Power Platform

Microsoft’s Power Platform epitomises a revolutionary approach to business solutions, integrating five pivotal products: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and Power Pages. This suite of tools empowers organisations to harness their data, streamline processes, and foster innovation. With seamless integration across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, and a multitude of other applications, the Power Platform enables the creation of comprehensive business solutions.

Designed with accessibility in mind, the Power Platform democratises app development, allowing users with varying technical expertise to quickly leverage its capabilities. This initiative supports the concept of Citizen Developers, enabling anyone to develop applications without the need for extensive programming knowledge.

At the heart of the Power Platform is the Microsoft Common Data Model (CDM), a robust, secure database hosted on the Microsoft Cloud. It comes pre-configured with a standard set of entities, reflecting core organisational systems and fields, such as Accounts and Contacts. The CDM’s extensibility allows for customisation to meet specific organisational needs, providing a unified, simplified schema that facilitates the interoperability of applications. The recent updates to the Power Platform have further enhanced its functionality, ensuring that organisations can stay at the forefront of innovation and efficiency.

•  The Power Platform integrates with leading CRM systems, including Microsoft Dynamics 365, enhancing both large and niche business solutions.
• With minimal coding required, it offers a customisable experience to align with unique business requirements.
• It fosters digital transformation through compatibility with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and other Microsoft stack tools.
• As a cohesive platform, it unifies data management, providing a comprehensive solution from start to finish.
• The platform delivers real-time data insights, centralising information to facilitate informed decision-making.
• It addresses the challenge of data overload in organisations by simplifying data consolidation and visualisation, utilising Power BI and AI tools for advanced reporting.

Power Apps are applications with services, connectors and a data platform. They are a low code/no code solution that are very responsive on mobile devices. Feature-rich custom apps can be built quickly and provide a simple user interface for users. There are over 500 connectors currently available which means that you can easily connect your data sources. In terms of the different types of Power Apps available, there are:

• Canvas Apps; apps you design and build by dragging and dropping different elements onto a blank canvas.
• Model-Driven Apps; provide responsive accessible designs and are composed of multiple component types including dashboards, forms, views, charts and business processes which together form a great user interface.
• Portal Apps; allow organisations to create websites that can be shared with external users. 

Power Automate allows you to create automated workflows between applications and services. Organisations can use it to trigger actions, approvals and notifications. For example, you can use it to automate business processes, send automatic reminders, move data between systems on a schedule, connect to more than 500 data sources, and much more. As with Power Apps, those with basic skills up to IT professionals can create automated processes using the no code/low code Power Automate platform.

Power BI is a business analytics service that delivers insights to enable fast, informed decisions. It gives your organisation the ability to surface data through graphs, pie charts and interactive visuals that can be shared on any device. It is also scalable with built-in governance and security. 

Microsoft Copilot Studio enhances the Power Virtual Agents platform by providing an intuitive environment for building sophisticated AI-driven chatbots. With Copilot Studio, creating chatbots capable of handling a broad spectrum of interactions is accessible to everyone, regardless of their technical expertise. These advanced chatbots can seamlessly communicate in multiple languages, making them ideal for global customer engagement across websites, mobile applications, and social media platforms, including Facebook and Microsoft Teams, all supported by the robust Azure Bot Framework.

The beauty of Copilot Studio lies in its simplicity; it doesn’t require users to have an IT background or development skills. It’s readily available as a standalone application or integrated within Microsoft Teams. Organisations have utilised these chatbots for a variety of functions such as managing sales enquiries, providing store details and operating hours, addressing frequently asked questions, and even handling internal queries regarding employee benefits and health services. Microsoft Copilot Studio empowers you to deliver exceptional service and support, transforming the way you interact with your audience.

Power Pages is a secure, enterprise-grade, low-code software as a service (SaaS) platform for creating, hosting, and administering modern external-facing business websites. Whether you’re a low-code maker or a professional developer, Power Pages enables you to rapidly design, configure, and publish websites that seamlessly work across web browsers and devices. Power Pages provides you with rich, customisable templates, a fluid visual experience through a reimagined design studio, and a new, integrated learning hub to quickly build sites that suit your unique business needs.

As the newest member of the Microsoft Power Platform family, with Power Pages, you can build sites by using the same shared business data stored in Microsoft Dataverse that you use for building apps, workflows, intelligent virtual agents, reports, and analytics with other Microsoft Power Platform components in your organisation.