Transform the Way You Do Business with Microsoft Power Apps (Self-Service Portal)

#FocusOnBestPractices

Why Microsoft Power Apps and Power BI Platform?

For a long time whenever we talk about building Apps, we talk about coding, we think of developers who sit, discuss and code until the desired App is created. It was always the power of the developer which brought our ideas to life. With the integration of the Power BI Platform, we can now incorporate advanced data analytics and visualization into our applications.

But this process had a lot of challenges which made it time-consuming and tedious, such as:

Challenges of Building Business Applications

Budget Constraints

Time & Resource Constraints

Business Expectations

Paper Processes

Complex Processes

IT/Business Partnership

Legacy system maintenance

“Shadow IT” governance

Leverage existing technology

Security & Compliance

But with the introduction of the Microsoft Power Platform, all these previous beliefs became obsolete. No longer did you need to be an expert in coding to be able to create apps. The Microsoft Power Platform as a low – code platform that spans Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, and Standalone Applications allows anyone to be able to build apps as per their needs even without an existing knowledge in coding. The power to innovate and create was no longer the developers alone.

So, what exactly does the Microsoft Power Platform help do?

As a connected Power BI Platform that empowers everyone to innovate it helps

Build web and mobile apps and workflows fast and without limits

Gain insights from your data regardless of where it lives

Enterprise-ready security and governance

Microsoft Power Platform consists of standalone Microsoft Power BI Services , PowerApps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. Each application has Data connectors, an AI Builder, and a Common Data Service all of which allow the applications to integrate and connect with other Microsoft services seamlessly and share data between them. The AI Builder also allows the user to build AI capabilities like text recognition into the apps you build. These power BI applications can be used as standalone services that can be used together. Power BI Platform implementation ensures efficient Power BI integration, enhancing these applications’ overall functionality and efficiency.

Power BI integration plays a critical role in unifying data across these applications, providing users with actionable insights. With seamless Power BI integration, teams can enhance decision-making processes and gain a centralized view of essential metrics. Additionally, Power BI integration empowers users to create dynamic reports and dashboards, offering valuable, real-time analytics for business growth.

Let us look at each application individually, with a greater emphasis on PowerApps, as well as their relationship with each other:

Microsoft PowerApps:

As stated, earlier Microsoft Power Platform empowers anyone to innovate. But how does it do so? This is where PowerApps comes in. PowerApps allows you to:

With the demand for business applications like Power BI, and PowerApps increasing day by day with limited developers to keep up with demand, the need for citizen developers who can create innovative apps despite a lack of coding knowledge is what Microsoft PowerApps was created for.

With PowerApps you can create apps for any business need you might have such as apps for form submission or report submission, creating a calendar app to be used by company employees, apps can be used to help with a variety of tasks both inside and outside the organization.

Microsoft PowerApps Capabilities and Benefits:

Microsoft’s PowerApps has the following capabilities.

It enables business users to build the applications they want, when they need it, without writing code.
In situations where traditional platforms stop, PowerApps starts by allowing professional developers to extend the capabilities.
It allows users to connect to 220+ data sources and services (including on-premises data) to build powerful apps that empowers your business to do more

An economic study by Forrester (March 2020) highlights the various benefits PowerApps offers:

The average cost to develop an application is 74% less with PowerApps.
Developing additional applications in-house eliminates vendor license costs.
PowerApps increase activity efficiency.
Better applications enable business transformation and improved business outcomes.
Employees can make better and faster decisions from better access to information.
PowerApps empowers users, which increases employee satisfaction.
Organizations realize additional value with other Power Platform and other Microsoft Managed solutions such as Dynamics CRM and Teams.
Mobile applications developed with PowerApps are more secure than would likely otherwise have been developed.

PowerApps and Teams:

PowerApps can also be added as a channel in Microsoft Teams. There are two types of App modes within Microsoft Teams. Tab Apps and Personal Apps. Tab apps can be pinned at the top of the channel for easy access to a collaborative workspace. Personal Apps on the other hand are for the personal use of an individual. These apps usually live in the App bar. These apps are usually HR Apps, apps for time tracking and field service apps for the personal use of the individual. Apps created in Power Apps can be shared in Teams and can be used as a collaboration.

Power Apps and Office 365:

The office 365 license contains the right to use PowerApps. These applications can be easily connected with office 365.

Power Apps and Salesforce:

Power Apps can be integrated with other CRM or ERP like Salesforce in order to build business applications which help you sell better. Microsoft also provides a Salesforce connector through which Salesforce can easily be integrated with Power Apps. There are a few limitations to this integration such as custom fields not being supported etc, but otherwise Power Apps integration proves itself a valuable addition to Salesforce.

Power Apps and SAP:

Like with Salesforce, Microsoft also provides a connector which allows you to integrate Power Apps with your SAP ERP. This allows you to build applications making use of your SAP Data.

Power Apps for Dynamics 365:

Power Apps and the Dynamics 365 suite of products all share the same common data platform (Common Data Service) to store and secure data. Thus, data from Dynamics 365 can be used to create Apps in Power Apps without the need for any integration. With Power Apps, we can create and share apps with company employees which will help them with their everyday tasks. But what about the people outside the company? How can we create and share apps with them? This is where Power Apps Portal comes in.

