Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a platform that offers a lot of out-of-the-box functionality for your organisation. Dynamics 365 is role-based and is designed to be shaped around your processes and requirements. One of the great ways to extend the platform’s capability even further is through the Power Platform.

The Power Platform is Microsoft’s platform for extending and managing all of your data and processes. The platform is based on the common data model(CDM) and the range of standard entities available. This makes it easy to connect to external sources. There are also built-in connections for all Dynamics 365, Office 365 applications and over 200 third-party connections available.

The Power Platform is made up of 3 different applications:

• Power BI – Make sense of your data through interactive, real-time dashboards and unlock the insights needed to drive your business forward.
• Power Apps – Build apps in just hours, with no need to code. Power Apps easily connect to data, use Excel-like expressions to add logic, and run on the web, iOS, and Android devices.
• Power Automate – Include powerful workflow automation directly in your apps with a no-code approach that connects to hundreds of popular apps and services.

The combination of Power Apps and Power Automate provides organisations with the ability to interface with teams and people on mobile devices and create actions and processes automatically. Power Apps is a great way of helping employees deal with certain tasks, you can easily capture or share relevant information with them on the go. You can then trigger actions and workflows off the back of any actions taken within the application. The great thing about Power Apps is you don’t need to be a coder to set them up, they work on a drag and drop visual interface that uses expressions that are very intuitive.

Power Apps are generally created as role-based applications that collate different workflows and tasks in one place for each group within your organisation. Alternatively you can create separate applications per task where you offer employees a suite of applications they can access. We encourage the second option as it offers a greater level of flexibility.

Example Power Apps

• Supplier mobile application – providing purchasing managers with supplier information when they are out visiting suppliers, get access to current costs, delivery times and quality information on the go.
• Production orders application – an application for your shop floor, to create a production order after a sales order has been received. This allows employees the ability to check stock levels as they go, create pick lists and reports that feed directly into Dynamics 365.
• Project accounting and timesheets – allowing employees to enter time directly against a project and build this into the project accounting module in Dynamics 365.
• New joiners – schedule workflows with predefined steps every time someone joins your organisation. This can combine tasks from IT, HR and your new team to make sure they have all the access, equipment and training they need straight away. At Telefónica Tech we have an employee facing app for new joiners to provide them all the information they need from day 1 and provide them a single place to look for all the information they need.
• Holiday management –Allows people to request holidays, see their holiday allowance and approve any holiday requests from their team.
• Safety and compliance – a simple application that has all health and safety checklists and procedures. Providing a simple way to capture that all H&S processes have been followed – providing a simple audit trail.
• Internal IT – order new devices, refresh your IT, raise a support ticket, etc with an application designed to interact with your internal IT team

Interested in setting up Power Apps for your organisation? Our 1-day workshop is designed around your needs. Not only will you get an overview of what is possible, we will help you identify the best opportunities for Power Apps and build you your first app.