What Is Microsoft Power Platform? Here’s All You Need To Know

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Microsoft innovates, updates, and releases new products and solutions quickly, with Power Platform being one of the latest, but what is it really?

» LEARN MORE: See How Microsoft 365 Can Help You Integrate All Enterprise Data & Drive Business Forward

And how can this automations-first set of tools help your company drive better business outcomes?

Let’s find out together what Microsoft Power Platform is in the next few lines.

What is Microsoft Power Platform?

“Power Platform” is a term that includes 3 Microsoft products: Power BI, PowerApps and Power Automate (formerly known as Flow). All three tools provide the means to help people easily manipulate, visualize, automate, and analyze data, and can be used with Office 365 and Dynamics 365 (as well as other third-party apps and other Microsoft services).

Power Platform is possible because of Microsoft’s Dataverse, which is the underlying data platform that provides a unified and simplified data schema for applications and services that interact with it. That’s what makes Power Platform so intriguing to many enterprises.

Companies are all extremely dependent on data, and the amount of it that companies create is constantly increasing.

While all of this data is inevitable, it’s useless if companies can’t get tangible value out of it.

Historically, data analysis, app creation or automation would be done by IT/development teams. This would require staff to outline their requirements and goals, send these requests to their IT department (or an external partner like LogicV), and then see if if they were approved or achieved.

Power Platform is attractive because some of those processes can be handled internally.

(A lot will still be technical in nature so an IT partner is recommended)

Power Platform enables more access to data and the ability for complex data structures to be accessed from non-technical business users.

Power Platform enables more access to data and the ability for complex data structures to be accessed from non-technical business users.

While it doesn’t allow for the complexity and flexibility of custom coding, it does provide a simple way for most users to create, automate, or analyze their own data in ways that have never been possible for the average worker.

Explanation of PowerApps, Power Automate & Power BI

Power Platform consists of 3 products:

1. Power Apps
2. Power Automate
3. Power BI

Let’s take a closer look at each of them…

Tool #1 of Power Platform: Power Apps

Power Apps is a low-code approach to custom app development, allowing users to quickly create apps in an out-of-the-box method.

The product allows users to:

• Create mobile-optimized apps quickly without development knowledge and reducing pressure on busy IT teams
• Connect and visualize data from your enterprise apps such as Dynamics 365 and Office 365 (and even third-party apps)
• Visualize key data in an intuitive app for easy data entry, meaning users only see the information they need to accomplish a particular task

Tool #2 of Power Platform: Power Automate

Power Automate used to be known as Microsoft Flow. This product allows you to create automated workflows between Microsoft services or other third-party apps, allowing staff to avoid performing repetitive tasks and save valuable time.

Here are the basics of it:

• Use predefined automation templates for common automations (within the Flow Gallery)
• Create your own automations by linking various apps such as Outlook, SharePoint Dynamics 365, or non-Microsoft apps such as Twitter, Asana, Gmail, MailChimp, etc.
• Set up triggers, alerts, automated emails, push notifications and more, without coding and in minutes
• Saves you time by reducing human error and streamlining your business processes

Tool #3 of Power Platform: Power BI

Power BI is a business analytics tool that allows you to easily connect to data sources, create visual elements, and quickly gain business intelligence. It allows you to:

• Connect with Microsoft and third-party cloud services, as well as local data sources
• Easily manipulate data and create visual elements, such as charts, dashboards, maps, and many more, so you can present your data in an easy-to-digest format
• Use natural language to query data and get results (e.g., “show me our sales pipeline for 2018 by month, by salesperson”)
• It allows you to easily analyze and make sense of complex data to enable continuous improvement

How Does Power Platform Fit Into Your Business?

Power Platform connects to a wide range of data sources, including third-party apps like Google Analytics and Twitter, but it’s most powerful when working with Office 365 and Dynamics 365. Microsoft is proposing Power Platform as a way to “unlock the potential of Dynamics 365 and Office 365 as quickly as possible so that businesses can easily extend, customize, and integrate these services.”

Power Platform will be a big area of investment for Microsoft and since it is still fairly new, we expect it to be regularly updated and improved as the products mature. In addition, as Microsoft continues to focus on bringing all of its technologies together, we can expect Power Platform to be a key player in achieving the goal of integration, helping to easily connect services like Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure.

Originally published Jun 20 2021

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