There's an app for that? Not really but . . .

Okay, I said in my inaugural post want to start giving back to the community, right?

Now, since I wrote that piece weeks ago, I have been asking myself one question: which community?!

This question came from the diverse reactions to that post. Now these reactions came from people that can be grouped into 3 main communities

• Group 1 - Those that want to consider changing their careers to tech

• Group 2 - Those already within the tech community who are willing to participate in knowledge sharing

• Group 3 - Business executives/business owners, curious to know what a Power Platform/Dynamics 365 developer has to offer

Suffice it to say that whatever I have to say will on be interesting to a particular “community” one post at a time (by the way, it feels weird calling group 1 and group 3 “community”. Makes it look like I know loads of people in that boat, duh!, who am I kidding?!)

Anyway, I suppose the first and last groups will only need one or two posts, maximum. Once I get some explanations out of the way, we can move to the technical part, which concerns group 2.

By the way, with every sense of humility, I cannot call myself a guru just yet! For me, every day gives a new meaning to the phrase “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know! So, if anyone is in the second group, note that I call it knowledge sharing.

So, housekeeping is done. Let's talk about Microsoft’s Power Platform and what a Power Platform developer does.

See, I don’t want us to get overly academic. So, I am just going to explain as simply as I can, meaning that I will probably need to expand the definition in the future.

99.9% of all business today has a use for a computer or a mobile digital device. (Would be nice to have someone give an example, in the comment section below, of a business that doesn’t). Typically, we use them for 3 fundamental things:

• Capture

• Process OR

• Store information

From Excel files to complex ERP/CRM or other specialized software. . . From Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to multinational corporations (MNC), business applications are everywhere probably millions of them.

Now, with all these millions of business applications out there already being used, there are still several business processes that can benefit from being digitized. It is something referred to as the “App Gap” You know what, you can listen to Microsoft’s James Philips (President, Business Application group) talk more about it here. He said it better than I ever can.

Cue in Microsoft Power Platform. What is it? Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of Microsoft technologies used for enterprise-level software development, data analysis and visualization, process automation, and the creation of chatbots. All of these goods offer a platform for building apps that don't need much or any code. There are five products under the Microsoft Power Platform:

• Power Apps - for building powerful desktop and mobile apps for the company to use internally.

• Power Automate (my favourite) – automate almost anything

• Power Pages – develop external business sites quickly

• Power BI – analyse and visual data from many different sources

• Power Virtual Agents – Develop chatbots for external customers

So, as you might have guessed, a Microsoft Power Platform developer is someone that can use all these 5 products to create value within an organization.

So, where does one even start?

Stay tuned