Microsoft Power Platform

Power Platform can not only be configured to work as a stand-alone solution, removing manual, disparate systems like excel sheets and Access databases, but can be used to enhance and improve the functionality of your ERP and CRM business apps.

Right now, we are seeing a shift. Businesses aren’t looking at how to customise current systems to achieve solutions to their problems. There’s another option. Instead, the Power Platform is being explored with users looking at how can the toolkit be utilised instead.

It is a change in mindset, one where you now have another option to help evolve and improve your business systems.

With standard connectors available for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, creating a connection between your incumbent business system and Power Platform in the cloud is easy and straightforward.

If you want to integrate Power Platform solutions with an on-premise version of Dynamics 365 Business Central the capabilities and your options might be a little different, so let’s have a chat. Tecman can help get you started on what connectors are available and how to approach getting data mapped between your business tools.

You don’t need to be a developer to get started with Power Platform, although it is advantageous to be a system admin or super user with a good understanding of table and data structures. If you’ve got someone in the business that is a whizz at creating some complex Excel worksheets or Access databases, then you’ve got someone who is going to be able to help manage your Power Platform journey.

Traditionally, enhancements for your ERP system like Business Central are delivered by a partner, like Tecman! But with Power Platform, you've got more control. You could say you have the “power” – see what we did there. Though, if you need a little more help, don’t worry, our team of Power Platform Consultants are here to help you build and configure solutions to enhance your business operations and streamline everything.

No, it’s nothing to do with Marvel, Microsoft Dataverse is the ultimate cloud storage solution for the Power Platform. Believe it or not, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM apps is a Dataverse database.

Data is stored inside Dataverse within a set of tables. These contain a set of records (Microsoft call them rows), and a set of fields (Microsoft call them columns). You can utilise the standard tables that Microsoft offer or easily create your own. Your data is securely stored in the Microsoft cloud and role-based security allows you to control access across your organisation, just like your Business Central and CRM solutions.

Your Dataverse can be built with logic, validation, calculated fields, business rules, and workflows to enable data quality, and in turn, help drive business processes. This is also known as a Model Driven Power App. Utilise your Dataverse data to build apps, portals, reports and more.

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful end-to-end cloud reporting platform to instantly give you the data you need in an easy-to-understand format for employees.

It takes data from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing and Customer Service (aka Dynamics 365 CRM), plus a whole range of additional sources, including your own Dataverse databases, from Model Driven Apps, to give you the ultimate reporting experience.

Whether you're needing to report on your sales and marketing efforts, warehouse or factory floor operations, financial performance, with Power BI you can remove building time consuming reports from your task list. Take reporting to the next level and transform complex information into reports that are easy to understand with dashboards, graphs and charts.

Build your own powerful and secure webpages and portals with a smaller reliance on a web developer thanks to Microsoft Power Pages. Integrate directly with other Power Platform solutions, the Microsoft Dataverse and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and CRM first party apps to help bring your external relationships with customers and suppliers even closer together. The opportunity to get started with creating supplier and customer portals, for example, has never been so good.

Power Automate is a service which helps you create automated workflows between your business apps and services, to synchronise data, get notifications, collect and transform data, and more.

Whether it is helping run approval processes in context of Business Central or CRM, or notification on data updates or more. Let this incredibly cool workflow tool do some of the hard work for you and reduce effort on mundane processes that don’t add value to your day.

Build your own business apps easier than ever before thanks to Microsoft Power Apps.

This low/no code solution is incredibly powerful. Helping you plug gaps in your business processes without having to budget as much as you would for large development projects. Create custom apps that are specific to your business requirements, processes, and data.

There are two types of Power Apps.

Firstly, Model Driven Apps. Excellent for replacing bespoke databases and unstructured spreadsheets to add more control across your estate of data and business processes – creating your own Dataverse database with logic.

Secondly, a Canvas Power App for creating a front end to business apps you already have, with smaller additional logic. They’re here to help with the ease of use for employees that could perhaps be out on the road, in the warehouse or running your production floor.

To simply understand this one, you’ve probably got a chat function on your website, haven’t you? Well, Microsoft has one too, with Power Virtual Agents.

Create your own bots to answer external queries from customers and suppliers on your websites and portals, with all chat history stored inside your Dynamics 365 CRM apps to keep visibility of the relationship engagements in one place.

You can even use chats to help manage internal communications. Whilst bots can be created to manage external chats, what’s really cool is an internal BOT could be created to answer those key FAQ’s everyone asks about holiday entitlements, policies and more.

Power Virtual Agents is about delivering the answers to your team, customers and vendors in the most efficient way, and enabling insight to those that need it.