Power Platform is
I'd like to personally define it as "A set of tools that helps ordinary people increase their productivity without being programmers, but who can use them themselves." When we define it this way, there's another related term: Low Code Development, which means developing applications without writing any code, or writing as little as possible.
This Power Platform suite isn't a generic term; it's Microsoft's own term for their set of tools. This suite includes:
- Power Apps
- Power Automate
- Power BI
- Power Virtual Agents
- Power Page
And if anyone feels like they've seen this before, I should mention that it's already been included in the Microsoft 365 suite, starting with the Business Basic suite. So, anyone who bought a Microsoft 365 license but only uses the Office Word and Excel suite is missing out.
Power Apps
How can it help us? Many things. If it's about creating user interfaces for entering and retrieving data, Power Apps is a great solution. It's easy to use and quick to create, befitting a low-code development tool. Examples of Power Apps usage include:
- Maintenance Staff: Repair Work Record Form
- Teacher: Student attendance record form, Exam score record form.
- Nurse: Patient Details Recording Form
- Stock Staff: Requisition Form
- Order taking staff: Order form
Power Automate
Many people may not be familiar with this, as it's a new feature in the Microsoft 365 suite. It's a crucial tool that revolutionizes automation. The era of manually deciding who to send work to after completion is over. Power Automate handles the coordination of information sharing, status updates, notifications, and data monitoring automatically. You simply plan and instruct the system to perform the tasks as defined. If the system meets your specified conditions, you can trigger further actions. Here's an example of how to use Power Automate.
- The teacher sends information to parents when the child arrives at school.
- The sales staff submits the daily sales summary to their supervisor.
- The technician sent a repair summary to his supervisor.
- The delivery person sends the information to the company when they arrive at the delivery location.
- Employees are required to submit approval requests for supplies.
Power BI
A report creation toolkit that's incredibly easy to use, loved by everyone. It allows you to create beautiful reports with interesting features. Presenting data in graphs, creating interactions, displaying data on maps, and comparing data is all simple and easy to understand. Examples of usage are provided.
- The sales manager sees the sales status dashboard for each salesperson.
- The maintenance supervisor sees the dashboard displaying the maintenance status of the machinery.
Power Virtual Agents
Power Virtual Agents is a service for creating chatbots without coding, instead relying on writing flows within a GUI designer.
Microsoft has prepared frequently used topics for customer conversations, such as asking about store opening hours, store location, or canceling an order. Each topic includes at least 5-10 catchphrases. For example, when asking about opening hours, you might ask, "Are you open now?" or "Are you open tomorrow at noon?"
Chatbots can connect to the outside world via API using Power Automate, allowing them to access data in various databases, perform web queries, and log results via API.
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