DEV Community: Jingyi Z.

Bring AI to your life with Power Virtual Agents and Graph

Jingyi Z. — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 22:06:17 +0000

Ever wondered how to bring AI to your day-to-day work? Our last post will focus on Power Virtual Agents, particularly how to build conversational BOTs with Microsoft Graph. We are going to return user's calendar meeting information through BOT interaction. Some extending ideas could be getting Planner or important email data. This post serves as a foundation and an inspiration. So let's go ahead and get into the content!

(from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_uiW2bjLxA)

Objectives and Prerequisites

So why this content is important? I am sure much like myself, most of you are inundated with a lot of information, which is spread across many services like Email, Calendar, SharePoint, etc. In order to find the right focus from the disparate data, we can bring this information together by using Power Virtual Agents and Graph.

Thus, our goal is to...

Introducing bots, explaining where they are being used, and providing an overview of how Power Virtual Agents can be used to create bots
Reviewing the process for creating a bot and how to work with the Power Virtual Agents user interface
Illustrating the process of publishing a bot and successfully solving our problem

In order to get those objectives, you should have...

Access to Power Virtual Agents
Relevant permissions including enabled delegation to access user calendar

Why Microsoft Power Virtual Agents in Education?

Microsoft Power Virtual Agents empowers teams to create powerful bots through a guided, no-code graphical interface. With Power Virtual Agents, we can eliminate the gap between the subject matter experts and development teams that are building the bots, and can reduce latency between teams recognizing an issue and updating the bot to address the issue.

Each one of us wears multiple hats at work sometimes. For example, a university professor may be a lecturer, a researcher and a faculty staff for one semester! Hence, there could be a lot of different meetings and projects. To efficiently and interactively navigate through information, our chatbot would come to the field. It can help to show a list and give suggestions, just like a personal assistant.

(from https://iconscout.com/illustration/virtual-assistant-2130746)

Moreover, it includes the following features to enhance your bot's functionality to make it even more powerful:

Initiate Microsoft Power Automate flows, which is being used in our following demo
Pass conversations to live agents. Bots can be configured to pass conversations, including the context to live agents
Automate topic creation. You can extract content from existing support pages, such as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How to get started?

The first time that you sign in to Power Virtual Agents and create a new bot, a default environment is created. Unless specified otherwise, any additional bots will be created in the default environment. If additional environments are needed, such as for different regions, organizational needs, or other circumstances, they can be added through the Microsoft Power Platform admin center.

When in the admin center, you can add environments by going to the Environments tab and selecting New to open the new environment panel.

You can create bots by selecting the bot icon in the Power Virtual Agents interface.

In the Create a new bot dialog box, enter a name for your bot. Select Create to begin the bot-building process, which can take up to 15 minutes for the first bot that you create in an environment.

You will define any additional topics by selecting Topics in the side navigation pane and then selecting New topic at the top of the page. Each topic that you define should include some trigger phrases. Trigger phrases are examples of text such as questions or utterances that teach the bot when to respond with this dialog.

After you have saved your topic, you can define how customers are guided through their conversational interaction with the topic. You can define the path by selecting Go to authoring canvas. The authoring canvas is a graphical dialog tree editor that allows you to define bot responses and the overall bot conversation. When the canvas loads, the c*onversation will consist of two nodes*:

The trigger phrases that will initiate the topic.
The initial message that will be provided to the user.

Conversation nodes help define the path that the conversation will take. Conversation nodes can display messages, ask questions, or run actions. You can add these nodes by selecting the plus sign (+) below the node. For example, if you want to provide store hours based on where the customer lives, you would add an Ask a question node to identify which store location that they want the hours for.

The following image shows the Ask a question node being used to ask the customer which store location they want the hours for. In addition, the customers are provided with two multiple-choice options to choose from: Seattle and Bellevue.

You can test your bot in real time by using the test bot panel, which you can enable by selecting Test your bot at the bottom of the side navigation pane.

By testing your bots often throughout the creation process, you can ensure that the conversation flows as anticipated. If the dialog does not reflect your intention, you can change the dialog and save it. The latest content will be pushed into the test bot, and you can try it out again.

