Microsoft Power Platform
Judging from my current understanding, the information comes from Baidu, csdn, Nuggets, Jianshu, Zhihu and other domestic information. In other words, the product information of the power platform series can only be obtained from agents. According to Microsoft's official website, even the useful information on GitHub, the external network, is Microsoft's official introduction. More detailed information can only be obtained by contacting Microsoft internally. I communicated with four Microsoft agents, and two of them do not represent this product. Among them, a company in Shandong does, but according to their introduction, they do not sell a lot of this product. For technical and platform reasons, The introduction above is also half-understood. A company in Shanghai has distributed this product abroad. After their introduction and demonstration, I also got a trial account and conducted a simple test. I also consulted with Microsoft Services in China. So as to make a summary.
a brief introdction
Power Platform mainly consists of 4 products:
1.Power Apps
2.Power Automate
3.Power BI
4.Power Virtual Agent
Power Apps
Power Apps provides a low-code development environment to create customized applications based on business needs. These include services, connectors, extensible data services, and application platforms (common data services), allowing simple integration and interaction with existing data. Power Apps can develop web applications and mobile applications, supporting various devices. Power App simplifies application development, and you can develop customized apps with only a simple interface.
Power Automate
Allows users to create automated workflows between applications and services. Helps automate some repetitive business processes, such as communication, data collection, decision-making and consent, etc.
Don’t waste time writing the same weekly report or going through the process. Automate is not just for individual users, but can also be used for enterprise-level automation. Power Automate's simple user interface allows users from any background to automate their work tasks.
Power BI
Power BI is an analytical service that delivers data analysis and insights to customers. Present data analysis insights in a visual form as reports or reports, so that data analysis can be presented to users. Power BI reports can serve as a kind of replacement for standard meeting reports.
Power Virtual Agent
Power Virtual Agent enables anyone to create a powerful chatbot using a wizard-driven, no-code interface that does not require a data engineer or developer.
Power Virtual Agent can solve many major problems in chatbot construction. For example, it can help solve the gap between subject experts and development teams, remove a lot of complexity and trivial conversational AI, and eliminate the need to write complex code. Power Virtual Agent is part of the Power Platform, so it is also integrated with existing systems. For example, OOBE is directly integrated with Power Automate. The Power Virtual Agent ecosystem consists of hundreds of connectors. Users can ask the chatbot to perform many actions by simply calling the Power Automate flow.
understand in my words
Power Apps is actually similar to a programming platform, on which you can encapsulate, publish and design your own components, and power Automate is equivalent to a middleware. It functions as a connection and a listener. You can obtain the data source of software under Microsoft, and you can also provide an interface for your own company to obtain and monitor data. Power BI is a tool for analyzing data services. It generates some reports and displays them to users in this situation. Finally, there is the power virtual agent, which is, to put it bluntly, a robot chat tool. Generally speaking, power Apps need to be used with power Automate. Design on power Apps interface. Power Automate is used as a function to obtain files from the network disk. middleware. Connectors, all data sources that can be linked to, serve as links and monitor emails. And the other two are the icing on the cake.
Conduct a test use for power Apps.
power Apps和 power Automate
First of all: power Apps applications are divided into three types: canvas, driver model, and portal.
Canvas: Design your app by dragging and dropping elements to the canvas, just like designing slides in PowerPoint. Create Excel-like expressions that specify logic and process data. Build apps that integrate with business data from a rich variety of Microsoft and third-party sources. Share your app so users can run it in a browser or mobile device; embed your app so users can run it in SharePoint, Power BI, or Teams.
Driver model:
Model-driven application design is primarily a method of adding components such as forms, views, charts, and dashboards to tables using the Application Designer tool. Additionally, relationships join tables together in a way that allows navigation between them and ensures that data is not duplicated unnecessarily.
Using the App Designer, you can build simple or very complex apps with little or no coding.
Portals: Power Apps developers can now create a powerful new experience: external-facing websites that allow users to sign in with various identities outside their organization, create and view data in the Microsoft Dataverse, and even browse content anonymously.
There are two running terminals:
PC: Just log in with your account to access
Mobile terminal: supports ios, Android, windows. It can be made into a mobile APP.
