Embrace the Promise of Microsoft’s Power Platform

Losing support for SharePoint 2010 isn’t presenting the transition challenge that you think it might be.

 
As good as SP 2010 was, it’s successors are better as Microsoft rolls out its newly christened Power Platform, three specific services designed to eliminate the need for dedicated coding to create proprietary and customized apps and functions. Your enterprise won’t look back once it’s embraced all the value that Microsoft is now providing through the Power Platform found on SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server 2019.

New Technologies = New Values

Three new technologies that come with an SP Online and SharePoint Server 2019 migration are certain to improve the productivity of your organization: Flow, Power BI, and PowerApps.

Flow

Most organizations struggle with managing the variety of technological resources involved in their projects, from communications apps to data storage and access processing and real-time productivity metrics. For many, the services of a developer are often needed to ensure that each data point is accurately processed and recorded.

SharePoint does away with the need for the developer by integrating Flow natively into its lists and libraries to connect them seamlessly with hundreds of services. Flow users can automate functions, synchronize files, and track events as they occur throughout the work-life process without requiring additional IT support or assistance. Flow coordinates productivity efforts by automating information regarding tasks, activities, and even authorizations while keeping team members apprised of progress. Automatic data copying and sharing speeds up the communications process and results in better data integrity.

Power BI

Acting on business intelligence is a critical element of corporate success, and SharePoint’s Power BI is the new tool for ensuring that that information is current, accurate, and available when needed. Power BI offers an intuitive user interface that enables non-technical business folk to aggregate, analyze, integrate and share their corporate data. It’s most helpful when searching for relevant information across disparate data sets because it can aggregate and clean the information regardless of its source and collect it into a model that provides visualizations of the data story being told.

The software’s Artificial Intelligence feature couples with its hybrid deployment opportunity to provide unrivaled flexibility. Power BI users can scan through their databases following ‘what if’ scenarios to identify and clarify what their data is telling them about the status of their business. The resulting metrics can provide the roadmaps needed to move the enterprise forward based on real information.

Power Apps

The point behind Power Apps is to give users the ability to create the custom apps they need without having to use complex coding to generate the functions. Microsoft designed its intuitive visual dashboard to users can drag and drop their desired features the same way that function works in other MS programs such as PowerPoint. The software connects to a multitude of other MS services that are already familiar to its customers, including MS SQL, Server, and OneDrive. Other popular productivity programs are also available through the PowerApps portal, including Google Docs, SAP, Oracle and Dynamics CRM.

Microsoft also recognized the distinctions between the various populations of PowerApps users; designers, creators, administrators, and users can all access and utilize the programming as needed for their specific perspective. As a functioning program, PowerApps offers rich business logic and intuitive workflow capabilities to power virtually any corporate function; the resulting apps run seamlessly in both browsers and on mobile devices.

For developers, the PowerApps extensible Azure platform flexes to interact with data and metadata and allows for custom connectors and integrations.

The Power Platform is a direct response to today’s demand for control over business information and outcomes. Harnessing the variety of digital sources to a cloud-based data management, analytics, and processing suite of services, Microsoft’s Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow combine to provide your businesses with the computing power it needs to excel and grow.