When you are ready to publish your bot, select the Publish tab on the side navigation pane. During the publishing process, the bot will be checked for errors. Bot publishing typically takes a few minutes. When the publish is successful, the top of the page will display a green banner indicating that everything worked correctly. If errors are detected, you will be notified through a message that is displayed in the application.

After a bot is deployed and customers are interacting with it, statistics that are related to the bot will become available. You can access this information through the Analytics tab in the side navigation pane. This pane provides key performance indicators (KPIs) that show the volume of sessions that your bot has handled, how effectively your bot was able to engage users and resolve issues, escalation rates to human agents, and abandonment rates during conversations.

For step by step exercise to create a bot, please check out this learn module.

How to connect my BOT with Graph?

It is not hard to connect with Graph with your Bot. However, we'll involve Power Automate as well. For our solution Architecture, we are going to use Power Virtual Agent Triger, HTTP Action to connect Office 365 Graph API, and then do some data processing to break it down and pull only the information we need. Lastly, we will send them back through the PVA Return Values action by using markdown.

For specific steps and final demo, please check out this video!

Next Steps

Interested in learning more about Power Virtual Agent? Here are some resources for you to explore:

Final Note

Great work if you read till the end! We learned what is Power Virtual Agent and where they are being used. We walked through how to create bot and connect it with Graph API. Let us know if this post is helpful. Thank you for reading and we are proud of your learning mindset!

Connecting Power BI to Microsoft Graph

Jingyi Z. — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 22:05:00 +0000

You are almost near to achieve your goal of becoming Microsoft Power Platform expert. Till now we expect that you have read all the previous blogs and this is our fifth blog. Let have a top-level view of previous blogs.

Revision:

In first blog we have learned the basic concepts of Power Platform and have learned the introduction of each component of Power Platform. In first blog we have introduction of each and every component of Microsoft Power Platform along with some features of Microsoft Power Platform. Then from blog two to blog five we have Microsoft Graph focused content. In these blogs we have learned how to access data from Graph API and how to connect Graph API to various components of Power Automate. So, it was a nice journey of how to work with a huge amount of data and how to handle the data with the help of Microsoft Graph API.

Preview:

So now in this blog we are continuing the concepts of Graph API and now we are “connecting Power BI to Microsoft Graph”. As we already have an introduction about these two components and now, we will focus more on the implementation rather the learning the concepts.

Microsoft Power BI is a data analyzing and data visualizing tool which gives the insights of data through reports and dashboards. And with the help of this analyzed data one can make proper decisions.

On the other hand, Microsoft graph is a data accessing API with the help of which we can access data from Microsoft cloud services like Active directory, SharePoint, OneDrive and much more. So now we will play with these two technologies to meet our business solutions. We will learn how to import data in Microsoft Power BI with the help of Microsoft Graph then visualize and analyze that data in Power BI.

Prerequisite:

For this blog, knowledge of Power BI and Microsft Graph is required because if you don't know how to work with Power BI and Microsft Graph then you can't connect Power BI with Microsoft Graph for mutual functionality. So it is suggested to first learn the basics of Power BI and Microsoft Graph and then learn the skills taught in this blog. So we expect that after learning Power BI and Microsoft Graph concepts we are connecting Power BI to Microsoft Graph.

So, let’s do it!

We can connect Graph API with Power BI using custom connectors for Power BI. Graph API have many important functionalities and one of the most important benefits of Graph API is that it has single endpoint as compared to other Microsoft Graph API’s. The Graph API data source can be used in the Power BI Desktop where we can publish the model to Microsoft Power BI service.

Demonstration:

Now let’s see the steps of connecting Power BI with Graph API. The steps are given below:

Login to Power BI Desktop using Microsoft Credentials. Click on Get Data and select OData feed. In simple clicks, you will be able to import the data to Microsoft Power BI Desktop easily.

Just copy the API URL https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/users from the Graph Explorer that can be pasted in the OData feed as shown in the image above. You must login to Graph Explorer before importing data.

