The Power Platform is more than the sum of its parts, giving you the ability to provide tailor-made solutions, no matter your client's requirements. Whether they have a complex data structure and rely heavily on data analysis or want to implement substantial amounts of automation to eliminate those repetitive, manual tasks and processes - the Power Platform will cater for it.
With endless possibilities being offered by the Power Platform, we thought we’d break it down for you. When we talk about the Power Platform, we are referring to the following four products:
Power Apps
Power Apps provide an interface for business users to interact with their data. It’s comprised of three different types of ‘Apps’.
Canvas - Canvas Apps are great for any niche requirements a business may have, where an app needs to be created straight from scratch – a blank ‘canvas’. They provide a highly customisable, responsive, low code interface and can connect to more than 200 data sources as standard.
Model-Driven - Model-Driven Apps are based on a pre-existing data model created in Dataverse, the platform's back-end database. Once created the app provides users with an intuitive interface, allowing them to easily navigate through different forms and views, through which the data is surfaced.
Portals - Power Apps Portals offer the ability for external users to access and interact with the data stored in Dataverse. Internal users can manage the data and processes through the model-driven and canvas applications, whilst the Portal provides a customer-facing experience allowing external users to interface with your organisation and its data.
All these app interfaces are customisable with little code. Meaning that complex solutions can be built and extended in a fraction of the time it would require to code them.
Power BI
One of the best things about Power BI, and the platform as a whole, is the vast array of connectors available as standard. These allow us to connect to nearly 300 different business systems.
In some cases, not all business data will be stored in the Dataverse. Power BI lets us create data models/sets comprising of multiple data sources, bringing them together into visualisations that users can filter across. Furthermore, these visualisations can easily be surfaced through Power Apps, as well as other Microsoft products such as SharePoint and Teams – a good example of the native integration available across different Microsoft technologies.
Power Automate
Power Automate brings an end to those repetitive tasks carried out by business users, saving valuable time and money. It has an extensive list of connectors, meaning we can easily build automation that interacts with third-party data sources, whilst also empowering end-users to take control of their task automation.
Whether you have a complex integration or want to simply save your email attachments to a cloud location, Power Automate can support most automation requirements. Power Automate has evolved to help take your business to the next level with Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation; the possibilities are endless!
Power Virtual Agents
Power Virtual Agents allow us to create intelligent chatbots which can be used by business users - internal or external. The best aspect is that they are generally built completely without code, making them highly customisable. Chatbots can be surfaced directly on a business’s website, meaning external users can make general inquiries without the need to consume an employee’s valuable time. Power Virtual Agents have powerful conversation AI capabilities built-in that enable end-users to have rich multi-turn conversations, helping steer them in the right direction without the need for human intervention. Bots can be configured to use Power Automate flows in their interactions, which further enhances their functionality.
So… feel like you now know a bit more about the Power Platform and all it has to offer?
Let’s talk next steps, get in touch today to begin your journey with the Power Platform.
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