Microsoft innovates, updates, and offers new products to its users with great speed. These frequent changes and innovative solutions make Microsoft technologies very attractive. One of those innovative solutions is the Power Platform.
Microsoft Power Platform has four core components that are Power Automate, Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Virtual Agents that work simultaneously to implement fast and straightforward data insights and app building.
All components of this Power Platform are made on the Common Data Service for Apps. Each of these four components is dynamic but smart, but when they are combined, they are masterful.
Power Platform usually helps in manipulating, surfacing, automating, and analyzing data. The Power Platform of Microsoft brings all your important data in sync within a common data model.
As mentioned earlier, Power Platform consists of four major applications, such as:
- Power Automate: These are multi-stage workflows that are automated and can hook up with many services and apps.
- Power BI: This helps in displaying business data in real-time and interactive dashboards and reports to help in supplying detailed insights.
- Power Apps: This helps in creating custom and no-code applications for desktop and mobile.
- Power Virtual Agents: These are intelligent chatbots that can interact conversationally with your employees and customers without the requirement of any code.
These applications usually handle your data by using CDS or the Common Data Service of Microsoft.
What is CDS?
The core of the Power Platform of Microsoft is the CDS or Common Data Service for Apps. CDS helps in storing and managing data securely that is used by business applications.
Inside CDS, data is stored within a collection of entities, which are bunches of records used to hold data. These entities are like how a table holds data within a database.
What are the uses of CDS?
The entities in CDS allow cloud-based and secure storage choices for your data, which are used by business applications. These entities offer several advantages like:
- Easy to secure
In CDS, data is stored securely so that the users can see it on the condition that you grant their access. The role-based security allows you to manage access to entities for different users.
- Easily manageable
Both the metadata and data are saved within the cloud.
- Rich metadata
Data relationships and types are directly leveraged within Power Apps.
- Dynamics 365 Data
Data from the Dynamic 365 applications can be additionally stored within the CDS. This allows you to build apps quickly that leverage your Dynamics 365 data and also expand your apps by using Power Apps.
- Productivity Tools
Entities are available to ensure data accessibility and increase productivity.
- Validation and logic
Helps in defining business rules, calculated fields, business process flows, and workflows to confirm the quality of data and drive business procedures.
Integration of the data into the CDS
CDS allows data to be integrated from different sources into one store, which then might be employed in Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, and Power BI, together with the data, which is already present from the Dynamic 365 applications. So, you can say that Power Platform offers four different and powerful tools under a single umbrella. Hence, to develop effective business solutions, users can leverage the Power Platform of Microsoft to automate the business processes safely and securely.
