The Power of the Power Platform 

The Power of Power Platform Consulting and Managed Services 

With Power Platform, your possibilities are virtually limitless – but with the help of a pro by your side, who knows how far you can take it? Unlock new potential and reach soaring heights that exceed all expectations. 

If you’re looking for a reliable partner to help build applications tailored to your organization’s needs, look no further than ECF Data. Our Power Platform services provide an end-to-end solution – from planning and designing all the way through testing and implementation. We’ll make sure every move is secure so you can concentrate on what really matters: running a successful business. 

Tricks and Tips for Low code/No code Services 

1. Power Apps: Change the Style of All Form Controls in One Go 

Forms can be a great time-saver when you’re looking to create a user-friendly interface, but all that convenience comes at the cost of laboriously styling each element one by one. But don’t despair – here’s an amazing little secret that’ll dramatically reduce your form customization workload: select and stylize them simultaneously.  

• Choose the form 
• Transform the vertical form’s layout to horizontal 
• In the top-right corner of Power Apps Studio, select the undo button 
• The controls on the form will now all be selected

2. Power Apps: Create a Barcode in a List in SharePoint

• Are you feeling overwhelmed by tracking inventory? No need to worry – SharePoint has your back! You can generate barcodes and store them in lists with just a few clicks. It makes it easy for anyone to build customized Power Apps with no 3rd party connectors needed. It’s simple and stress-free – now that’s something worth celebrating!  
• Dive into List Settings 
• Go to Information Management Policy 
• Activate Barcode 
• Select OK

3. Power Automate: Make use of Connectors

With Power Automate and the Microsoft Power Platform, you can access incredible capabilities that would otherwise be out of reach. Think of it as a power boost! With over 350+ connectors for different services (not just from Microsoft!) at your fingertips, there’s no limit to what kind of creative projects you can take on with this great tool.  

Though each boast something and deserves the spotlight due to its flexibility and how it extends Power Platform’s functionality, these are some that stand out from the pact:  

• Power BI 
• HTTP with Azure AD 
• HTTP/HTTP Request (available as an action/trigger through Microsoft Power Automate) 
• Office 365 Users

If you want to integrate your own service, you can utilize Custom Connectors.  

4. Power Apps: Avoid screen-to-screen control reliance

Loading an app’s screens into memory can be a real-time-saver, but if one screen requires something from another which has its dependencies on additional screens and so on – the optimization process breaks down! That kind of dependency chain would cause many more unnecessary loads.  

To keep your workflow running smoothly, try to steer clear of data bindings between screens. As an alternative, consider employing a global variable or collection that can help link them together if you need to pass along information.  

There’s an exception: Imagine in the above example that accessing screen 1 requires navigation from screen two only. Then screen 2 will already be loaded in memory when screen 1 is to be loaded. There is no performance impact because the dependency for screen 2 may be satisfied with no additional work.

5. Power BI: Envision the services you use

Power BI provides a fantastic way to combine the data from your favorite services and create beautiful, personalized reports. There are hundreds of content packs for Xero accounting, K2 Cloud business processes, Adobe Marketing Cloud, SAP HANA analytics, and more. Get ready to explore powerful insights with just one click on an interactive dashboard; it’s time to make sense of all that valuable information.  

The on-premises gateway can be set up to use Power BI to navigate data sets on your own servers. It allows you to correlate website visitors with sales or pinpoint the initiatives that have brought in new customers. To manage who has access to more sensitive data, you may build your own dashboards, reports, and visualizations, do calculations (Power BI refers to these as calculated measures), and define access levels for specific individuals, data sources, or dashboards and reports.

6. Power BI: In your data model, avoid both-directional relationships

Performance matters and poor choices can cost you when it comes to your data model design. Relationships that go both directions should be avoided as they easily trigger a filtering loop which will reduce performance. Instead, create an optimal data model or explore DAX’s CROSSFILTER() function – two solutions for better performance.

7. Power Automate: Activate Automatic Notification

With the buzz of daily emails, texts, and notifications, it’s easy to miss something important. Power Automate is here to ensure your top priorities aren’t overlooked. With automatic reminders that alert you when tasks are due, or progress updates arrive – no detail will slip through the cracks.  

Maximize your efficiency by customizing notifications that alert you to the tasks or events most important to you. No more waiting for an important message from your boss – get notified immediately. Don’t let a co-worker’s delay set back progress; receive instant notices when they send in forms and paperwork, so everything is handled smoothly.

8. Power Automate: Label your Actions

Give your Power Automate flow a proper name. Doing this takes seconds, but managing more significant flows can make a big difference. Renaming the action will help you keep track of what precisely each part handles and save time trying to figure out which ones do what – trust us on that one. So, remember to give each action in your flow an appropriate title for easy management later.

9. Power Virtual Agents: Create a Bot

Creating a Bot is one of the first things you should do in Power Virtual Agents. These are the steps to guide you:  

• Access the Power Virtual Agents Home Page.
• Select Create in the navigation menu. Another option is to select Home, then Create a Bot.
• Select the type of bot you prefer to make:
• To generate production bots that are meant to be sent to your clients, use Build for production.
• To test out the new authoring features in preview, use Try the unified canvas (preview). These preview bots are only supported in English and should not be used by customers.
• Enter a name for your bot in the box labelled Name your Bot.
• After that, you can select the Language you want your Bot to use. 
• Then, chose Create.

10. Power Virtual Agents: Delete a Bot

Opposite of creating a Bot, let’s tackle now how to delete them.   

• First, dive into the Home Page of Power Virtual Agents. 
• Select Chatbots in the navigation menu. Choose the bot that you want to delete and select Delete. 
• You’ll be prompted to type the bot’s name to confirm the bot’s deletion. Shortly all bot content will be removed after you confirm.

Ready to unlock the potential of no-code and the Microsoft Power Platform? Get started today by talking to our approachable experts and see how far you can go.