Development
1. How is the development agent authorized? (license or dongle)
license
2. Hardware configuration, whether it is an ordinary computer
普通电脑
3. Does the operating system only support Windows? Does it support other operating systems such as Linux, Unix, and Mac operating systems? Which versions of Windows support it, such as Windows 7, 10, and 11?
B/S 架构，PC浏览器访问登陆即可
4. Whether to support custom controls
支持(符合它的模板规范即可)，js语言
5. Has the business process developed an API for external programs to call?
支持
7. What is the ability of the low-code platform to call external interfaces, such as API calls or DB (database) calls?
(API调用，可以调用公司的接口，可以调用第三方接口 requires a premium fee)
8. Whether to support debug mode
支持（不是编程的debug而是通过平台的工作流程查看）
9. What is the approximate price range for development agents?
Provide documentation (free of charge) and provide professional training (3,000 per day, about ten days) (depending on the company, some companies do not have this training)
Deployment
How to deploy and run the application after development?
Sass application can be accessed by sharing and connecting after development.
1. Is it running as a platform or an application? Does it have a certificate? (safety)
There are no developed applications, but the platform does exist.
2. Whether the deployment supports privatized deployment, hardware environment, operating system, and whether it supports ARM (whether it supports embedded)
Does not support privatized deployment and does not support ARM.
3. Network requirements, whether it is necessary to connect to the external network, or it can also run on a LAN without an external network
Be sure to access the external network. However, you can set a network limit (you can ask Microsoft to set a LAN limit for you).
4. Is the authorization method a certificate or a dongle?
Just buy an account
5. The price range (for example, how much does a platform cost, and there will be corresponding APPs, 1 APP for each platform) are the same.
International version: 43*12 (this price is only available on an annual basis)
Domestic board: 32*12
Delivery
In addition to applications, can what is delivered to customers include other applications so that customers can carry out secondary development?
(Can)
1. For example, what are the deliverables of the delivery platform? (powerApps and power Automate)
Only delivery account
2. Deliver the application source code (in what language)
No source code, only the account is delivered
3. Will there be a logo for the low-code platform? The customer is unwilling to display other logos besides his or her own.
The fixed logo cannot be changed, but the application developed by yourself can be changed.
4. What is the price range? (How much does the delivery platform cost?)
Operating environment
1. How do customers run the application, through a browser?
Just use the browser
2. Does it support mobile APP and push message?
Supported, but you need to browse through the power Apps mobile app;
Support push
Apple APP shelf issues
Support
4. Is the authorization authorized by license or the customer only needs to log in with username and password?
Username and password
5. Can the same account be logged in to both mobile phone and computer at the same time?
Yes
6. Price range (for example: 200 licenses: 15W/year)
One administrator account plus 100 user accounts (5.5w/year). One management account can be created according to the number of managers. The price increases as the number of accounts increases. You can log in to mobile phones and computers at the same time.
other questions
I understand that the international version and the domestic version have different software and target different users. What is the difference between the international version and the domestic version of this product?
Difference: The users are different, and the update iteration in China is about half a year slower than abroad. Functionally: Mainly different from Team.
Screenshot of running test
1.Home page
2.Homepage
3. Create a new one yourself, and then view the published applications
4. Mode optional
5. View portal releases
Mobile App
Other questions (for domain names after release):
The published domain name is now https://idetail.powerappsportals.com/, and only the idetail main domain name cannot be modified. For example, our canvas application access link is longer. Generally, we will map a domain name that the company is familiar with and jump to the address of the apps when accessed.
Summarize
Advantage:
1. Support team members to build and share applications on any device.
2. Solve business problems with intuitive low-code tools, work faster with a platform that supports data integration and distribution, and extend the platform with building blocks for professional developers.
3. Behind the scenes, Microsoft can be used in conjunction with multiple Microsoft products.
Disadvantages:
It is difficult to use and the international version is slow to access.
at last:
power Apps and power Automate are used together. If you want the advanced service of API, there is an additional fee. However, an API advanced service can be used by multiple people, but there is a certain upper limit on the number of people. As for how many people can be online, you have to ask Microsoft, but around 200 people are still OK. . This online means that when the number of people calling the API reaches a certain level, the calling rate and others will be affected.
Official address: https://docs.microsoft.com/zh-cn/power-apps/powerapps-overview