What is the Microsoft Power Platform?

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icons showing all the microsoft power platform services

The Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of Microsoft products that allows users to build, manage, and analyze their business data.

We live in a digital world and in recent years, there has been a distinct shift in what companies are learning to be their primary problem with data. Historically, companies were only wanting to capture data derived from their processes; now that these companies have taken steps to acquire even more data, they have no idea how to gain insights from it! This is where Microsoft’s Power Platform shines. With this extensive set of business intelligence tools, companies can finally start extracting more value from their data –  gains that can be used to transform their business processes.

 

What do you get with the Microsoft Power Platform?

Most companies do not believe that their data is being used to its full potential. This is what Microsoft offers as a simple fix. Coming in the form of a simple Graphical Interface, Power Platform ensures that you can get a streamlined view of your data in real-time. 

Overall, Power Platform can be viewed as a set of four components:

  • Power BI
  • Power Apps
  • Power Automate
  • Power Virtual Agent

Power BI: The Analyzer

Power Business Intelligence (BI) can be viewed as a multi-faceted power tool. Even for those without technical expertise, Power BI contains all the capabilities to connect, shape, and share insights. With interactive real-timehdashboards, reports, and stories, all the information that you are wanting to see can be viewed in a single dashboard.


screenshot showing the interface of power bi, a microsoft power platform product

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Power BI allows for multiple sources to connect with the platform (think where you get your data: SQL servers, excel worksheets, databases, etc.) By inputting all this information into the model, users can modify and craft the data in ways that match their reporting needs. This data can then be transformed into different visual forms like charts and graphs to help gain a better understanding of what’s happening with the business.

Power Apps: The Builder

Power Apps offers a versatile platform that helps users build application interfaces. With very little, if any, programming skills required, Power Apps is an intuitive alternative to building applications – it makes it easy to create intelligent apps that have built-in logic that fits your business.

screenshot of the power apps interface, which is a power platform service

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Users can quickly build apps for use on modern operating systems such as iOS, Android, and Windows, as well as common browsers like Edge, Chrome, Firefox etc. There is additional extensibility available for those with development backgrounds, so that these professionals can use a familiar environment to create apps. 

Power Automate: The Operator

Power Automate, previously known as Microsoft Flow, allows users to automate their business processes without writing any code and comes with several pre-configured templates that make it easy to automate workflows.

screenshot showing the power automate screen, which is a power platform application

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Process that can be automated with this tool typically fall into one of three categories:

  • Scheduled Workflow: This task triggers at the same time every week. An example of this would be sending out an email to your vendors once a month.
  • Automated Workflow: This workflow starts when another previous action is done. For example, after creating a Word document, Power Automate would automatically convert the file to PDF format. 
  • Button Workflow: This task is triggered when a button is clicked. An example of this would be to create a button that when clicked, reminds you to submit a task in 20 minutes.

Power Virtual Agents: The Communicator

Power Virtual Agents is a great resource for companies that are wanting to expand their customer relations but are either a) not technical enough to program a virtual bot, or b) don’t have available staff to manage a live chat. Either way, Power Virtual Agents is a great alternative.

screenshot of power virtual agents screen, showing what is possible with this power platform service

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By using the intuitive interface, a user can easily add logic to the system and set up their virtual agents! Once implemented, there are many ways that these Virtual Agents can be used and integrated with other Microsoft Power Platform apps. For example, you can use Power Automate to automatically generate a set workflow once the Power Virtual Agent picks up on a keyword.

Integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365

While Power Platform can be a very versatile and useful standalone application, the greatest value is realized from linking Power Platform apps with Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Bringing all of these Microsoft products together – Dynamics 365, Office, Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform – can seem daunting. That’s where Turnkey Technologies comes in. 

Feel free to Contact Us

Or learn more about:

Power BI

Microsoft Dynamics ERP Solutions

Microsoft Customer Engagement (CE) Solutions

 

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