Introduction to Power Platfrom

 

Introduction

Modern businesses run on data. Users interact with data daily from entering their time for payroll, seeking guidance on existing processes, and analyzing data to make decisions. In our technology driven world, users can be empowered to gain insights from and interact with data all while automating those menial responsibilities that seem to be more burden than job task. Microsoft Power Platform enables your business to craft solutions while empowering you to unite customized technology to help everyone, from the CEO to the front-line workers, drive the business with data.

In this module you will,

Learn the components and features of Microsoft Power Platform

Identify when to use each Microsoft Power Platform component application to create business solutions

Learn the value of using Microsoft Power Platform to create business solutions

What is Microsoft Power Platform?

 

Microsoft Power Platform is composed of four key products: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and Power Virtual Agents.

Power Apps provides a rapid low code development environment for building custom apps for business needs. It has services, connectors, and a scalable data service and app platform (Microsoft Dataverse) to allow simple integration and interaction with existing data. Power Apps enables the creation of web and mobile applications that run on all devices.
People use apps for every area of their lives, and business should be no exception. Most out of the box solutions do not meet exact business needs or integrate well with other business programs. Power Apps eases users into app development with a simple interface so that every business user or pro developer can build custom apps.

Power Automate lets users create automated workflows between applications and services. It helps automate repetitive business processes such as communication, data collections, and decision approvals.
Don't waste important productive hours on drafting the same email for a weekly update or walking approvals through. Not only for the individual user, Power Automate allows for the creation of enterprise-grade process automation. Power Automate's simple interface allows every level of user to automate work tasks - from beginners to seasoned developers.

Power BI (Business Intelligence) is a business analytics service that delivers insights for analyzing data. It can share those insights through data visualizations which make up reports and dashboards to enable fast, informed decisions. Power BI scales across an organization, and it has built-in governance and security allowing businesses to focus on using data more than managing it.
You can consider Power BI as the analysis and insights leg of Microsoft Power Platform. It takes business data and allows you to display it in ways that makes the most sense to users. A Power BI dashboard could potentially replace a standing meeting to report out on company metrics such as sales data, progress against goals, or employee performance.

Power Virtual Agents enables anyone to create powerful chatbots using a guided, no-code graphical interface, without the need for data scientists or developers.
It minimizes the IT effort required to deploy and maintain a custom solution by empowering subject matter experts to build and maintain their own conversational solutions. Power Virtual Agents is part of Microsoft Power Platform, therefore integration into existing systems is streamlined with out-of-the-box integration with Power Automate and its ecosystems of hundreds of connectors. Users can enable chatbots to perform an action by simply calling a Power Automate flow. Flows help users automate activities or call back end systems. Users can utilize existing flows that have been created in their Power Apps environment or they can create a flow within Power Virtual Agents authoring canvas.

Features

Among the programs listed above, there are cross cutting features which enable Microsoft Power Platform to be leveraged to its full potential. Some of these are:

AI Builder lets users and developers add AI capabilities to the workflows and Power Apps they create and use. AI Builder is a turnkey solution that allows you to easily add intelligence to your workflows and apps and predict outcomes to help improve business performance without writing code.

Microsoft Dataverse is a scalable data service and app platform which lets users securely store and manage data from multiple sources and integrate that data in business applications using a common data model to ensure ease and consistency to users. Microsoft Dataverse is the common currency that enables the components of Microsoft Power Platform to work together. It’s the foundation that enables the consolidation, display, and manipulation of data.

Connectors enable you to connect apps, data, and devices in the cloud. Consider connectors the bridge across which information and commands travel. There are more than 600 connectors for Microsoft Power Platform, enabling all of your data and actions to connect cohesively. Examples of popular connectors include Salesforce, Office 365, Twitter, Dropbox, Google services, and more.

Although every feature is essential to building powerful solutions, let's dive in deeper to one of the features of Microsoft Power Platform, connectors.

The business value of Microsoft Power Platform

The business value of Microsoft Power Platform

Many organizations struggle building solutions that help their users be successful. Not only do they struggle trying to modernize their systems, but they simply don't have the resources required to meet the ever-changing needs of businesses today. With demands for targeted applications at an all-time high and labor shortages, it isn't uncommon to see application demand up to five times what departments can realistically deliver.

