Power Platform Basics.txt

Power Platform Basics

Terminology
-----------------

Entity -> Table
Field -> Column
Record -> Row
Option Set -> Choice
Common Data Service -> Dataverse


What Is Power Platform?
----------------------------------
- a suite of tools that includes Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents
- these core services are built upon other components called Connectors, AI Builders, and Dataverse
- these solutions also integrate with other Microsoft Platforms like Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365
- this suite is leveraged in order to quickly put together solutions
- aimed at "Citizen Developers" (people who do not have Comp Sci degrees and are not Developers by trade)


Power Apps
-----------------

[ Canvas Apps ]
- builds apps in a drag and drop fashion from scratch, templates, or other data sources (e.g. Sharepoint List)

[ Model Driven Apps ]
- builds apps on top of the Dataverse using models/relationships (e.g. think ORM)
- use a component-focused approach to develop the app

[ Portal Apps ]
- builds pubic facing web apps that can be browsed (anonymous or authenticated)
- allows users to browse data contained in the Dataverse




Power Automate
----------------------
- used to automate workflows and processes
- these flows have to connect to datasources via Connectors

Connectors -> Triggers (button click) -> Actions

// Flow Types

Cloud Flows
	Automated - initiated via trigger
	Scheduled - predefined time/frequency
	Instant - invoked direcltly from the UI

Business Process Flows
	guided experience for model driven apps (i.e on-boarding application)

Desktop Flows (UI)
	Robotic Process Automation


// Actions

Loop
	run until a condition is met

Switch
	executes a given piece of logic based on input (case)

Do Until
	execute until a condition is true

Apply to Each
	executes for each item in an array
	
Expressions
	runs manually created logic
	
	
// Approvals

Approvals
	flows that run based on the approval of a request (accept/reject)
	




Power BI
-----------
- used to visualize and analysis data to provide intelligence in order to make organizational decisions

// Components

PowerBI Desktop (Create)
	connect and model data using desktop app
	access to many data sources
	transform
	modeling 
	can publish to BI Service
	
PowerBI Service (Share)
	cloud based service; publish and share from the browser
	access to some data sources
	dashboard
	workspaces for collaboration
	sharing within an organization
	
PowerBI Mobile (Consume)
	consume data via the mobile app


[ Dataset ] 
- collection of data
- used to build visualization

[ Reports ]
- collection of visuals

[ Visualization ]
- a single visualization of data

[ Dashboard ]
- a single page of visualization(s)

[ Workspaces ] 
- collaborative space for dashboards, reports, and datasets


Workspace
	Datasets
	Reports
	Dashboards
	
**Datasets can be shared across the "new" workspace experience



Power Virtual Agents
---------------------------
- can be used to create chatbots that interface with customers in order to provide a service (e.g. customer support)
- empowers team to build chatbots without the need for developers or AI scientist
- reduce cost by automating responses to common inquiries 
- customer satisfaction by creating a strong self-service eco-system
- chatbots can be published to Teams, mobile apps, or custom websites
- has it's own licesning apart from other Power Platform Apps

// Core Components

[ Topic ] 
- a topic of conversation for a chatbot

Trigger Phases
	Pricing?
	How much?
	
Nodes
	Message Node - Show messages
	Question Node - Ask question to a user and capture input
	Action Node - Execute Actions (e.g. call Power Automate Flows in the same environment)
	
	
[ Entities ] 
- identify information supplied by a user
- Phone number, Email, First Name, etc
- this information is used as "inputs" in down stream flows
- many are prebuilt
- can also be custom


[ Monitoring ]
- Analytics tab will provide full insight into the chatbots performance


Core Components
------------------------

[ Connectors ]
- wrappers around APIs
- the bridge between datasources and power applicaitons

Triggers
	notification when an event occurs
		Polling Triggers
		Pushing Triggers

Actions
	interaction with/on a datasource
	
	
Standard Connectors 
	interfaces to standard apps like Sharepoint, Outlook, etc

Premium Connectors
	interfaces for more complex platforms like Azure SQL, Workday

Custom Connectors


[ Dataverse - Common Data Service (CDS) ]
- scalable database service that is used to store and manage data that's used by the Power Platform
- is created on a per environment basis
- all data is stored in tables

Security
	authentication managed via Azure AD (with MFA and Conditional Access)
	row/field level security can be enforced as well
	
Storage
	stores physical data in Azure
	
Import/Export
	can get data in and out using APIs, webhooks, and data exports


[ AI Builder ]
- provides pre-built and trainable AI models 
- separate licesning model for AI Builder

Pre-Built Models
	Business Card Reader Model -- from text
	Language Detection Model -- from text
	Entity Extraction Model -- from text
	Sentiment Analysis Model -- from text
	Key Phrase Extraction -- from text
	Text Recognitiion -- from images
	
Custom AI Models
	Form Processing
		reading and saving from standard documents
	Object Detection
		recognize and count things in images
	Prediction
		will something happen based on historically data
	Category Classification
		categorize text by it's meaning so its easier to analyze
		
**Custom models can be embedded inside of Canvas Apps and Power Automate Flows
	


Structure
------------

Geographical Region (e.g. United States)
	Environments
		Production Environment
			- used for permanent workloads that will run in the organization
		Default Environment
			- automatically created by default for each Azure AD tenant
			- should not be used for Production workloads due to limitations
		Sandbox Environment
			- non-production work
		Trial Environment
			- short term testing needs		
		Developer Environment
			- special environment restricted to a SINGLE user
		Teams Environment
			- auto created when Teams users start using Power Apps
		
		
		
Administration & Security
---------------------------------

Security Hierarchy
	Identity Services (Azure AD)
	Licensing (per user)
	Governance & Compliance (isolation of resoures by region and environment)
	Role-Based Security Model (roles can be assigned at the environment, resource, and data level)
	Organizational Hierarchy (division of users into Business Units and Teams within an environment)
	Pre-Defined Roles
	
	
Environment
	Businesss Unit (Sales & Sales)
		Teams (Ops & Production)
		
**Access can be deligated by business unit or even more granularly, by teams within a business unit

[ Pre-Defined Security Roles ]

Environment Admins
	super users

Environment Maker
	can create resources but cannot access data within the environment
	
System Administrator
	similar to EA
	
System Customizer
	can customize; only can view records/entities they create
	
	
[ Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies ]
- you can "classify" connectors according to their data sensitivity

Connectors		Classification
---------------		------------------
Twitter				Non-Business
Sharepoint		Business
Facebook			Block

- DLPs can be "scoped" at the AD Tenant or Environment level
- they can also be configured to "exclude" certain environments
- a default group can be set for all connectors created so that there is consistency when they are first created 


[ Data Privacy ]

Users
	clients access the GUI via TLS encryption via the browser
	
Endpoint
	 API endpoints are also protected via TLS
	 
Data Gateway
	encrypted data transfer for on-prem connections
	
Dataverse (CDS)
	transparent data encryption
	
	
[ Compliance & Accessibility.]

Trust Center

Data Location

GDPR 

Compliance Manager

Accessibility Checker