Microsoft Power Platform explained

Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code platform that enables developers and business users to build custom applications and automate business processes without writing code. It consists of four main components:

1. Power BI: a business intelligence tool that enables you to create interactive reports and dashboards to visualize and analyze data.
2. Power Apps: a platform for building custom business applications without writing code. You can use Power Apps to create custom forms, workflows, and integrations with other systems.
3. Power Automate: a tool for automating business processes by creating workflows that trigger actions based on specific events or conditions.
4. Power Virtual Agents: a platform for building chatbots that can interact with users and provide information or assistance.

Together, these tools enable you to build custom solutions that meet your specific business needs, without requiring extensive coding knowledge.

Here is an example of how you can use Power Apps to create a custom application to track employee training records:

1. Open Power Apps and click on the “Create an app” button.
2. Select the “Phone layout” option, and then click on the “Create” button.
3. In the Power Apps designer, add the following fields to the form: Employee name, Training title, Training date, and Notes.
4. To save the form data to a spreadsheet, click on the “Connections” button, and then select the “Excel” option.
5. In the “Connect to data” window, select the Excel file where you want to store the form data, and then click on the “Connect” button.
6. To test the app, click on the “Run” button in the top menu.

This will create a simple Power Apps application that enables you to track employee training records by entering the employee name, training title, training date, and any notes into a form, which is then saved to an Excel spreadsheet.

In summary, Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code platform that enables developers and business users to build custom applications and automate business processes without writing code. It consists of four main components: Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents, which can be used together to build solutions that meet your specific business needs.

Focus point – Power Platform and Power Automate

Power Apps is a platform for building custom business applications without writing code. It enables developers and business users to create custom forms, workflows, and integrations with other systems, using a drag-and-drop interface and pre-built connectors to popular business applications and services.

Power Apps applications can be accessed from a web browser or a mobile device, and can be used to automate a wide range of business processes, such as data entry, approvals, and task management.

Here is an example of how you can use Power Apps to create a custom application to track employee vacation requests:

1. Open Power Apps and click on the “Create an app” button.
2. Select the “Phone layout” option, and then click on the “Create” button.
3. In the Power Apps designer, add the following fields to the form: Employee name, Start date, End date, and Reason for request.
4. To send an email notification to the employee’s manager when a request is submitted, click on the “Flow” button, and then select the “Create a flow” option.
5. In the “Create a flow” window, choose the “When a new item is added” trigger, and then select the SharePoint list where the form data will be stored.
6. Add an “Send an email” action to the flow, and configure it to send an email to the employee’s manager, including a link to the request form and the employee’s name and request details.
7. To test the app, click on the “Run” button in the top menu.

This will create a simple Power Apps application that enables employees to submit vacation requests, which are then stored in a SharePoint list and trigger an email notification to the employee’s manager.

Power Automate is a tool for automating business processes by creating workflows that trigger actions based on specific events or conditions. It enables you to build automated processes that span multiple applications and services, using a range of pre-built connectors and a simple, visual interface.

Power Automate can be used to automate a wide range of business processes, such as data entry, approvals, task management, and data integration.

Here is an example of how you can use Power Automate to create a workflow that automatically updates a customer record in a CRM system when a new purchase is made:

1. Open Power Automate and click on the “Create a flow” button.
2. Select the “When a new purchase is made” trigger, and then select the e-commerce platform where the purchase data is stored.
3. Add an “Update a record” action to the flow, and configure it to update the customer record in the CRM system with the new purchase information.
4. To test the flow, click on the “Test” button in the top menu.

This will create a simple Power Automate workflow that triggers an action to update the customer record in the CRM system whenever a new purchase is made.

In summary, Power Apps is a platform for building custom business applications, and Power Automate is a tool for automating business processes by creating workflows that trigger actions based on specific events or conditions. Together, these tools enable developers and business users to build custom solutions that automate a wide range of business processes and integrate with other systems.