Issue: 2023 - Vol. 20 - Issue 1 - Power Platform

Charles Lamanna argues that Microsoft Power Platform democratizes software development by combining low-code tools with AI copilots, empowering non-coders and seasoned developers alike to collaboratively create solutions. He highlights Power Platform’s components (Power Apps, Automate, BI, Pages, Virtual Agents) and the universal Power Fx language, with Dataverse enabling compliant data management. Lamanna envisions a future where AI accelerates and broadens who can inno...vate, reshaping collaboration across domains and industries as citizens-developers contribute to a galactic odyssey of digital transformation.See More

Lewis Baybutt argues that the integration of generative AI and Copilot with Microsoft’s Power Platform is transforming software development from a constrained, expert-driven practice into a broad, democratized activity. He traces the shift from traditional coding to low-code and RAD, enabled by AI-assisted design, automated flows, and data-driven apps, while highlighting the role of Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and related tools in empowering citizen developers ...and professionals alike. The piece also stresses governance, lifecycle management, and responsible AI as essential guardrails in this nascent AI-enabled era.See More

Shane Young narrates Phillip’s odyssey to illustrate how Microsoft Power Apps can transform a simple Excel spreadsheet into a responsive, data-rich mobile app, bridging citizen development with professional engineering. Through Phillip’s trials—importing data, calibrating data types, adding a barcode scanner, querying external APIs via a custom connector, and embedding a PCF control—Young shows how end users can rapidly build usable apps while recognizing when pro develo...pers are needed to handle JSON, APIs, and advanced components. The tale underlines Power Apps’ potential to democratize app creation and scale with expert collaboration.See More

Angelo Gulisano surveys how Microsoft Power Automate, including its Desktop variant, enables users of varying coding skill to design cloud and desktop flows that automate complex business processes by connecting services, extracting data with AI Builder, storing results in Dataverse, and notifying teams via Teams. Through two practical examples—processing an invoice from email attachments and automating data from legacy desktop apps—he demonstrates building automated wor...kflows, leveraging Copilot to generate flows, and expanding automation across integrations, with guidance on testing, deployment, and real‑world applicability.See More

David Yack argues that traditional code developers remain essential in the Power Platform ecosystem by leveraging familiar skills to extend a low-code environment built on Azure. He emphasizes extensibility without cliffs through APIs, connectors, PCF components, and Dataverse plugins, and highlights practical tooling (Power Platform CLI, VS Code extension) and API-first integration to bring custom logic into low-code flows. Yack also champions fusion teams that blend ma...kers and developers to accelerate solutions, encouraging code professionals to engage, contribute connectors and plugins, and deepen their understanding of the platform.See More

John P. White surveys seven seamless integrations between Power BI and the Power Platform that extend analytics into action. He covers how to automate dataset refreshes (scheduled or event-driven with Power Automate), achieve real-time reporting via Dataverse DirectQuery, enable writeback through the Power Apps visual, push live form results with Forms, alert and automate responses from dashboard tiles, and implement data-driven subscriptions through Flow. White highligh...ts trade-offs (licensing, latency, DirectQuery limitations) and practical steps to implement each pattern, underscoring how these integrations turn insights into timely, cross-platform actions.See More

Greg Lindhorst introduces Power Fx, Microsoft’s open-source, Excel-like low-code language that extends the spreadsheet model to let both novice makers and pro developers author apps, automation, and server triggers; embeddable via C# SDK and a React formula bar, it supports declarative and imperative logic, strongly-typed checks, connectors (including Dataverse and REST), safe server execution, and tooling for integration and IntelliSense—enabling democratized, maintaina...ble business logic authoring across platforms.See More

Chris Huntingford argues that we are entering an era of enablement driven by low-code platforms like Microsoft Power Platform, where not only professional developers but citizen developers and business technologists collaboratively solve real business problems. He traces the shift from technology-centric digital transformation to people-centric enablement, emphasizing reusable digital bricks, governance, data modeling (Dataverse), and cross-role collaboration. Through re...al-world examples and a multi-perspective stance, he shows how diverse roles—citizen developers, business technologists, and professionals—co-create scalable solutions, with AI and Copilot poised to further lower barriers and expand impact.See More

Fabio Franzini surveys Microsoft Power Pages as a fast, flexible, low‑code platform for building public-facing and partner portals, internal sites, and B2B/B2C experiences. He highlights how Copilot enhances design and iteration, and covers the design studio, Liquid templating, PCF components, web templates, and Web API integrations, enabling both power users and professional developers to customize data-driven portals. The article also addresses authentication, security..., governance, ALM via CI/CD and pipelines, and governance tooling, illustrating broad use cases and practical steps to create, manage, and deploy Power Pages solutions.See More