It’s finally here! A product to enable the citizen developer in all of us and automate the work tasks that slow us down. Have you ever sat at your desk and wondered why someone hasn’t built a solution to enable you to automatically send emails, update vital tasks, and collect form data? Wonder no more, its name is Power Platform! See the pricing model here and note the special for COVID-19 response workers!
Power BI
First and foremost is Microsoft’s business intelligence visualization tool, Power BI. Power Business Intelligence is now in the upper right most quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence. Need to display information in a hurry? Here are some important links to get you started:
- Check out Microsoft’s free training on Power BI.
- Need more depth? Check out LinkedIn learning course.
- Want something holistic, check out Udemy’s course on Power BI.
Power Apps
The words “custom application “can be a curse word in some organizations. Custom applications have been known to cost more money. Some studies have found 30% of all mobile apps for IOS and 43% for Android have known high-risk vulnerabilities.
Don’t want to deal with security issuews or use more man hours than almost any other IT solution in the industry? Borrow Microsoft 365’s solutions like Advanced Threat Detection and Intelligent eDiscovery capabilities to secure your PowerApps solutions. But how do you get efficiency without creating an application that only one developer knows how to operate? Microsoft’s answer is the power application suite or quote power apps unquote power apps allow you to get started quickly, deliver immediate impact, and some studies have shown up to a 74% reduction in application development costs.
Here’s some more links to get your started on Power Apps:
- LinkedIn Learning Power Apps Essential Training
- Udemy’s Power Apps and & Flow: Build Apps Without Code
- Microsoft Power Apps Docs: Getting Started
Power Automate
The backbone of the power platform is Microsoft flow (recently renamed to “Power Automate”). Power Automate allows citizen developers to automatically automate tasks between Planner, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and dozens of other non-Microsoft information stores like Salesforce and Adobe. If you need to make impact quickly, Power Automate is your way to go.
Here are some links to get you started:
- Microsoft Docs is a great place to start!
- Use LinkedIn Learning to go beyond the basics here.
- Need some no-code pro training, check out The Learning Tree’s training here.
Power Virtual Agents
Sometimes you need a virtual agent to clean things up for you. In my humble opinion, power virtual agents are the hardest to implement. Implementing AI chat bots and creating virtual agents can seem very intimidating at first period when dealing with 10s or hundreds of thousands of customers however, the payoff is almost immediate! Power virtue agents allow you to create smart agents that respond to natural language queries given by your end customers. The result is faster customer engagement, standardized answers to common questions, and saved time you can invest in other parts of your business.
- Microsoft MVP Dian Taylor has an awesome introduction here!
- Check out the nx365guy.com’s PVA intro here!
- Of course, LinkedIn Learning has a course as well!