In this Microsoft power platform presentation course Introduction, we’re going to start off by briefly touching on some of the elements that make up the power platform. First of all, let’s start with something called Power Apps. To get Power Apps in the address bar of a browser, you would type in powerapps.microsoft.com.
You will then need to sign in to use any license your organization may have made available to you. Alternatively, there are trial licenses available once signed in. And within Power Apps, you’ll have several options to quickly get you into a position to effectively create quite a robust application that will not only work from within the browser and even it can be surfaced in many other Microsoft power platform presentations. But also, it will automatically be mobile-ready to made use of the Power mobile app.
If we click on apps and then the new app, there’s going to be a few options here. As the name suggests, Canvas apps are a blank canvas where you can create something from scratch. Model-driven is more where you’ve already gotten a data source with predetermined data. Then just make an app based on that data that controls its model-driven.
Suppose you’ve ever heard of dynamics 365 that essentially is a model-driven app that utilizes something called the standard data service. The common data service loosely can be thought of as a database. It works on the concept of something called entities, and those Entities effectively loosely like a table within SQL. Then each entity will have various bits of information. So, it could be a contact entity, and then there’ll be bits of information such as first name, last name, and so on.
Portal App
Portal is more of a web-style app and could be a good way for you to create something that’s easily accessible to anonymous users. However, your quickest way of getting started with Power Apps can be from other Microsoft 365 services such as SharePoint Online. From SharePoint Online, you can go to a list. And you can very quickly create a power-up representation of the list that can be used in mobile. It can be used on the web, and all you’ve really had to do is click a button.
Another way to go if you’re not confident enough to create an app from scratch, even if you just want to get a head start or a kind of reverse engineer. See how an app did something and then replicate that in your own app option you’ve got.
Here is that when you choose a canvas app. You’ll see here you have two options: you can either start the app with data or do a blank cap. But the option I was alluding to earlier was to start from a pre-designed template. As an example, we’ll click on tape tablet layout, and here we can see some example templates.
If we selected one of these and created a power-up from it, we could either just tweak it to our personal needs and make use of it. We could take elements of it and come back to a step. Once we created a blank app, we could use features from the app Template within that blank application.
Microsoft Power Platform Presentation: Elements of Power App
We’ll leave it at that for now with Power Apps, as this course is primarily around showing you what you can very easily make use of within Power Apps with little knowledge. But some of the elements of the power platform do intertwine. So, you can make use of flows within the power app which will talk. You can use chat-bots. You can bring in artificial intelligence quite rapidly.
So, there’s a lot that you can do without really needing to know how to create an application. You can create an application from Scratch with pure code. If you’re familiar with SharePoint, you can loosely think of these as a more advanced workflow form. The powerful thing with the flow is that there are predetermined templates that you can use again.
But also, it can tap into and interact with many of the other Microsoft 365 areas. Also, there’s a whole library of third-party connectors for more custom scenarios that you may not be willing or want or have the knowledge or in-house expertise. To create yourself and you can just make use of one of those third parties.
So, with flows, it flows again. If we click on create, we’ll see that there are a few options. So, again similar to Power Apps, we get the option to start from templates. Across the top, we have a few flows here, so you’ve got an automated flow that will have to respond to a trigger. So that trigger could be someone clicking a button within a power app. Someone is adding an item to a SharePoint list moving on from automated flows; you’ve got instant flows.
Mobile App Features
This is very good from a personal perspective because the flow has a mobile application, and you could create a series of buttons. When you click that button, it basically does whatever the flow has been configured to do, and that’s where the instant flow comes in. We then look at scheduled flows, so this is as the name suggests.
You can specify a frequency for when that flow will run UI flows. So, this is a touch on what they call RPA Robotic Process Automation, and this can be effective. If you have an older application with no app for you to the interface, you can essentially have it. So, you click through a bit like a macro as you click through a sequence of events.
When such an event happens, take the inputted information that bit of information goes in where you would have clicked in this box. Lastly, we’ve got what they call a business process flow. Now business process flow is, as it suggests the stepping through the stages of a process.
So, if you had step one, step two, step three, then it would be a guided process to go; you’re in step one. Once you’ve done x y and z, you’ve fulfilled the criteria for step one. You now into step two and so on. So here we see templates, and we do have what they call connectors. So, connectors can be used within Power Apps as well; they’re effective.
Power BI Advanced Feature
If you need to Interact with a particular service, be a third party or an internal to Microsoft server such as Microsoft teams. That’s how you would bridge the gap and allow your flow to work with teams. If you want to take it a step further, it’s worth calling out that you can create custom connectors.
If the functionality isn’t available from Microsoft power platform presentation for a third party, you can make your custom connector with a bit of development to facilitate your needs. Again, you’ve got artificial intelligence now; we’ll briefly touch on Power BI.; Power BI essentially is a way for the data you have within Microsoft 365.
As an example, data Sources of giving it a powerful visual representation. So, you can really get advanced with this. It is almost a specialist subject in itself.
Power BI Kind
It is one kind of quick-win that Power BI could do easily for you. It could take location information and build out a good graphical representation of a map with little pins based on that data set and the locations that are involved in that data set. We’ll leave it there. Now, this course introduction is showing you that the power apps flow the power bi. There are even things like virtual power agents which are effective.
If you go to a website and see the little chat-bot appear, you can build out it. But what we’ll do further on, we’ll talk about more kinds of real-world examples that you can quickly make use of without the need to know the ins and outs.
