Empower your organization with powerful solutions using PowerPlatform. Known as ‘low code’, Microsoft PowerPlatform enables you to rapidly create solutions on top of your existing data sources such as SharePoint, Teams, Azure, etc. This allows you to provide modern and robust solutions that cater to the needs of your end-users.
We can help you with :
- Information Architecture
- Design and development of business applications and processes using Power Platform.
- Microsoft Teams custom applications development.
- SharePoint Modern customisations and development.
- DataVerse data architecture, security and optimizations.
- PowerBi and Virtual Agents.
What is Power Platform?
A low code platform, part of Microsoft 365, is designed to be used by citizen developers and power users for quick development and deployment of business applications.
This suite is known as the Power Platform.
- Power Apps
- Power Automates
- Power Bi
- Power Virtual Agent
- Power Pages
- Data connectors
- AI and ML Builder
- & Dataverse
PowerApps
Power Apps serves as the platform that enables organizations to create and customize business applications. When creating a new PowerApps application, it is essential to identify your target audience and understand how they will be using the app. This will help you determine which type of app to choose. PowerApps offers three primary types of apps.
Canvas App:
Canvas Apps are the go-to option for building your apps quickly. You start by designing your app while defining the data model. Typically, you begin by designing various screens and components of your apps while defining the data sources you want to use or create.
In essence, the process of building a Canvas App involves defining the user interface first and then plugging in the data when necessary. According to Microsoft, Canvas App is defined as “Design and build a business app from a canvas in Microsoft Power Apps without writing code in a traditional programming language such as C#. Design the app by dragging and dropping elements onto a canvas, just as you would design a slide in PowerPoint.
Microsoft defines Canvas App as “Design and build a business app from a canvas in Microsoft Power Apps without writing code in a traditional programming language such as C#. Design the app by dragging and dropping elements onto a canvas, just as you would design a slide in PowerPoint. Create Excel-like expressions for specifying logic and working with data. Build apps that integrate business data from a wide variety of Microsoft and third-party sources. Share your app so that users can run it in a browser or on a mobile device and embed your app so they can run it in SharePoint, Power BI, or Teams.” Ref.
Model Driven App
A model-driven app is designed to prioritize data. To create this type of app, you need to connect PowerApps to your data model, which will then automatically generate various views that allow you to interact with the data through CRUD operations.
Model-driven apps are particularly useful when you already have existing data models (entities) and want to quickly create an app that can work with that data.
“Compared to canvas apps, model-driven apps in PowerApps are based on underlying data — specifically, the data stored in Common Data Service (CDS). CDS is a secure, cloud-based storage space that organizations can use to store business application data.” Ref.
Portal Apps [Deprecated]
Canvas and Model Driven apps are designed for internal use by your organization’s users. However, if you need to develop apps for external users, PowerApps Portal Apps is the answer.
Portal Apps have some limitations when it comes to designing the user interface – they are driven by Bootstrap and are more like web applications than typical PowerApps (Canvas or Model Driven apps).
Furthermore, Portal Apps cannot connect to any data source other than Dataverse.
Power Automates
Power Automate is a powerful tool that allows businesses to automate their processes, from simple data validation to complex approval workflows.
It offers various data connectors and actions to streamline tasks and save time.
The first step in creating a Power Automate is to define the trigger that sets it in motion.
Power Automates offers different ways to trigger your processes.
- Data Trigger: This can be a data event such as Item creation or modification.
- Schedule: You can define a frequency for the process (e.g. Every data, every hour, or a more customized recurrence).
- Manual trigger: If you want your flow to be triggered manually either from your Power App or from the
Once you have determined the most appropriate trigger for your Power Automate, the next step is to create the process.
Power Automate provides a range of actions to execute most business processes without significant difficulty or custom development.
Although it is not possible to describe all the actions in a single document, most of them are straightforward to use.
The second factor to consider while developing the process is to choose the right connectors.
Power Bi
Power BI is a platform that enables users to create interactive reports using their existing data.
As Microsoft Describes PowerBi:
“Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Your data may be an Excel spreadsheet or a collection of cloud-based and on-premises hybrid data warehouses. Power BI lets you easily connect to your data sources, visualize and discover what’s important, and share that with anyone or everyone you want.”