Microsoft Power Apps Portal:

The Microsoft PowerApps Portal allows users to create external-facing websites which can be accessed by users outside the organization. For example: An educational institution uses Power Apps to create an app for registering into the institute. In order to do so, access is given to outside users i.e. the prospective students to register with the institute. This is where Microsoft Power Apps Portal comes in. It is considered as an important component of Power Apps alongside canvas and model – driven apps. Outside users can gain access to the Common Data service and create, view or browse content. It allows users to:

Microsoft PowerApps Portal also allows you to integrate with Microsoft services like Power BI, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Flow etc allowing it to enrich existing content.

If you are using Dynamics 365, you can create the following portals with Power Apps:

Customer self-service portal: A customer self-service portal enables customers to access self-service knowledge, support resources, view the progress of their cases, and provide feedback.
Partner portal: A partner portal allows every company with resellers, distributors, suppliers, or partners to have real-time access to every stage of shared activities.
Employee self-service portal: An employee self-service portal creates a well-informed workforce by streamlining common tasks and empowering every employee with knowledge source.
Community portal: A community portal leverages individual-to-individual interactions between customers and experts to organically grow the database of available knowledge from knowledge base articles and blogs as well as providing feedback.
Portal from blank: Create a website to share data with external and internal users. This template comes with sample pages to get you started on creating your own portal as soon as possible.

To make it easier for non-developers to use Microsoft Power Apps Portal, Microsoft has also been working on making available a new low – code authoring experience called PowerApps Portal Studio. This new experience will allow users to:

All these features are available to low – code users. Microsoft Power Apps Portal also has a tool called Portal checker which allows users to check and identify potential issues with the configuration of your Power Apps Portal. It also provides suggestions and solutions for these issues, thus helping to improve the security of PowerApps Portal. Microsoft is also preparing to introduce a new Web API for CRUD operations which will allow developers to use JavaScript for a more direct and flexible interaction with the Power Apps Portal instead of the old Liquid development language.

Microsoft PowerApps Pricing:

Power Apps has 2 pricing plans, the single App pricing Plan and the Unlimited App Plan. A Comparison between the two plans is as follows:

Features	Single App Plan	Unlimited App Plan
Pricing	$10/user/app/month	$40/user/month
The ability to build and run custom Apps	2 Apps and 1 Portal	Unlimited
Custom Data Service Capacity	50 MB Database Capacity/ 400 MB File Capacity	250 MB Database Capacity/ 2 GB File Capacity.

Microsoft PowerApps Portal Pricing:

Additional add-ons can be bought and installed by external users to gain access to Custom Portals such as Login Capacity Add-on (For Authenticated External Users) priced at $200/month/100 daily login sessions and Page View Capacity Add-on (For Unauthenticated users) priced at $100/month/10000-page views. AI Builder Add on is priced at $500 per unit/month.

Power BI:

Microsoft Power BI is an integral part of the Microsoft Power Platform. Like PowerApps, Power BI can be used as a standalone service or together with the other applications of the Power Platform. Power BI implementation improves integration to maximize the platform’s capabilities.

Microsoft Power BI services allow you to:

Power BI can also be paired with Microsoft Information Protection and Microsoft Cloud App Security to better protect Power BI data. With Power BI, you can also make use of AI technology in order to get insights faster. Moreover, Power BI analytics provides comprehensive data analysis capabilities that help businesses make informed decisions with ease.

Power Automate:

In today’s fast-paced world, time is a very precious resource. Even with 24 hours in a day, it still seems as if it is not enough. So how can we complete tasks quicker and still have time to spare? This is where the power of automation comes in to help.

Power Automate allows you to:

It offers automation at scale, secure seamless integration, accelerated productivity by allowing you to focus on more strategic tasks and increases efficiency through automated workflows with the power of AI. Power Automate was initially known as Microsoft Flow.

Power Virtual Agents:

Power Virtual Agents empowers your employees to easily create powerful bots using a no-code graphical interface without the need for the help of experts in the field.

Using Power Virtual Agents, you can:

Empower your teams by allowing them to easily build bots by themselves without the help of experts, or coding or AI expertise
Reduce costs by easily automating common inquiries.
Improve customer satisfaction by allowing customers to resolve issues quickly by themselves 24/7 using rich personalized bot conversations.
Get in-depth AI-driven insights to improve bot performance.

Conclusion:

Microsoft Power Platform and its standalone services can help transform and empower your business. So, choose Power Apps now and create your own Business Applications. To learn more about Microsoft Power Platform and the rest of Microsoft’s Managed Services & Solutions contact Korcomptenz.

KORCOMPTENZ is a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner headquartered in New Jersey with extensive experience in improving business outcomes for our customers. We leverage end-to-end solutions involving the ongoing convergence of ERP, Azure Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT. We specialize in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 range of products such as Dynamics 365Business Central, Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, and Dynamics 365 CRM. Request a consultation today.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.