I think a better name for this blog might be “What can’t you do with Power Apps?”. The possibilities are endless. Therefore, I will narrow the scope of this blog and focus on some of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications.
As with all the Microsoft Power Platform products, Microsoft Power Apps are great at connecting with multiple databases or services using prebuilt connectors At the time of this blog, Microsoft has over 1,000 certified connectors. Think of a connector as being a conduit to another service or database. You use a connector to pull data to your app or push data from your app elsewhere.
Let’s create an example of how you can use Power Apps and connectors. You have met with a client and they have the following requirements. The client sells a product line to installers after being directly contacted by an end-user. The client uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central for their sales.
The installers deliver the products and document all installation details. The client wants to track and retain the installation details so they can be used by their sales team for future reference. The client wants a report on daily sales that includes information on the initial end-user lead and information on the installation details. The client tracks all lead information in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. The daily sales report should automatically be sent to the sales team at the end of the day.
The client wants the sales manager to be able to view an on-demand graph of the the month-to-date sales with the option to drill into the installation data. The client would also like the option of adding new data in the future that links to the installation data.
Building out a solution we can use the Power App as the center point of our design. The new app will pull sales information using the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central connector. The app can also pull lead information using the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales connector.
The app will allow the client to manually enter installation details while at the same time publish select sales and lead information into Microsoft’s Dataverse using the Dataverse connector. We want to retain the information in the Dataverse as we want the ability to add additional tables, fields, perform additional analysis, and link the data to other custom Dataverse information in the future.
Once our consolidated data is in the Dataverse we have the ability to easily access the information using Microsoft’s Power Automate and Power BI. With Power Automate we can set up an automatic daily report derived from Dataverse information using the Dataverse connector that will be sent to the sales team. We can also create a Power BI dashboard that pulls information from the Dataverse using the Dataverse connector so that the sales manager can view and analyze monthly sales information as needed.
This was just one example. You still have 997+ connectors to work with. The possibilities are endless.
Comentários