Next, import the data shown in your dashboard and then it’s good to go.

The URL given here is used to find the users connected with me. We can also run this as a query in Graph Explorer, just paste the link in Graph explorer search bar and hit run query to see the output as shown below

Note: here the output is hidden due to privacy issues.

There is also modify permissions (preview) tab where we can change and modify permissions for our queries.

Graph explorer has two versions beta and v1.0 and I founded beta as the best versions so it’s recommended to use beta version.

On the left side are sample queries which we can use for testing and learning purposes.

So it was the short and precise overview of Graph API, we can further explore it using Microsoft docs and Microsoft learn platform.

Next steps:

Microsoft Graph Documentation

Overview of Microsoft Graph

Videos on Microsoft Graph

Connect to the Microsoft Graph Security API in Power BI Desktop

Use Graph Explorer to try Microsoft Graph APIs

Blog 6: Bring AI to your life with Power Virtual Agents and Ms Graph

Call Microsoft Graph API in Power Automate using custom connector

Jingyi Z. — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 22:03:00 +0000

Credits- http://m.alnafsy.com/

Now that we are well acquainted with power apps and creating a microsoft graph custom connector in it, let us familiarize ourselves with the following terms once so that we can proceed to call Microsoft graph API in Power Automate using custome connectors for which we will require to set the criteria in authentication.

Azure API Management Gateway

Custom connectors are supported by Microsoft Azure API Management infrastructure. When a connection to the underlying API is created, the API Management gateway stores the API credentials or tokens, depending on the type of authentication used, on a per-connection basis in a token store. This solution enables authentication at the connection level.

Credits- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crypto_key.svg

Azure API Authentication

Before using any connector in Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate, or Power Apps, the user needs to create a connection by authenticating to the network service. There are different types of authentication.

No authentication- No further information is required.
Basic authentication- The user will provide the user name and password to create the connection.
API Key- Used by web services. Make sure that you define- Parameter label, Parameter name, Parameter location
OAuth 2.0 authentication- Available for online connectors. Provides implementations for specific services and prebuilt identity provider templates, when selected, fill in many of the fields that are required by OAuth 2.0.
Windows authentication- Available only for connections that use on-premises data gateway, when the Connect via on-premises data gateway check box is set on the General tab. When a new connection is created, the user will need to provide Windows credentials for the service and then select one of the installed on-premises gateways.

Azure AD Authentication

Prerequisites

An account on Power Apps Portal, Graph Explorer, Microsoft Azure.

Let's get started!

Step 1: Create a new solution.

Go to Power Apps maker portal and make sure to be in the correct environment.
Select Solutions > + New solution and enter the following details.
Don't navigate away from this page after selecting 'Create'.

Step 2: Use Graph Explorer to test the API.

Sign in to the Graph Explorer and use it to test the API. Read the permissions and continue if you agree.
Make sure that GET is selected for the verb, add /insights/used to the URL, and then select Run query.
You should get a 403 error indicating that Graph Explorer lacks your permission to perform this action.
Select the Modify permissions tab to grant Graph Explorer permission > Select Sites.Read.All > Consent.
Read the requested permissions, continue if you agree and select Run query again.

Start a new browser session tab. Sign in to OneDrive Personal Cloud Storage.
Select + New and select Word document.

Enter some test text in the Word file. The document will be saved automatically for you.
Go back to the Graph Explorer and run the same query again.
You should now get a response with values. Select the response JSON, right-click, select Copy, and then save it.

Step 3: Register a new application and add permissions.

Sign in to Microsoft Azure with your user admin credentials.
Select Show portal menu and then select Azure Active Directory.

Enter Learn last used connector for Name, enter https://global.consent.azure-apim.net/redirect for Redirect URI, and then select Register.

Select API permissions and then select + Add a permission.

Select Certificates & secrets and + New client secret.
Enter Last used connector action for Description, select In 1 year for Expires, and then select Add.
Copy the Value and save it for later because it won't be shown again. You will use this user secret when creating the connector.
Select Overview, copy the Application (Client) ID and save it on a notepad. You'll use this client ID when creating the connector.

