Advantages of Microsoft Power Platform components

There was a time when there was a significant emphasis on ways to capture and harness data from different sources. Most businesses today aim to use the data streams in more meaningful ways to make informed decisions. This is where Microsoft Power Platform comes in.

Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of low-code apps that help create and manage complex business solutions. Power Platform can work with data in many ways to automate, visualize, analyze, and transform it. Power Platform components are user-friendly and accessible and can be used with Microsoft tools and other third-party apps, enabling user contribution to drive digital innovation.

The Main Components of Power Platform Include -

● Power BI — It is a data visualization platform enabling business intelligence
● Power Apps — These are application development tools to build low-code to no code apps
● Power Automate — It enables workflow automation and integration service
● Power Virtual Agents (PVA) — PVA allow the building of intelligent chatbots
● Power Pages — A web page builder and hosting service

In this blog, we will discuss the various components of Power Platform and their benefits.

Power BI

Power BI incorporates data mining, performance benchmarking, descriptive analytics and process analysis to present reports, performance measures and trends that can lead to making intelligent business decisions.

Benefits

• Better connectivity with data: Power BI makes it easy to collate data, resulting in more accessible, visible, organized, and improved data reporting. Power BI supports many connectors enabling organizations to access and collect data from various data sources like Google Analytics, Dropbox, Azure, CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, SQL Databases, and more.

• BI offers open-source custom visuals: Power BI offers pre-packed data visuals like columns, line, bar, map, pie that can help leverage interactive data reports. It also provides various customization options that can enhance the functionality and presentation of these visuals.

• Advanced analytics: The embedded Power BI Service makes it easier to transform, enrich and integrate the business data into Power BI dashboards and reports. The Power BI tool is a potent tool that is easy to learn and allows users to leverage the data easily.

• Natural language query engine: Power BI users can use its natural language query engine to gain insights into data. Natural language queries can give results in charts or table visualizations that can represent the data accurately. Power BI’s intuitive query engine works without code or syntax. Mobile Power BI now also supports voice recognition Q&A.

Power Apps

PowerApps is a powerful enterprise-level tool that can create functional business applications with a simple interface on all platforms, such as Android, iOS, Windows, and web browsers.

For PowerApps users, Power BI custom visuals can be used to embed personalized Power BI tiles within the app. Power BI’s native integration with PowerApps allows users to send and receive data using the in-built custom application within a similar interface.

Benefits

• Time-saving — Its time-saving drag-and-drop functionality can help save development time. The web interface toolbox enables the development and design of apps through GUIs, and its designer interface allows screen layout adjustments.

• Low-code, No-code — Allows users to create web-based and mobile apps and forms with low-code or no-code.

• Extensive integration capabilities — Power App connectors were built specifically to remove the challenge of connecting data to an app, enabling connecting custom apps with external data sources. The data can be within the Microsoft ecosystem or from other sources like Oracle, Linkedin, etc.

• Secure — Power Apps gives users extensive user controls over the apps through its administration center, allowing them to manage data and permissions. Each application is also linked to Microsoft Active Directory Domain Service (ADDS), allowing for secure authentication. This results in increased visibility and data accessibility with tracking and controls.

Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate is an integrated automation platform that can create automated workflows between apps and services. It uses advanced digital process automation (DPA), robotic process automation (RPA), and process mining capabilities. It enables users to automate repetitive tasks and streamline tasks like transferring billing information from emails to Excel. Power Automate uses triggers to start a Flow (Flows are automated workflows) and can be triggered instantly or automatically by a press of a button or by an event. It helps boost productivity by allowing users to create workflows with minimal effort.

Benefits

• Streamlined tasks — Power Automate streamlines mundane and repetitive tasks, allowing users to focus on meaningful work. For example, creating a template for emails that can be classified as necessary. Power Automate templates ensure such emails are not missed.

• Automate tasks — Power Automate can connect and automate tasks within the Microsoft ecosystem and other sources. Its popular connectors include Power BI, Teams, Asana and Freshbooks

• Reduce human error — Automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks helps users focus on what matters and requires attention. This can lead to higher job satisfaction and reduce the risk of human error.

Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents is a tool that can be used to create AI chatbots for a wide range of requests, such as answering simple common queries to having complex conversations for resolving issues. Power Virtual Agents is a discrete or standalone app and can be used as needed.

Benefits

• Customer support — PVA allows organizations to give better service and customer support using AI chatbots that can provide real-time responses to a broad range of queries. This process reduces response times and increases customer engagement and satisfaction.

• Cost saving — Automating repetitive customer interaction using PVA can help organizations reduce or even eliminate human customer support systems, increasing operational efficiency and reducing costs.

• Enable rich and natural conversions — AI-based chatbots can ensure rich multi-turn conversations with users. Unlike many other chatbots, re-training of these AI chatbots is not required, and changes in answers can be tested in real-time using a test pane.

Power Pages

Power Pages is a low-code software as a service (SaaS) platform that can be used to create, host, and administer modern business websites. It enables users to rapidly design, configure and publish websites that work across multiple browsers and devices.

Benefits

• Simple site building — Power Pages offer customizable ready to use templates that can be used to create sites at a faster

• Enhancing development capabilities — Power Pages can be integrated with Azure DevOps, GitHub for developmental workflow automation and leveraging CI/CD practices.

• Faster time-to-market — Power Pages web building tools help developers reduce development time significantly and allow organizations to stay ahead of the competition.

Winding Up

The Power Platform is essentially a low-code, no-code technology suite. Its components allow users to create efficient and agile solutions for businesses. It also provides various security and compliance features and the Center of Excellence (CoE) framework that enables users to monitor and govern resources. The Power Platform is a powerful and adaptable suite of components that can help organizations to use data and drive better outcomes.

A software company specializing in Power Platform components can help you develop custom solutions that seamlessly integrate with your business systems while offering efficiency & optimization to your operations.