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An introduction to the Microsoft Power Platform
Microsoft Power Platform is a group of Microsoft products that help develop complex business solutions and automate businesses requirements. The platform offers the ability to build applications for desktop and mobile devices for those who have low coding or programming knowledge. It provides a simple GUI so developers/business users/administrators can easily create applications, which ultimately reduces the need for IT administrators in an organization.
With customizable business logic, Power Platform allows users to extend Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure to help improve business processes, systems and workflows.
There are four products under the Microsoft Power Platform:
Power BI
Power BI is a business analytics service by Microsoft. It aims to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end-users to create their own reports and dashboards.
Despite very humble beginnings, Power BI is now a potent and highly capable suite of tools. Designed specifically for business to gain insights into their business operations by exposing data through the lens of big data warehouse technologies. The true advantages are the tool-sets Microsoft has provided to enable the business to see that data in meaningful ways.
Power Apps
Combining all the Microsoft Power Platform Apps, services, components like connectors, and data services into a single app gives you the power to rapidly develop custom applications as per your business requirements.
Power Apps lets you create custom business applications that connect to your business data stored using different methods at different locations using a common platform called Microsoft Dataverse (formerly Common Data Services)
Power Automate
Power Automate (Formerly Microsoft Flow) is a cloud-based service that helps users create automated tasks/workflows among multiple applications and services. It provides an easy to use UI and you do not need to be a programmer/developer to create these workflows. These flows automate the collection and sharing of data and trigger actions. These actions can be a set of push notifications and other predefined steps of action to automate and manage business processes.
Power Virtual Agents
Microsoft Power Virtual Agents is a new offering that enables everyone in your organization — such as customer service, sales, marketing, finance, or HR — to easily create chatbots using a guided, no-code/low-code point-and-click graphical interface without the need for data scientists or developers.
Other Microsoft products are also part of the Power Platform commonly used by the above products which assist in building applications:
Microsoft Dataverse
Microsoft Dataverse (Formerly Common Data Service) is a service that is used mainly in the Power Apps portal. However, it is accessible through other Power Platform services and Microsoft Dynamics. The data can be loaded into Microsoft Dataverse entities/tables in multiple ways, and it can also be extracted from there using different methods.
Microsoft AI Builder
AI Builder is a Microsoft Power Platform service used to add artificial intelligence to your business by different AI models available to choose from. This ultimately improves business processes. This is again a low/no-code platform and gives users an experience to create an AI model using some clicks. Users do not require any programming or data science knowledge for this.
Microsoft Reference links:
With customizable business logic, Power Platform allows users to extend Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure to help improve business processes, systems and workflows.
There are four products under the Microsoft Power Platform:
- Power BI
- Power Apps
- Power Automate
- Power Virtual Agents
Power BI
Power BI is a business analytics service by Microsoft. It aims to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end-users to create their own reports and dashboards.
Despite very humble beginnings, Power BI is now a potent and highly capable suite of tools. Designed specifically for business to gain insights into their business operations by exposing data through the lens of big data warehouse technologies. The true advantages are the tool-sets Microsoft has provided to enable the business to see that data in meaningful ways.
Power Apps
Combining all the Microsoft Power Platform Apps, services, components like connectors, and data services into a single app gives you the power to rapidly develop custom applications as per your business requirements.
Power Apps lets you create custom business applications that connect to your business data stored using different methods at different locations using a common platform called Microsoft Dataverse (formerly Common Data Services)
Power Automate
Power Automate (Formerly Microsoft Flow) is a cloud-based service that helps users create automated tasks/workflows among multiple applications and services. It provides an easy to use UI and you do not need to be a programmer/developer to create these workflows. These flows automate the collection and sharing of data and trigger actions. These actions can be a set of push notifications and other predefined steps of action to automate and manage business processes.
Power Virtual Agents
Microsoft Power Virtual Agents is a new offering that enables everyone in your organization — such as customer service, sales, marketing, finance, or HR — to easily create chatbots using a guided, no-code/low-code point-and-click graphical interface without the need for data scientists or developers.
Other Microsoft products are also part of the Power Platform commonly used by the above products which assist in building applications:
Microsoft Dataverse
Microsoft Dataverse (Formerly Common Data Service) is a service that is used mainly in the Power Apps portal. However, it is accessible through other Power Platform services and Microsoft Dynamics. The data can be loaded into Microsoft Dataverse entities/tables in multiple ways, and it can also be extracted from there using different methods.
Microsoft AI Builder
AI Builder is a Microsoft Power Platform service used to add artificial intelligence to your business by different AI models available to choose from. This ultimately improves business processes. This is again a low/no-code platform and gives users an experience to create an AI model using some clicks. Users do not require any programming or data science knowledge for this.
Microsoft Reference links:
- Microsoft Power Platform
- What is Power Apps?
- Solution - Microsoft Power BI
- Power Virtual Agents case study
- What is Microsoft Dataverse?
- What is AI Builder?
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