Microsoft Power Platform: What?

For the past few years, Microsoft has been developing and rolling out pieces of what it now calls its “Power Platform” in relative isolation. One of the biggest new areas from Microsoft that you will read a lot about is the Power Platform.

What is the Power Platform?

Power Platform is a low code platform offering provided from Microsoft which spans Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365 and standalone applications.

Power Platform combines the robust power of PowerApps, PowerBI, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents into one powerful business application platform — providing Act, Automate, Analyze and chat bots ability to build business application.

The Power Platform is possible thanks to the Common Data Service for Apps(CDS), which is essentially the underlying data platform that provides a unified and simplified data schema so that applications and services can inter-operate.

Power Platform Products:

The Power Platform enables the ability for digital information to be accessible to the typical (non-technical) end user.

Power Platform is comprised f four key products:

1. Power Apps
2. Power Automate
3. Power BI
4. Power Virtual Agents

Power Apps:

It is a rapid low code development environment for building custom apps for business needs. It provides services, connectors, and a scalable data service and app platform (Common Data Service) to allow simple integration and interaction with existing data. Power Apps helps you build and deploy customized apps that work across web and mobile, embedded or standalone, on any device.

Both developers and non-developers can create apps within PowerApps as it works in a no-code or low code environment. However, more technical users are able to extend capabilities by using Azure functions or creating custom connectors and integrated solutions.

• Build scalable and responsive apps which can run on web, mobile, tablet or any other device without No Code.
• Connect to and harness data from your business applications, such as Dynamics 365 and Office 365 (and also third-party apps).
• Build apps used for internal users or websites for external facing customers.

With Power Apps, following types of Apps can be created:

1. Model Driven Apps
2. Canvas Apps
3. Portals Apps

Power Automate:

Power Automate used to be known as Microsoft Flow. This allows you to create automated workflows between Applications, Services and other third-party applications, which allows to avoid carrying out repetitive tasks and save valuable time.

• Use pre-built automation templates for common business process automations
• Set up triggers, alerts, automated emails, push notifications, automating of repetitive tasks like moving data from one system to another and much more — with no coding and in minutes.
• Guiding a user through a process so they can complete the different stages
• Create automations by connecting various applications and external data sources, such as Outlook, SharePoint, Dynamics 365 or non-Microsoft apps like Twitter, Asana, Gmail, MailChimp etc via one of the hundreds of connectors or directly via an API

Power BI:

PowerBI is a business analytics service provided by Microsoft. Using data stored in CDS or other databases, users can build informative reports and dashboards to display important data about sales, customer service, and other business functions. These dashboards and reports can be published on websites, in SharePoint or Teams, and in Apps.

Power BI is a business analytics tool which allows you to easily connect to data sources, create visuals and gain business intelligence quickly. It allows you to:

• Click and connect with Microsoft and third-party cloud services, as well as on-premise data sources
• Easily manipulate data and create visuals, such as charts, dashboards, maps and many more — so you can present your data in an easy-to-digest format

Power Virtual Agents:

Power Virtual Agents empowers developers to easily create powerful bots using a guided, no-code graphical interface without the need for data scientists or developers.

It eliminates the gap between the subject matter experts and the development teams building the bots. It removes the complexity of exposing teams to the nuances of conversational AI and the need to write complex code. And, it minimizes the IT effort required to deploy and maintain a custom conversational solution.

Using Power Virtual Agents, you can:

• Empower your teams by allowing them to easily build bots themselves without needing intermediaries, or coding or AI expertise.
• Reduce costs by easily automating common inquiries and freeing human agent time to deal with more complex issues.
• Improve customer satisfaction by allowing customers to self-help and resolve issues quickly 24/7 using rich personalized bot conversations.

Power Platform Architecture:

Power Platform itself is divided into multiple components and layers where each component is dynamic and scalable by itself, but brilliant and masterful when combined. From a developer or more precisely citizen developer’s perspective, Power Platform is splited into Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents, which be used to map their business process requirements.

This platform is build upon lots of services which powers this platform and Pro Developers can interact with these services also in order to perform advance functionalities.

Common Data Service (Apps) is harnessed from Azure Data services like Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Blob Storage etc. Similarly Azure API management service is involved in integrating all of the products with API management. Bot Services powers Power Virtual Agents wheres Analysis Services powers Power BI.

Common Data Service (CDS)

The heart of the Microsoft Power Platform is the Common Data Service for Apps(CDS). It is a central data repository for business data.

CDS is a secure database hosted in Azure Cloud prebuilt with a standard set of entities and record types. These record types — for example, Accounts, Contacts, and various activity types are extensible — so you can add additional data fields. Developers can also add new entities to fit their business needs. Entities have relationships to each other, and Business Rules can be created to make fields required, to hide fields and to set default values.

Common Data Service offers following categories of functionality:

• Security Common Data Service handles authentication with Azure Active Directory (AAD) to allow for conditional access and multi-factor authentication. It supports authorization down to the row and field level and provides rich auditing capabilities.
• Logic Common Data Service allows you to easily apply business logic at the data level. These rules could be related to duplicate detection, business rules, workflows, or more.
• Data Common Data Service offers you the control to shape your data, allowing you to discover, model, validate, and report on your data. This control ensures your data looks the way you want regardless of how it is used.
• Storage Common Data Service stores your physical data in the Azure cloud.
• Integration Common Data Service connects in different ways to support your business needs. APIs, webhooks, eventing, and data exports give you flexibility to get data in and out.

The structure of a Common Data Service database is based upon the definitions and schema in the Common Data Model

Common Data Service (CDS) and Common Data model (CDM)

The standard entity design in a Common Data Service database is based upon an open data model standard called Common Data Model.

Common Data Model is a logical design that includes a set of open-sourced, standardized, extensible data entities and relationships that Microsoft and its partners have published in an industry-wide initiative called the Open Data Initiative.

This collection of predefined entities, attributes, semantic metadata, and relationships form the basis of the Common Data Model. The structure of a Common Data Service database is based upon the definitions and schema in the Common Data Model.

The key benefit of using Common Data Model as the basis of a Common Data Service database is simplified integration of any solutions that use a Common Data Model schema because the standard entities of the solution are the same.

Open Data Initiative

The Common Data Model is the output of the Open Data Initiative. Microsoft has partnered with SAP and Adobe on the Open Data Initiative.