Create business apps at ease with PowerApps
Digital transformation is the key for any business to become fast growing and successful. When we speak of digital transformations latest technologies take a center stage. In this era where transformation is the new constant, it is crucial for every company to stay updated in technology. PowerApps helps in giving this agility to your business. This technology will reduce the time you consume to build apps from months to hours. It will help you overcome the problems faced while building business apps like high cost, inability to build it in house, issues in development, integration complications, security concerns and many more by building apps using PowerApps. In this article let’s explore what is Microsoft PowerApps, how it works, and how is it helpful for your business: About Microsoft PowerApps PowerApps is a unique solution to many problems, a platform to meet the growing business needs. When other app platforms fail to perform, PowerApps keeps going as it is platform independent. Many organizations at present are transforming their business with PowerApps – a service to create or customize data-driven and task-specific enterprise apps. PowerApps is used to connect, create and publish apps within team on variety of platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows 10 (Modern Apps), as well as on the web in minutes thereby reducing resources, development costs by 70% and increasing overall business efficiency and ROI. PowerApps supports cameras, GPS, barcode scanning and orientation which is used to collect any kind of information that can be used or saved to any data sources online/on-premises. Connecting to data It attracts nontechnical and business users enabling them to store data to a number of data sources, such as cloud databases, Dynamics 365, Excel, OneDrive, web services and on-premises SQL etc. It allows us to create mini apps by connecting to data and work across web and mobile. PowerApps has the ability to connect to data sources like SharePoint, Dynamics 365, SQL, Salesforce, etc. without the need for integration. With 230+ built in connectors and custom connectors, connecting to data has become simple. Also, there is on-premises data gateway to connect to on-premises data like SQL, SharePoint, Oracle etc. Easy to Use/Build Applications build with PowerApps can be anything from simple to complex and can support multiple platforms. PowerApps is a “no-code” application. It eliminates the burden for users to customize forms, screens regardless of browser / OS. The app has an easy to use UI with drag-and-drop and point-and-click features, which makes the process of developing business apps easy. Role of Microsoft Flow Microsoft Flow (workflow) is important as it is the program that runs behind the apps we create. It can be used to automate several processes like sending a notification, reminder emails, etc. For example, if a new document is added to the SharePoint library, Microsoft Flow plays a role in sending a notification to Outlook, Slack or any other application where you want to be notified. “With PowerApps, we gain the ability to rapidly iterate, innovate and publish solutions that better connect employees.” PowerApps as an app is useful for viewing and editing data, while Microsoft Flow helps in performing actions. If you need any help in development of Apps or it’s customization our team of experts can help you.
Getting started with Microsoft Flows
Introduction In recent years, we have seen that technology is growing perpetually and flourishing at a rapid rate. It would not be erroneous in saying that technology has made a mark in virtually every sector. From the traditional way of working to automation, business processes have streamlined to a great extent. “Automation is the incipient way of working”. If we talk about our daily routine, there are a various task which needs to be performed daily like checking important emails, schedule meetings, monitoring business data etc. It’s quite natural to wonder, how these routine tasks can be performed efficiently? How to save time but still get same the quality results? Microsoft flows, the answer to many of the questions which work to automate the business processes. “Microsoft Flow is a cloud-based service that makes it practical and simple for line-of-business users to build workflows that automate time-consuming business tasks and processes across applications and services.” One can say that Microsoft flow is used to automate the workflows. The most common use of Flow is to trigger notifications. Use cases of Microsoft flows There are numerous scenarios in which flows can be used to get the task done efficiently. Few of the use cases are: Flows can be linked to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For example, when a new lead is added to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, an automated workflow can send the sales person a notification(an email/text message) with details about the lead. Flow can automate the process of copy files. For example, when a new file is added to Dropbox or OneDrive, an automated workflow can immediately post a copy of the file to SharePoint. One can accumulate data using flows. For instance, if the user wants to know what people are saying about a particular brand, the user can create a trigger that will capture new tweets that mention the brand and put a copy of each tweet in a database for mining. Getting Started In order to get started with Microsoft Flows we need to have a glance at the following points. Templates Templates are there to ease up your task. A lot of useful templates are available which can be included in your flow easily. This will save a lot of your effort. A huge number of templates are available and categorized as Approval, Button, Data collection, Email, Events and Calendar, Mobile, Notifications, Productivity, Social media etc. For each of these categories, multiple templates are available. Connectors According to Microsoft “A connector is a proxy or a wrapper around an API that allows the underlying service to talk to Microsoft Flow, PowerApps, and Logic Apps. It provides a way for users to connect their accounts and leverage a set of pre-built actions and triggers to build their apps and workflows.” In other words, connectors are a medium to connect to various apps. 3. Login Details Login credentials are required to use a connector. For example, if one needs to use twitter connector, then he/she needs to provide the login credentials. 4. Identify the need It is very important to identify the exact requirement. It would be a great way to commence the flow with a clear understanding of the process and what needs to automate. 5. Setting up the required environment It is necessary to set up the environment. For example, if you want to connect to SharePoint, you need to set up list and libraries, folder structure etc. 6. Know your desired outcome One should know what result should be achieved. 7. Choose iterative steps It is better to commence with small steps than to make an intricate flow. An example would be “Save twitter feeds with particular tags in a SharePoint library or send in a mail.” These Flows can be setup expeditiously in a few minutes utilizing the template and can avail hundreds of users in a short time. 8. Get to know your starting point Flows can be created either from the flow portal or directly from SharePoint app. 9. Explore the available options The more you make mistakes, the more you struggle, the more you explore, the better you will understand. 10. Get Started So, get started with the existing templates or begin from scratch. Choose the option that best identifies your need.
