D365 & Power Platform — Next generation of Business Application
A Microsoft product collection to analyze data, build solutions, automate processes and meet various business requirements
Everyone must be familiar with Windows OS and Microsoft Office products (PowerPoint, Excel, Word and Outlook). In fact, Microsoft keep introducing other powerful computing/application products (e.g. Azure Cloud, Dynamics 365 “D365”).
In this story, we will deep dive to the foundational features & functionalities for D365 & Power Platform that you could be able to understand how these products could fulfill your business requirements.
What are Dynamics 365 and Power Platform?
Microsoft CRM 1.0 was released in January 2003 which was a application 18 years ago. Over 13 years of revolution, Microsoft Dynamics 365 was officially released on November 1,2016. Combining Microsoft business products (CRM & ERP Dynamics AX), this application that was known as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, is now known as Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (D365 CE) or D365 Online.
One of the key features of D365 is the pre-built modules to fit in different business needs which significantly reduce the development effort. The list of available modules are as below:
- Dynamics 365 for Sales
- Dynamics 365 for Customer Service
- Dynamics 365 for Marketing
- Dynamics 365 for Field Service
- Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation
- Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
- Dynamics 365 Business Central
The Power Platform was rolled out in 2018 and the products aren’t generating major revenue yet for Microsoft. However, with the revolution of D365 and Azure Cloud, the Power Platform improves its features, functionalities and integration capabilities which could provide high flexibility and customization capability.
The Power Platform includes three main components:
- Power BI, a business intelligence (“BI”) tool for visualizing data with different kinds of charts. It competes with BI products from companies like Tableau / Qlik. From recent 2020 Gartner report, it positions as leaders in the BI tool market with Tableau.
- Power Apps, a tool to enable non-technical people easily create front-end applications with low-code / even no-code app development platforms. It could easily integrate with the D365 backend database (Dataverse, was known as Common Data Services “CDS”)
- Power Automate, (was known as Flow), a workflow tool for connecting various Microsoft applications and orchestrate business workflow and logic in D365/SharePoint (E.g. sending automatic emails / Teams messages)
Apart from those three key components, AI Builder and Power Virtual Agents provide additional AI capabilities with the Power Platform (e.g. OCR, Chatbot, RPA using Desktop flow).
Why D365 & Power Platform are powerful?
Comparing with CRM market leader like Salesforce, D365 functionalities / capabilities may not be as mature as it. However, Microsoft is not trying to sell a single product. It’s selling the entire eco-system starting with your OS, Office 365, Active Directory to business applications like D365. Below are some key features as a Microsoft eco-system,
Native integration capabilities
System integration is always one of the most challenging part for every system implementation especially CRM. With Power Platform, D365 could integration with nearly most of the Microsoft products without additional integration efforts (e.g. Outlook, Teams, Office products, Microsoft SQL Server). In additional, there are over 100 built-in data connectors that organizations could be leveraged on before building their custom connects.
Single Sign-On (“SSO”) capabilities
If your organization is using Office 365 / Azure Active Directory, D365 end users could simply use their Outlook account and password to login the business applications to provide best SSO user experience. The configuration effort is required depends on the AD types and sync methods available.
High flexibility on customization
For D365 / Power Apps, the JavaScript extension is available that developers could develop the web application using JS and plug-in the app into D365 as iframe / other formats.
With Azure Logic App, the external integration with on-premise systems is also achievable in a easier way via API calls / HTTP requests. Other Azure cloud services (e.g. Azure Service Bus, Azure SQL database) could also be leveraged with built-in connectors.
How to select the best combination for the business needs?
Every business problem could be unique with different needs. There is no model answer / universal solution in D365 and Power Platform. It requires collaborative efforts from the business analysts, D365/Power Platform functional consultants and developers. Below are some key common steps the team could follow for designing a D365 / Power Platform solution,
Step 1: Understand your business requirements
Step 2: Select the most suitable D365 module as the starting point
Step 3: Identify the integration required and interfaces need to be used
Step 4: Determine the customization effort required (e.g. JaveScript UI, custom connectors) and additional Power Platform components required (e.g. Power Apps for external clients, Power Automate for business workflow)
Step 5: Finalize the D365 & Power Platform design
Next step: Let the Journey Begin
If you are really keen to further expand your D365 & Power Platform knowledge, I would highly recommend taking the Microsoft exams PL-900: Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals and MB-901: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals for beginners.
In addition, you could apply for 30-day trial to taste the power of D365 & Power Platform using your business email. Let the Journey Begin!
