If you’ve been looking to streamline your business processes and create custom solutions – without having to engage in extensive coding or development – Microsoft Power Platform is hands down the go-to set of tools that can help with all that.
In this blog post, we will examine the platform and its five core components: Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Power Pages, and Power Virtual Agents, providing an overview of each component and walking you through the process of getting started with Power Platform!
In a nutshell, Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code software development solution combining 5 powerful tools: Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate (formerly known as Flow), Power Pages, and Power Virtual Agents. Together, these tools empower users to create custom solutions for a variety of business needs easily and intuitively, as it doesn’t require formidable coding and programming knowledge.
We will deal with each of the parts that make up Power Platform later on, but in general, let’s summarize what each component is about:
The Power Platform offers the following key, general features and benefits for businesses:
All in all, a business equipped with Power Platform's features and capabilities will be empowered to create custom solutions that increase productivity, drive growth, and improve overall business performance.
Power Apps is a low-code app development platform that allows users to easily create custom business apps. It allows users to build apps that can be used on a variety of devices, including desktops, tablets, and mobile phones, while some additional common use cases for Power Apps include building custom forms, creating mobile apps for field workers, and building apps to handle asset management or customer service by tracking inventory or customer data.
For getting started with Power Apps, you’ll need to sign up for a Power Apps account and choose a template or start from scratch. Once you’ve created your first app, you can intuitively customize it by adding screens, fields, and other elements using a drag-and-drop interface.
It also provides a variety of connectors that will allow you to integrate with other systems, such as Dynamics 365, SharePoint, or Salesforce.
Power BI is an all-in-one business intelligence tool for creating custom dashboards and reports based on data gathered from a variety of data sources. It enables users to connect to sources such as Excel spreadsheets, cloud-based services like Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, and even web services like Twitter and Google Analytics.
Similarly to Power Apps, you’ll need a Power BI account and start connecting your select data sources. Once you’ve connected your data, you can create dashboards and reports using another intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Fortunately, Power BI also comes with a wide range of visualization tools – e.g. charts and graphs – which enable the easy communication of insights and trends to your stakeholders.
Power Automate is all for automating workflows and repetitive tasks that hold up your employees’ time and creativity. In general, it’s an easy-to-use solution that will let you create custom workflows that connect directly to systems such as email, SharePoint, and Dynamics 365.
Once again, a Power Automate account will be required before you can start creating your workflows, but once it’s done, you can build them from scratch or use one of the pre-built templates found in the application. With your workflow ready, you can further customize it through the addition of triggers and actions that define and finetune the workflow’s behavior.
Microsoft Power Pages is a powerful low-code tool that makes it easy for users to create interactive web pages with a professional-looking design, without relying on developers or designers. Power Pages helps organizations improve their customer engagement and streamline their internal processes by providing a simple and intuitive drag-and-drop interface to create responsive pages that can be published directly to the web. The platform also comes with the ability to create custom forms, surveys, portals, and other web-based solutions in minutes, not requiring any coding skills.
Additionally, Power Pages integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft Power Platform tools, such as Power Automate and Power Apps, to provide a complete end-to-end solution. As for the setup, it’s practically a breeze as it is a cloud-based service that can be accessed through a web browser. Simply sign up for a Power Pages account and start creating your first web pages.
With Microsoft Power Virtual Agents, you can easily create and deploy chatbots for a variety of use cases. Whether it's for customer service, IT support, or HR inquiries, the platform works 24/7 and helps automate common tasks, frees up time for human agents to focus on more complex issues, improves customer satisfaction, and reduces wait times by providing quick and accurate responses to customers' inquiries. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, users can build chatbots, and then deploy them to a variety of channels, such as websites, Facebook Messenger, and Teams.
Similarly to Power Pages, it is also a cloud-based service accessible through a browser, so setting it up is just as easy and intuitive. You simply register a Power Virtual Agents account and start creating those chatbots.
You might feel overwhelmed by the amount of options inherently available in Power Platform, so we’ve collected a few best practices to keep in mind as you start using any of its components:
All in all, Microsoft Power Platform offers a powerful trio of tools that can help businesses streamline their processes and create custom solutions quickly, intuitively, and without pre-existing knowledge of coding and software development. With Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Power Pages, and Power Virtual Agents, the custom applications, dashboards, workflows, websites, and chatbots, that connect to a variety of systems and data sources and you’ve wanted to have for a long time become reality.
As you could’ve seen from each overview, the first step starts with registering accounts for each component before you can begin exploring the available templates and examples. And as you start getting ready to work on your first real custom solution, keep in mind the best practices mentioned above!
Also, do pay attention to the fact that Power Platform is constantly evolving, with new features and integrations being added via regular updates. So, it’s essential to stay up to date with the latest developments. As such, joining the Power Platform community, attending online events and webinars, and following Microsoft’s official documentation and blogs can help greatly in always being informed and ready to take advantage of upcoming features.