Microsoft Teams and Project Online integration using Microsoft Flow
Microsoft Teams is a unified communications platform that combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration. The service integrates with the company’s Office 365 subscription office productivity suite and features extensions that can integrate with non-Microsoft products. Microsoft Teams is being used by over 125,000 organizations across the world, since its launch on March 14, this year. It has come out as core product of Microsoft ‘s vision for intelligent communications – bringing together conversations, meetings, files, Office apps, and third-party integrations at a single hub in Office 365. And as Teams become a single hub for team work, it is obvious that all project related updates should be available as posts in Teams as well. Though Teams provide a bunch of connectors to integrate with other application, but not for Microsoft Project Online. This integration is important because it would help to keep the project team updated with the latest project happenings in the form of posts in Microsoft Teams. Isn’t it interesting? In this article, I’m going to share a simple scenario about how we can quickly integrate Teams with Project Online using Microsoft Flow. To give you a bit of context, Microsoft Flow is a cloud based workflow service that enables automation of common tasks and business processes across the most common apps and services. It has Project Online connector and supports the following triggers: Microsoft Teams is core to our vision for intelligent communications—bringing together conversations, meetings, files, Office apps, and third-party integrations—to provide a single hub for teamwork in Office 365. New project created New resource created New task created Project published And following are the actions available for Project Online: Check-in and publish project Checkout project Create a new resource Creates new project Creates new task List projects List tasks Let’s see how we can develop Microsoft Flow workflow to post a message in Microsoft Teams whenever a new project is created in Project Online. To begin, sign-in (or sign-up), into Flow and click on Create from blank. Step 2: At the bottom of the screen, click on Search hundreds of connectors and triggers Step 3: In the search bar, type Project and you will see the list of connectors available for project management. Step 4: Click on Project Online Step 5: Next screen shows all the supported triggers for Project Online. In this scenario, we want to post message in Teams whenever a new project is created so select Project Online – When a new project is created. Step 6: Provide your project root site URL and click on + New step Step 7: Click on Add an action Step 8: Here we need to specify action for Microsoft Teams. Type Teams in search bar and click on Microsoft Teams Step 9: Select Microsoft Teams – Post message. Step 10: Select Team Id to post a message. Step 11: Select Channel Id. Step 12: Draft a message for post using custom text and fields from Project Online. From the right Dynamic panel, select needed field and drop it in the Message box. See the below image: Step 13: Once you have drafted the message, give a name for your Flow and click on Create Flow to save this workflow settings. Testing Flow Go to Project Online and sign-in Create a new project Check Microsoft Teams to receive project creation notification in the configured channel There you go! You have successfully integrated Project Online with Microsoft Teams without any coding. If you are looking for more such integrations with Microsoft Project Online, our PPM experts can help you with the right solution. Here I showed just one example for a trigger and action. Similarly, you can add more triggers as you require. Good Luck! You may find these useful: Related services & solutions Robotic process automation Automate repetitive tasks focus on higher-value work Read more Implementation Deploy and adopt automated, integrated, and customized applications and tools, to stay proactive. Gain a complete picture of your organization with a system of integrated applications and data stores. Read more Collaboration with SharePoint and … Automate workflows and empower teamwork Read more Business productivity Read more Related Technologies: Apps and Business Automation Integration Adoption Services