Step 4: Create a custom connector.

Make sure to sign in and be in the right environment in the Power Apps Admin Portal.
Select Solutions and then select to open the Contoso graph solution that you created in 'Step 1: Create a new solution'.
Select + New > Other > Custom connector.
Enter Contoso graph for Connector name, scroll down, enter graph.microsoft.com for Host and /v1.0 for Base URL and select Security.

Select OAuth 2.0 for Authentication and Azure Active Directory for Identity Provider.
Paste the ID that you copied from Azure in the Client id field and then paste the Value that you copied from Azure in the Client secret field.
Enter https://graph.microsoft.com for Resource URL and then select Create connector. Don't navigate away from the page.

Step 5: Add the action.

Select Definition > + New action.
Enter Last used for Summary and LastUsed for Operation ID. Go to the Request section and select + Import from sample.
Select Get for the verb, enter /me/insights/used for URL, and then select Import. Scroll down and select the default response.
Select + Import from sample. Paste the response that you copied from Graph Explorer in the Body field and then select Import.

Select Update connector. Don't navigate away from this page.

Step 6: Test the connector.

Select the Test tab and then select + New connection.
Provide your credentials. Read the requested permissions and continue.
Select Refresh connections and Test operation. You should see a 200 status, and the response should look like the image.

Summary

Congratulations! You have now created an environment to call Microsoft Graph API in Power Automate and can proceed to learn more in this area. Do leave your feedback in the comments below. Our next blog will on how to connect Power BI to Microsoft Graph. Stay tuned!

Next Steps

More info on overview of Microsoft Graph

Basics of Power BI

Blog 5: Connecting Power BI to Microsoft Graph

Creating Microsoft Graph custom connector in Power Apps

Jingyi Z. — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 22:02:00 +0000

Credit- http://m.alnafsy.com/

To creat Microsoft Graph custome connector in Power Apps, let us get acquainted with some important terms first.

What are Power Apps?

Power Apps is a suite of apps, services, connectors, and a data platform, that provides a rapid development environment to build custom apps for business needs.
Using Power Apps, one can quickly build custom business apps that connect to data stored either in the underlying data platform (Microsoft Dataverse) or in various online and on-premises data sources (such as SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server).
One can create three types of apps using this service: canvas, model-driven, and portal.

What are Microsoft Graphs?

Microsoft Graph is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365. It provides a unified programmability model that you can use to access the tremendous amount of data in Microsoft 365, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility + Security.
The Microsoft Graph API offers a single endpoint to provide access to rich, people-centric data and insights in the Microsoft cloud.
Microsoft Graph connectors work in the incoming direction, delivering data external to the Microsoft cloud into Microsoft Graph services and applications to enhance Microsoft 365 experiences such as Microsoft Search.
Microsoft Graph Data Connect provides a set of tools to streamline secure and scalable delivery of Microsoft Graph data to popular Azure data stores. The cached data serves as data sources for Azure development tools that you can use to build intelligent applications.

Credits- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/images/microsoft-graph.png

How can Power Apps bring positive changes in the education system?

One can create learning games in a cohesive system. Students can choose which subject they want to work on. They’ll demonstrate that they’ve learned the skill in question, and collect points.
One can create a variety of different apps that tackle different learning processes. If there are children with dyslexia, coping strategies for the disorder can be incorporated into the program.
One can create a smart tracking system to keep up with student proficiency by flagging various questions and exercises with different proficiency tags when creating them.

Credits- https://pixnio.com/free-images/2017/05/31/2017-05-31-10-23-44-900x675.jpg

What are the uses of Microsoft Graph?

One can use Microsoft Graph to:

Look at the next meeting and prepare for it by providing profile information for attendees, as well as information about the latest documents they're working on, and people they're collaborating with.
Scans one’s calendar, and suggests the best times for the next team meeting and subscribe to changes in the calendar, send an alert when one spending too much time in meetings, and provide recommendations for the ones one can miss or delegate based on how relevant the attendees are to you.
Help one sort out personal and work information on a phone. For example, by categorizing pictures that should go to your personal OneDrive and business receipts that should go to your OneDrive for Business and bring custom business data into Microsoft Graph, indexing it to make it searchable along with data from Microsoft 365 services.

