. 

We can use Azure databricks eventually to store the data which is connected to our reports in PowerBI.

Let me know your thoughts.

kr

Doeke

[christinepayton · Accepted solution]

Microsoft Lists (SharePoint lists) are great for this. If you give your users contribute access, they will be able to enter data but not change column settings (this is what tends to break Excel sources). 

With Power Apps, it's not necessarily an either-or, you can use Power Apps with lists if you want to - it's mostly about how much data you have and how complex it is. If you're working with millions of rows of data with relationship tables, make an app on Dataverse or SQL - note that this triggers premium Power Apps licensing for all app users, which can get pricey.

The setup and maintenance of MS Lists is MUCH lower, and the user experience for entering data is quite good. Power Apps you will have to put in a lot of dev time to match the user experience of lists, and it's more expensive, but it's better for more complex data and larger data sourcecs.