What is the Power Platform?
- Power BI
- Microsoft PowerApps
- Microsoft Power Automate / Flow
- Power Virtual Agents
What is the Power Platform?
Microsoft Power Platform is comprised of three services – Power BI, PowerApps and Power Automate \ Microsoft Flow. While each of these services is best-of-breed individually, combining them into one Power Platform is a game-changer.
In today’s more modern fast-moving environment, companies have started to understand the value of using data to propel business outcomes. They’ve adopted the cloud to store more data and have become more efficient at capturing data and signals coming from sources like web leads, social media and business CRM/ERP applications. But once they’ve implemented the infrastructure for harnessing data, how can they put that data to work for them most efficiently? They need a layer above the data that enables all team members to be able to utilize it in a straightforward manner to best drive business outcomes.
This is essentially what the Microsoft Power Platform accomplishes. It’s a system that enables users to do 3 key actions on data that drive business: Evaluate, Act, and Automate. Performing this with Power BI, PowerApps and Flow all working together atop your data to assist all team members, from the CEO to the front-line employees to drive the business with data.
The Microsoft Power Platform consists of three applications:
Power BI – Displaying rich visualizations from your business data in interactive, real-time dashboards and reports to provide detailed insights.
PowerApps – Create custom, no-code desktop and mobile applications running off your data.
Microsoft Power Automate \ Flow – Multi-stage automated workflows that connect to hundreds of apps and services.
Power Virtual Agents – Easily create chat-bots to engage in conversations with your customers and employees—no coding required.
These applications handle your data through leveraging Microsoft’s Common Data Service (CDS). The Common Data Service is a cloud-based tool hosted on Azure which enables you to securely store and manage your business data. Data within the CDS is stored within a set of entities, a standard set of entities are included, however custom entities can be created for specific requirements.