What are custom connectors?

Connectors help make it easier for app and flow makers to connect to other apps, data, and devices in the cloud in the following ways:

Connection is done in a consistent, repeatable way that is discoverable by makers.
Connectors have actions that allow makers to control when an operation is performed.
Connectors can have triggers that allow automation to start when the triggering event occurs.

Create a custom connector

Prerequisites

An account on Power Apps Portal.

Let's get started!

Step 1: Create a new solution.
Go to Power Apps maker portal and make sure to be in the correct environment.

Select Solutions > + New solution and enter the following details.

Don't navigate away from this page after selecting 'Create'.

Step 2: Create a custom connector.
Go to Power Apps admin portal and make sure that you are in the correct environment.

Select Solutions and then select to open the Microsoft Graph solution that you created in Task 1: Create a new solution.

Select + New > Automation > Custom connector.

Enter Microsoft graph for Connector name.

Scroll down, enter graph.microsoft.com for Host and /v1.0 for Base URL.

Go to the Security option. Since we are just creating a custom connection, you can choose "No authentication" else any other type of authentication as per your needs.

Go to the Definition option. You can leave it as it is and move to the Code (Preview) option.

You can leave it as it is and click on "Create Connector".

Summary

Congratulations! You have created a Microsft Graph custom connector in Power App and can proceed to learn more in this area. Do leave your feedback in the comments below. Our next blog will on how to call Microsoft Graph API in Power Automate using custom connector. Stay tuned!

Next Steps

More info on overview of Microsoft Graph

List used for building a Microsoft connector

Credits- https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/07/15/19/55/thank-you-394180_1280.png

Blog 4: call Microsoft Graph API in Power Automate using custom connector

Access User Data from Microsoft Graph

Jingyi Z. — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 22:01:00 +0000

In the previous blog post, you have learned about the basics of PowerPlatform and Microsoft Graph. In this one, we will elaborate more on Graph specifically and provide examples in the field of education regarding how to access user data. After reading this, you will get an idea about how to use Graph to work with users in MS 365 including the required permissions.

Objectives and Prerequisites

Users are the core of most operations in Microsoft 365. Microsoft Graph enables developers full control over the lifecycle of users in Microsoft 365 including creating, updating, and deleting users and listing users in the organization.

Thus, are you interested in...

How to get a list of users?
How to get details, including multi-media, of a user?
how to manage the lifecycle of a user from creation to deletion?

In order to get those objectives, you should have...

Basic knowledge of REST services & APIs
Basic knowledge of Microsoft Graph
Ability to develop with NET Core at the intermediate level
Experience using Visual Studio Code at the beginner level
Access to a Microsoft 365 tenant

However, you don't have to check all those boxes! Your interest and willingness to learn are the key. Once we go through the following demonstration process, there are additional resources for you to practice and learn more. So, let's go!

Why integrate with education scenarios?

Imagine a teacher who went to a conference and got excited about certain great applications. After she came back, the first thing she need to do is to load the list of students into the app. It doesn't sound like a fun task to do, right? It can also be kind of a barrier to entry at times when there is a large class or a lot of details needed.

(from https://pin.it/28Oyt9U)

This scenario doesn't only happen to teachers, but to students or education software developers who may find key pieces of information are typically locked away inside a school Student Information System (SIS). Any time teachers bring a new application into their classroom, they spend time manually importing roster data into the app. Time-consuming, isn't it? And here is where Graph could come in and help.

What can you do with the Microsoft Graph user resource?

The user resource is the gateway to resources related to a user. The user can be the currently signed-in user, or another user if your identity and application have been granted the necessary permissions.

