One of the Big Pillars of the Power Platform is Microsoft Power Virtual Agents (or PVA’s). What is a Power Virtual Agent? Its a Chatbot! Microsoft has been delving into the Chatbot space for awhile now, especially in Teams, however, chatbots in teams have historically been developed with the Bot Framework. The Bot Framework is…
Category: PowerApps
Creating a Unified Dynamics Search Experience in Canvas Apps
Recently, I had a client who was interested in building a PowerApp Canvas App for Mobile Devices that would take some of the more routine aspects of their Dynamics sales process, and provide their sales people with an easier way to do some of the tasks associated with capturing customer information. This particular client’s users…
Reduce your PowerApps licensing cost to SQL Server with Layer2 Cloud Connector
Not too long ago, Microsoft changed the way they licensed PowerApps. Before, you were able to use may of the connectors (especially SQL Server) with the licensing that came with PowerApps for Office 365. Microsoft turned that connector, and may others into “Premium Connectors”. In order to use these, you now have to license your…
Mobilize Exchange Online Powershell with Azure Functions, Flow, and PowerApps – Part 2
So, in the Previous post, we created an Azure Function that we can pass a query to and cancel a departing user’s meetings. But that’s only part of what we wanted to accomplish. Now we need to make it mobile friendly, so let’s dive in and use PowerApps and Flow to make it happen! Make…
Mobilize Exchange Online Powershell with Azure Functions, Flow, and PowerApps – Part 1
So, I recently had a colleague of mine come to me with a requirement for a PowerApp he was building. The customer wanted to be able to click a button in PowerApps, and export a SharePoint list to a CSV file. “I can do it through Powershell, but they want to be able to just…
Interact with Machine Learning with PowerApps and Flow – Part 2
Click here to read Part 1 of this series We’ve got our Custom Connector in Place, lets make a Flow! So, Open Microsoft flow, and create a New Blank Flow. I named my flow ‘Machine Learning Request-Response’. The first Action we want to Add is the generic “PowerApps’ Trigger. This essentially says “Start this flow…
Interact with Machine Learning with PowerApps and Flow – Part 1
Recently, the company I work for (Centric Consulting, check us out!) held a Hackathon to get our consultants a bit more exposure to Machine Learning. It was a day and half of different teams putting together something that could demonstrate what Machine Learning is, and how it could be used. In the case of my…
PowerApps Development Strategies – Part 2
In my previous post, I discussed a bit about the Tools we can leverage to develop and manage Apps in PowerApps. For this Post, we won’t use any of those tools! Plan First, then Develop Microsoft has done a fantastic job of selling the narrative of how simple it is to create and use PowerApps….
PowerApps Development Strategies – Part 1
As PowerApps continues it’s long march to maturity, it’s important to stop and evaluate where the platform is in regards to developing and managing your PowerApps in the Enterprise. In a traditional Enterprise Development organization, you have many tools and strategies available to you when architecting, designing, testing, and managing code bases for your applications. …
PowerApps Tip Corner – Use Variables!
As any developer will tell you, variables are some of the most important objects when you are creating an application, and that holds true for PowerApps as well. One thing I’ve learned about PowerApps (in particular when designing them), is that the more screens you have, the slower editing an App can be. This is…