Definition of Microsoft Power Platform
Microsoft is one of the most innovative firms in terms of productivity. Equipped with many useful, effective business tools, the American giant has a new application on offer. With their Power Platform application, you can connect most productivity-related Microsoft components.
Microsoft Power Platform is a decidedly business- and productivity-focused invention. What is Microsoft Power Platform? This software is the opposite of what we described in the introduction; it’s more of an application platform than an application itself.
In fact, it’s a complete platform that brings together many applications, all used for professional purposes. In other words, Microsoft, with its heavy focus on productivity, aimed to kill two birds with one stone. They combined what they do best under a single banner, one that bears the name of Power Platform. Thanks to this productivity tool, you can share, create and discuss all at once in an ultra‑professional environment.
This environment is designed to make it easier to manage and oversee projects. This way, all players can work together efficiently on part of a project or on an entire project in and of itself. With Power Platform, you can also automate workflows to transform and process individuals’ technical knowledge as well as data or information flow using unique, up‑to‑date methods, all while operating independently.
We will discuss this in greater depth below, but basically, Microsoft Power Platform houses 3 different complementary tools under the same roof: Power BI, Power Apps and Microsoft Flow. As you will see, these tools give you 360-degree oversight of any type of project.
What tools are included in Microsoft Power Platform ?
While we have already touched on this very generally, it’s now time to discuss the tools available in Microsoft Power Platform and why they are complementary, especially for project management.
- Power BI: while some are undoubtedly familiar with it, others may not be, so we’ll describe it here. Power BI is a Microsoft software program that stands as a powerful data analysis service that lets your collaborators or colleagues convert this very data into simple visuals. These visuals can then be easily put to use. The main feature of software such as Power BI is its ability to convert data into visuals accessible by all. It’s a tool designed for professional, creative teamwork. All in all, you’ll benefit from its scalability to suit the size of your business or organization.
- PowerApps: Although it is perhaps lesser known than the preceding software, PowerApps is an exceptional resource for creating customized applications tailored to your data and your systems, an invaluable asset for meeting your teams’ needs. These professional applications can be equipped with AI for efficiency, creativity and intelligence. PowerApps is the tool you cannot do without if you want to create apps that, within the few hours it takes to develop them, will meet your professional process or operations needs.
- Power Automate: this is undoubtedly the most well-known of them all. Power Automate is a simple and entirely automated tool for creating workflows in no more than a few minutes. This software will enable you to automate your manual workflows so you can turn repetitive tasks into automated ones and manage them intuitively and efficiently via step-by-step processes. You can enjoy automated tasks on over 296 applications, including Twitter, SharePoint, Outlook.com, RSS, Agilite, Adobe Creative and Asana. To summarize, Microsoft Flow helps you significantly boost productivity by automating certain tasks so that they no longer require manual human effort.
To conclude, Power Platform brings together 3 powerful Microsoft software programs that are used for 3 specific business tasks: data processing, creating customized work platforms or applications, and task automation. As you will learn, these tools will help your business break through to the next level.
Why can these be applications useful?
First, you will be able to process data differently. With a simple, up-to-date way of creating visuals and integrating data, you will be able to adapt your methods, your processes and your entire organization to better meet your needs.
Power BI will provide you with a mathematical view of your data, free from any subjective factors to which a given issue, business or process can be summed up. With the assistance of PowerApps, you can react and use these data to create applications that are specifically adapted to the responses you receive from these data.
But that’s not all: this is the perfect application for modifying your entire structure to ensure a seamless, efficient and significantly more productive workflow. In fact, the software’s core feature is that it lets you develop a digital environment that reflects your needs and is tailored to your organization and your team. You can finally say goodbye to Microsoft Flow!
By processing data retrieved via Power BI, or simply by thoroughly analyzing your PowerApps or your structure, you will understand which tasks you spend the most time on without making you any money. These are essential tasks that don’t require any human effort. This will be your first step towards automating processes across multiple applications.
Instead of curtailing your quality, automation will bolster your efficiency so you and your team can focus on creative, dynamic tasks that do require human effort. With these applications, you will manage your organization more effectively thanks to improved time, data and team management.
Power Platform will boost both your efficiency and your productivity. This platform integrates smoothly into Dynamics 365, which will be our last point of discussion.
How do you integrate Microsoft Power Platform into your Dynamics 365 software?
Dynamics 365 is one of the most efficient ERP and CRM solutions on the market. Among other things, you can use this solution to consolidate your data and obtain predictive information to anticipate upcoming events happening in the near or not-too-distant future in given market sectors. Overall, this tool improves your operations by giving you deeper insight into your organization, from client acquisition to business operations to customer service. This application may be nationally and internationally renowned, yet it’s still easily integrated into your Microsoft Power Platform software:
- Power BI is used, among other things, to extract data from Dynamics 365 that will then be compiled and combined in preparation for analysis.
- With PowerApps, you can create applications related to 365 for yourself or your collaborators…and there is no code required!
- As we saw, Microsoft Flow lets you extract data from Dynamics 365 and automate tasks as needed.
In conclusion, it’s easy and hassle-free to integrate Power Platform into CRM or ERP software like Dynamics 365. This software program is, above all, uncompromising. It’s a great way to further strengthen the performance of a quasi-perfect Microsoft tool. Microsoft Power Platform offers a huge—and perhaps even infinite—number of possibilities. Contact one of our Gestisoft experts to learn how this tool can meet your business’ unique needs.