Following are some examples of things you can do with Graph user resources:

Manage your organization by creating new users in your organization or updating the resources and relationships for existing users. E.g. Create or delete users in your Azure AD organization, Upload or retrieve a photo for the user, etc
Work with calendars and tasks through viewing, querying, and updating user calendars. E.g. Find free meeting times for a set of users, get a list of reminders set on a user's calendar, etc
Administer mail and handle contacts by configuring user mail settings and send mail on a user's behalf. E.g. List mail messages and sending new mail, retrieve and update mailbox folders and settings, etc
Gather user insights. E.g. Return documents recently viewed and modified by a user, return documents and sites trending around a user's activity, etc

How to access users through Microsoft Graph?

There are two ways you can do it:

Access the signed-in user through the "me" alias at https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me. This alias maps to the same endpoint as /users/{signed-in user's id}.

To access a specific user, use either their ID or their userPrincipalName. For example:
- https://graph.microsoft/com/v1.0/users/{user's ID}
- https://graph.microsoft/com/v1.0/users/{userPrincipalName}
Microsoft Graph also enables developers to get a list of users. The /users endpoint will return all users in the organization using the Microsoft Graph API. The following code will do the same thing using the Microsoft Graph .NET SDK:

GraphServiceClient graphClient = GetAuthenticatedGraphClient(...);
var users = graphClient.Users.Request().GetAsync().Result;

Back to the case

So now after you have a basic idea about Graph's functionality, let's go back to the scenario and see how to get a class of student info from Graph. There are two ways, build a Graph application or access from the Graph webpage.

To begin with, if you haven't used Graph before, developing Microsoft Graph apps requires a Microsoft 365 tenant. You can follow the instructions on the Microsoft 365 Developer Program site for obtaining a developer tenant if you don't currently have a Microsoft 365 account. Then, you'll create an Azure AD application, a .NET Core console application, then finally display the currently signed-in user's details. For specific demo videos and documentations, please check it out here.

Moreover, if you already have an account set up and have some experience with Graph. You can access it from Graph Explore. For example, if you log in as a teacher account, you can have a look a the list of classes. by using this query:

  GET /education/me/classes
  GET /education/users/{id}/classes

Then, it'll return a list of class like below.

From there, you can find descriptions of the classes codes for the class you taught and other details. Then, you can copy the class ID of one of those. In the search query, put

  GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/education/classes/{class-id}/members

Then, you'll get a list of members of that specific class.

As a result, you'll get information about students whose data are always updated since it syncs with school's back-end system. Pretty cool right?

Next Steps

Interested in learning more about Graph? We saw this ahead and prepared the following resources for you to explore:

Summary

Good job on reading so far! In this post, we learned what can you do with the Microsoft Graph user resource, how to access user data through Microsoft Graph in different ways, and how to use Graph to solve problems in the realm of education.

(from https://pin.it/4JwkcWS)

Blog 3: Creating Microsoft Graph custom connector in Power Apps

(from https://www.canva.com/)

PowerPlatform + MS Graph

Jingyi Z. — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 15:49:00 +0000

This blog series introduces the Power platform ecosystem and includes a broad understanding of the Power platform with additional resources for people from different backgrounds no matter as consultant, data analyst, or developer. The blog series aim to empower readers to build solutions easily that normally require developer expertise and to hone the consulting skills regarding business problems!

Prerequisite:

To learn and build with Power Platform, there are no prerequisite required. We will start from the very basics and will learn the track step by step. In this blog we are going to answer the questions which evolve in every person’s mind who starts with Power Platform in order to hone their business. We will learn this technology in details and will also define its pros and cons.

So we encourage the readers to start learning Power Platform without worrying about the prerequisites for this learning path.

Expected Outcomes

After leaning this track, you will be able to

Work with power platform components to create best business solutions.
Create custom apps using Power apps without having coding skills.
To automate workflows and repetitive processes using Power Automate.
Analyze data, visualize data and make decisions using analyzed data with the help of Power BI.
Work with the most powerful AI oriented technology called Power Virtual Agents.

Introduction to power platform

Power platform is a platform which consists of four components and many underlying technologies that all the applications can use. The four components are:

Power Apps
Power Automate
Power BI
Power virtual agents

We will discuss all of them one by one.

