Weekly Tip: The Power Platform
Just like the Office Suite contains different apps for different jobs, like Excel vs Word, likewise, the Power Platform has different apps for different jobs.
| Power Apps | Build your own Low Code Business Apps – think MS ACCESS or SQL Server replacement |
| Power BI | Reporting Tool – Tableau competitor, integrates well with TEAMS for KPI reporting – think Pivot Tables and Charts or Dashboarding to the Nth level. |
| Power Automate | Low Code Automation tool for Cloud based items – think replacement for Visual Basic for Applications in the Office Suite |
| Power Virtual Agents | Chatbots – If you wish to have database driven conversations with your users, this is the tool – REPLACED by CoPilot Studio in 2024 |
| Power Pages | Low Code websites. |
Power Apps and Power BI are completely FREE when developing and Microsoft give your ALL the apps features. What you are paying for monthly then is the deployment and use of any reports and applications you create and wish to share with others. Power Automate is FREE with some MS365 plans for basic functionality and again allows you to pay for Desktop flows, premium connectors or AI builders. Power Virtual Agents is FREE within TEAMS but that is a scaled down version. The Paid version will give you full capabilities. Finally, Power Pages are not FREE and allow you to build websites. However, WIX and WordPress are still widely used website creation apps (Power Pages doesn’t rank at all).