Which tool is right for me? (Powerapps, Sharepoint List Form, Excel Survey, etc)

Hi Steve,

There are definitely more than one option available to solve your dilemma.  What's great about the E1 is that you can use a variety of tools based on the needs.  It's important to consider the pros and cons of each though.

1.  You're right about using the Microsoft Flow Twilio connector to send the message, which is quite straight-forward to use and doesn't require any technical expertise really.  In terms of the form, you could use a SharePoint list to capture the text (for archiving purposes as well) or use PowerApps.  The latter would provide a nice interface for users to use on their mobile devices, but is a bit heavier on the processing as it requires the PowerApps app to be installed wherever you use the forms.  Another consideration is cost.  Based on the Microsoft Flow Pricing Plan, you can send up to 750 SMS messages per month with a delay of up to 15 minutes per message.

2.  For the onboarding case, in order to cut out the potential errors introduced by a helpdesk person would mean having a workflow that can talk to the other systems to retrieve the necessary information or possibly even execute some of the tasks.  Again, you could go with a SharePoint list and enhance the form with PowerApps.  However, in my experience, provisioning is often an asynchronous tasks where some tasks have to wait until upstream tasks are complete as they depend on information coming from them.  If the PowerShell script is taking care of all then, then you're set. You could also look into using Azure Functions to perform the PowerShell work for you so the process becomes more automated.  Have a look at the article on Using Azure Fuctions in PowerApps.

However, if you're looking to further automate the process and be able to track progress, I would lean towards a solution like Nintex, which is great for such complex workflows.

Unless there is a very compelling reason for you to use SharePoint Designer or Infopath, I would probably recommend going down the PowerApps/LogicApps/Flow route as this is where Microsoft is investing their efforts now.

Hope this helps.  Please feel free to reach out to me as I always like to discuss these kind of problems and solution with peers... #processgeek :)