So, all these apps combinedly forms a powerful platform called Microsoft Power Platform. Microsoft Power Platform is used to provide complex business solutions, analyze the data and make decisions on the basis of analyzed data, visualize the data with the help of graphs, automate a business process and is used to build virtual agents for communication with humans. The most interesting fact about Power Platform is that everyone can use it without having coding skills because it is drag and drop technology and by just dragging and dropping the components, we can build powerful applications. Along with these powerful tools Power Platform also provides other amazing features like AI builder, Microsoft Data verse and connectors which adds more functionalities to these apps. With all these extensions and functionalities Microsoft Power Platform is the leading technology in the low code/no code development.

The Microsoft Power Platform is used by many businesses – both big and small. The following image shows some of the businesses that have chosen to adopt the Microsoft Power Platform to accelerate their business.

So now its time to dive into details of each component of Power Platform.

POWER APPS

 ![download](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/64436573/170779669-e59a8ce3-b4bb-4cfb-9745-7fa2dbb93e36.png)

PowerApps is a drag and drop interface which allow users to create apps with no-code/low code development. And the apps designed through PowerApps can run on Android, iOS, windows and on any internet browser, this feature of PowerApps makes it the leader of other app development platforms. PowerApps also provides other services, connectors and data platforms which are helpful in creating custom apps for business solutions. PowerApps can quickly transform any manual business to digital operations by providing interactive interfaces and several functionalities for better performance.

How to create a PowerApps app?

First click on this link and sign in or create account. After signing in below interface will appear which provides various data platforms to import data from and create the app. So we will create an app using excel workbook so I will click on excel

After clicking on excel below interface will appear

This interface shows the various connections for importing data. I will click on one drive for business for importing excel workbook and then click on create. After clicking on create, select the file as shown below

After selecting excel file, select table as shown below and then click on connect

After clicking on connect below interface will appear

Based on the data, power apps create default app for us which can be customized by us.

We can now click on icons and can customize them easily. When we click on play button in the top right corner then the interface changes and we can browse our apps and can check it as how it will work after publishing

After customizing the app we can use it by selecting file and then click on save as and now we can install it on our phones etc

POWER AUTOMATE

As its name suggest, it’s a tool for automation. It helps automate the repetitive processes by designing workflows for automated communications, for automated files synchronization, for automated reminders, for automated data collection and for other tasks automations. Some of the examples of Power automate workflows are given below:

If we receive an attachment in our email then we can automatically upload it to one drive.
We can send automated emails on fix date and time.
We can automatically send monthly salary slips to our clients.
Automatically add the events to calendar and get alerts of upcoming events.
Automatically schedule events.
Get automated notifications of tasks to do.

So these are some of the functions which Power automate can do. Power automate can connect to various data sources and API’s for improved automation.

How to create our first workflow with Power automate?

i. Sign in to Microsoft 365 account.

ii. From apps select Power automate and click on it.

iii. After clicking on Power automate below interface will appear.

iv. On the left panel various functionalities are available like data, monitor and AI builder which can be used for advance features of workflows.

v. We will create a simple workflow by clicking on “get a push notification when a new file is added in OneDrive for business”.

vi. After clicking on “get a push notification when a new file is added in OneDrive for business” the below interface will appear. Here we need to login to our OneDrive for business account and click on create for notifications tab.

vii. After above step below interface will appear, here select the folder which we need to monitor for files upload and select the desired settings for push notifications as shown below.

Settings for push notifications

viii. Now click on save in the top right corner to save the workflow. After saving the workflow below notification will appear on the top. We can also test our workflow by clicking on “test” button.

Power BI

Power BI is all about data visualization and dashboarding. It is useful for visualizing the complex data and convert the complex numbers into interactive graphs and visuals. As visuals are more understandable than numbers, so Power BI can transform the number and calculations into immersive visuals which can be easily understood by non-technical peoples.