This is not the only challenge that face today’s businesses. As the business climate changes, new factors are impacting businesses. These impacts include:

·         Changing workforce expectations: As millennials and Gen Z come to represent most of the workforce, organizations need to adapt to fit the way they work. They have grown up in a world of tailored experiences and collaborating through social media. To best apply their abilities, organizations need to be able to deliver more custom, streamlined, and collaborative digital experiences.

  Increased costs for custom application development: Building custom applications is time consuming and expensive. Not only do you need to factor in the costs to initially custom develop an application, but you need to factor in the costs to maintain it.

·       Need to become more agile: Historically, solutions can take months to build and roll out. Once deployed, it can take weeks to implement every minor change. We no longer have that luxury. Business strategies and needs change rapidly, so organizations need to be able to quickly build solutions based on those changing needs.

·  Need to scale development efficiently: To meet ever changing needs, organizations need to change how they develop solutions. By responsibly enabling citizens developers (Power Users) as part of development processes, we can create hybrid development teams that empower the entire organization to grow.

The Power Platform makes it easy for organizations to address all the challenges mentioned above. The combination of low code tools, along with the ability to leverage enterprise level application development tools, provide a collaborative solution where citizen developers and professional developers work together to build targeted solutions based on needs of the people who will be using these applications every day.

For example, technicians in the field may encounter scenarios where, they need a part to execute a job. Ideally if that part is in inventory, they can easily request the part so they can continue to work. However, many times, there's a bottleneck in this process. They need to submit a request to the parts person first. This means that they can be potentially spending time waiting for the parts person to get back to them only to find out later that the part isn't in stock. This could be easily solved by building a dedicated Power App. By being able to check inventory levels while onsite, technicians do not have to spend time onsite waiting to determine if the part is available. Not only can they see if the part is available, but they can easily request the part as needed. Since they best understand what they would need, they can use their first-hand knowledge of what would be required, to build out a prototype of the application using Power Apps that reflects the best user interface and overall experience. This is something that would have to be done by a developer in the past. Once prototyped, the organizations' developers can be used to fill in the gaps that go beyond the technician’s ability, such as developing the APIs that will do the checking in the company’s inventory system. Once created, the APIs can be easily added to the Power App and to any Power Automate Flows that may be needed. This collaborative approach to creating solutions is often referred to as Fusion development and allows organizations to use the best resources for the required task.

The image below provides an example the Fusion development approach.

Leveraging a low code/no code approach minimizes the amount of time that development resources spend working on items like screens, automations, and more. This frees them up to focus on the more advanced portions of the solution where their skills are more appropriately used. Over 600 pre-built connectors help simplify integration with both internal and external systems. These connectors mean that organizations do not need to custom build integration solutions from the ground up, which can be costly both initially and to maintain.

In addition to the cost benefits provided by using Microsoft Power Platform, the Power Platform helps to increase performance and efficiency. The flexibility of the platform lets you build applications and solutions that meet your business initiatives and goals. For example, a dedicated time management Power App could be quickly created to ensure that everyone is capturing their time on projects the same way. This means that the potential for data entry errors would be dramatically reduced. Integrated approvals built on Power Automate ensures that items like time off requests and other items are being automatically routed to the right person, so they can approve or reject items as quickly as possible.

Microsoft Power Platform helps organizations build solutions that meet their ever-changing needs. Microsoft Power Platform gives organizations the ability to increase their business agility, by allowing them to quickly build application prototypes in hours or days, as opposed to weeks or months. This ensures by the time the solutions are created, it will still be something that provides value. The business value provided by Microsoft Power Platform extends beyond the value of the platform to the value of the apps themselves that are being built. These applications typically help improve one or more value drivers, such as performance improvement, direct or indirect cost savings, risk mitigation or business transformation. This allows organizations to have a library of applications to facilitate day to day operations. These apps might include solutions for facilities management, solutions to assist with employee onboarding, solutions for streamlining process, and more.