Microsoft Power Platform Basics

Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents

Developing applications may be in your interests, but you dislike the idea or concept of coding. Thankfully, there are low-code technologies that can be used to create awesome applications. Low-code technology enables organizations to build applications with little to zero coding expertise and Microsoft Power Platform is one of these low-code platforms.

Microsoft Power Platform is a group of low-code tools used in developing business applications, analyzing and visualizing data, automating business processes, or building virtual agents for communication. Microsoft Power Platform has 4 products: Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents.

Power Apps

Power Apps offers a quick and easy way to build low-code/ no-code applications (web and mobile applications) fashioned to meet a business’ needs while running seamlessly across different devices. Power Apps has a simple interface so that every business user or pro developer can build custom apps. Apps can be quickly built by connecting your business data that is stored either in the Common Data Service or in various online and on-premises data sources (SharePoint, Dynamics365, Excel, SQLServer, Office365, etc).

Developers can use Power Apps as a platform for interacting with data and metadata, applying business logic, writing custom connectors, and integrating with external data.

Subsets of Power Apps are; Canvas apps, Portal Apps and Model driven apps.

Power BI

Power BI (Business Intelligence) is a business analytics tool that delivers insights for analyzing data. In order to enable fast, informed decision-making, Power BI can visualize data and generate reports and dashboards using those insights. With Power BI, businesses are able to focus more on leveraging data than managing it, since it scales across an organization. A Power BI dashboard could consist of business metrics such as; sales data, progress against goals, or employee performance.

Power Automate

Power Automate enables users to create automated workflows between applications and services. The technology automates repetitive business processes such as communications, data collection, and decision approvals. You don’t have to waste important productive hours on rewriting the same email for a weekly update or approvals. Whether you are a beginner or seasoned developer, Power Automate’s simple interface allows you to automate work tasks.

Power Virtual Agents

With Power Virtual Agents, you can create chatbots that can answer questions posed by your customers, other employees, or visitors to your website or service without writing any code. Users can enable chatbots to perform an action by simply calling a Power Automate flow. Flows help users automate activities or call back end systems. Triggers and actions are terms that are commonly used here.

Features of Microsoft Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform can be used to its fullest extent by leveraging the features listed below that are cross-cutting. They are:

• Microsoft Dataverse makes it possible for users to securely store and manage data from multiple sources and integrate it into business applications. Microsoft Dataverse enables all the components of Microsoft Power Platform to work together.
• AI Builder gives users and developers the ability to add AI capabilities to their workflows and Power Apps. AI Builder allows you to easily add intelligence to your workflows and apps and predict outcomes to help improve business performance.
• Connectors enable users to connect apps, data, and devices in the cloud. Microsoft Power Platform has over 200 connectors and some include; Office 365, Google services, Twitter, Dropbox, etc.

Career Opportunities

With the knowledge and skills in Power Platform, you can venture into any of these career paths; Power Platform Engineer, BI Developer, Power Platform Administrator, SharePoint Developer, Power Platform Functional Consultant, etc.

Microsoft Power Platform Certification

After studying and leveraging on the concepts and capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform, you can take these certification examinations to test your knowledge.

• Exam PL-900: Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals
• Exam PL-100: Microsoft Power Platform App Maker
• Exam PL-300: Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst

To write the Exam PL-900 for free, attend one of Microsoft Power Platform Virtual Trainings by registering here.

Resources

• Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals — Microsoft Learn
• YouTube Videos