How to work with Power BI?

i. We can start working with Power BI by using online web portal or install Power BI Desktop app.

ii. Sign up head over to this link and sign up, after sign up we can use either the web-based version or can also install the Desktop app.

iii. In this tutorial we will use the online web-based version. After signing in to the online Power BI website we will have the below interface

iv.On the left panel is create button, click on it and then select “pick a published dataset” as shown below.

v. As I have already a published dataset so I will select a dataset named “time table”. We can add data manually or by copying and pasting data in the online web portal. We can add more data sources in Desktop app but can’t add data sources in the web-based version.
so after selecting dataset click on create then below interface will appear.

vi.Here we can create our visuals and dashboards. Various panels are present where we can select our desired options. On the most right panel we have our data where we will select only the desired columns for visualization then on second are the types of graphs we can use then on the third panel are the data fields and filters for customization. So here can drag and drop our data and can easily visualize our data as shown below

Here we can add further customizations depending on the technicality of designer.

Power virtual agents

Power virtual agent is that component of Power Platform which is used to create chat bots for automatic communication. It is drag and drop interface where no code is required and there is no need of data scientists or developers for designing powerful chatbots.

So, what are chatbots?

Basically, if we have company and we are selling software’s then on daily basis we can have thousands of customers who may face problems while using our software’s or some customers want to know about our company then a single person can’t handle all these customers at a time so what we can do is that we can create a chat bot with the help of Power virtual agents where we will populate all the information and general questions & answers related to our software’s and company, so when ever a customer visits our site and he/she want to communicate with us then a chatbot will be initiated for conversation and based on the selected problem the solution will be provided by the chatbot.

We can start our chatbot creation journey by clicking on this link Microsoft Power Virtual Agents after clicking on this link create a free account and start working with chatbots creation. Free account is for limited time but we can practice with chatbot creation for such limited time.

Below is the interface of power virtual agents chatbot creation.

Features of Power Platform

Power platform has some other powerful features which increase the customization and capabilities of Power platform. Due to these features Power platform provides robust solutions to almost any kind of business. So the detail of these features is given below:

AI BUILDER:

This feature of Power platform allows users to add AI capabilities to their Power apps and Power automate. This feature makes Power platform intelligent and can make predictions for better business solutions.
To add AI capabilities to our workflows and apps we can locate its button on the left panel in Power automate and in Power apps.

Microsoft data verse:

As its name suggests that it’s a platform for data storage and data integration with Power platforms components. It facilitates the user to add data from multiple resources and integrate it with power platform for usage. As we need data for every component of Power platform to make it functional and that data is stored and manipulated in Microsoft Data verse.

Connectors:

Connectors help us to connect apps, data and devices for cohesive actions and functionalities.
Let say we have data stored in our Dropbox account and we want to use it in our Power app then we will use the Dropbox connector for importing that data in Power apps platform. We can use the connectors functionalities by locating it on the left panel in Power apps and in Power automate. There are various options available for connecting various connectors, examples of popular connectors include Salesforce, Office 365, Twitter, Dropbox, Google services, and more.

Introduction to Microsoft graph

Microsoft graph is an API which is used to connect to various services of Microsoft 365 and we can also use it to access data in Microsoft 365, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility + Security. It can add intelligence and security to our apps which will interact with millions of users. It can automate our tasks and can make decisions for us based on the data provided.

We can start our initial journey with Microsoft graph by exploring the “Graph explorer”.

Graph explorer provides samples for creating Microsoft Graph REST API requests. It contains some common scenarios to work with Microsoft graph API. We can use the samples codes for using Microsoft graph API in our apps and the sample queries are also present which can be utilized in our apps for accessing different services of Microsoft graph.

Graph Explorer includes the following elements:

HTTP verb drop-down list
API version drop-down list
Request query address bar
Sample query
Documentation link for the sample query

Next Steps

if you are interested to further learn these technologies then below are some useful resources

Summary:

In this first blog of blog series, we have just given the introduction to various components of Microsoft Power platform. We have introduced each component and also shown that how can we get started with each of these components. In the next section of this blog we have a little introduction to Microsoft Graph API which is a powerful tool for connecting to a tremendous amount of data and which can also add intelligence capabilities to the business solution.

(from https://www.canva.com/)