Business Application Platform: PowerApps | Business Applications Spring 2018 Release
Thank. You for joining us today we're gonna be talking about the new power ops capabilities, available in the April release before, we get into those details we, want to talk about the framing that we use to think about power ops we, use a digital feedback loop which is something that you've heard about consistently, throughout the other of streaming videos and the digital event which, talks about how we go connect together customers, products, and people to. Actually enable digital transformation. And we do that through, the six main offerings, of marketing sales services, operations. Financials, and talent which together create, a great deal of data which can go feed back and forth between these applications, to go transform, how you engage with those customers, your, products, as, well as your employees a key, underpinning. Of this digital feedback loop is the platform elements that's, power apps Microsoft, flow power bi Azure, and the artificial intelligence capabilities, from Microsoft, and these, platform, capabilities are an essential ingredient to the digital feedback loop for a few basic reasons the, first is that, when, you ever want to go do digital transformation, the easiest, way is to go buy an application off the shelf and with Dynamics, 365, we, have a plethora, of options available to you which all make it very easy to just take something and quickly change how you actually run your business the, next bit and this is where the platform becomes very important, is that none of those applications, are perfect right off the shelf you have to go customize, them and tweak them to match what you need to actually make your business processes, run as you, need for your industry and the, platform, is how you go about change, changing. Things like the sales and service offerings. From Microsoft, and the, third bit is equally important, the reality, is there isn't always an app for that sometimes, you can't just go buy something off the shelf instead. You, have to go build it and to build it we have a great platform, here at Microsoft to go make that real and a good visual to think about that is this one if you imagine digital, feedback loop has the, big elements that are available through the SAS applications, from, Dynamics, 365, there's, all kinds, of small pebbles, in between those that are key to actually doing a digital transformation making. A digital feedback loop real, for, your business and this, last mile is enabled, by the platform the, platform makes, it incredibly easy to quickly build, applications. That integrate tightly. With, your data and your existing business processes that. You use within your and, this, is really that last smile that last element, of what it takes to truly transform how, you engage with your customers, your products, and your employees or your people and if, we go and think about what is that platform, really mean the, business application platform. If you drill into it you can see that there's power apps and power bi is the two big elements, of it power, apps is all about rapid. Application development, quickly. Creating experiences, embedded. In all your other business processes and applications tailored. To what your business needs and power, bi which is all about creating insights, and intelligence, on top of the data as, part of your business and these, elements, integrate, with a few other core, products, or core capabilities, the most important of which is the common data service we, have the common data service for applications, which is what underpins power out it's where all your system of record data is stored as well, as Microsoft flow which makes it incredibly easy to do business process, automation and, workflows, on top of that data and on top of your applications, for, power bi it also has the common data service for, intelligence. Which is what actually enables, you to quickly build, insights, and optics. Into the data that you've accumulated from your applications, together, these two elements create the business application platform power apps and power, bi and what's, great about them is they also share the, common data model the common, data model is a really important, detail for what the business application platform, enables is it's a well-defined, consistent. Schema to describe your business data and your business objects in addition to the common data model there's connectors, and data integration capabilities. So you can very easily reach, data. That may not be in the common data service whether it, may be inside, of s ap workday. Or Salesforce over 200, different services have completely native integration with, power ups and power bi out of the box if that's where your data is today and what's.
So Unique about power, apps and power bi from. Microsoft, is the tight integration we enable with Dynamics, 365, office, 365, as well as your standalone business applications, that you create if, you go inside of SharePoint lists, the way that you actually change the experience, for your end-users is with power ups there's, way you go create workflow and automation is to Microsoft, flow if the, same thing applies we go to Microsoft, teams or a bunch, of other office, 365, offerings, let's go to Dynamics 365, it's, going natively built on top of the power apps platform that, means it can go customize all your dynamics applications, using the same knowledge. And tools and. Capabilities that, you see in power apps which. Enables our customers to, that earlier point to go tailor, our SAS, applications, to exactly what they need to go change their business and of course for, that last mile that we were talking about you can go build your standalone, applications, and your standalone experiences. On top, of power, apps and power bi and when. That may not be enough when maybe you have to go an extra mile you can go drop into Azure and Microsoft, has incredibly, tight integration between power ups and power bi and Azure to make it very easy to, go bringing, developer, code through api's connectivity. Or just, logic that may be beyond what you want to go do in a high productivity application, platform like power apps and to. Show these, things in action we're gonna talk about three real, customer, examples that are out in the wild today, first. We, have Metro Bank Metro, Bank uses, Dynamics, CRM to, actually manage, all of its engagement with its customers and this, is a great story of how you take that Amex you can see five off the shelf you can actually quickly change, how you go engage, with your customers, but, in their, case there is more to it they want to go have an experience, with a Greek people who walk into the bank and to do that they built the power up so, with Microsoft, power apps they're able to go build a tailored, experience for, their greeters and now called M greet so that whenever you walk into the bank they can give you a high-touch highly. Tailored experience, specific. To what it is to be a Metro paying customer, in this, connectivity. Between Microsoft, and Metro Bank really, transformed, and enabled, that close customer, engagement which is so important, to Metro Bank as a company and that's what the story really is all about you can take Dynamics, 365, off-the-shelf change, how you do business and as needed you can turn around and drop into power apps to go build experiences, as needed. As required, and just exactly. How you want them to go engage your customers, another. Great example is G&J Pepsi here's, a great story of how they change how they engage with their product as, well as how they empower their employees they, had a problem as the largest family-owned, Pepsi bottler in the United States and that they wanted to go audit, individual. Grocery stores to make sure that the placement of the Pepsi products is up to our standard and up to the agreements that they already reached to, do that it.
Was A paper process people, would go out with clipboards. And if they wanted to go order more inventory or anything like that they had to go make phone calls and send text messages, however. With, power apps and power bi they were able to transform, what this process looks like first. They're able to go build a mobile application, so as people who actually went into these grocery stores to go do these inspections and these audits they could use power apps to record, and track, every, single thing that they noticed and whether or not they were actually getting the placement, that they expected, and wanted and to. Go beyond that to really change the process and how they actually manage their products they, were able, to go and add a function to go order more inventory or request more delivery. To that store which is the thing that before couldn't really be enabled certainly, not enabled digitally but, they could go transform, that because they had power apps running on a mobile app to go be brought into the store and actually, help with that process and as a result of all the data from power apps flowing, into the common data service for applications. All kinds, of other great capabilities, lit up and primarily, that would be power bi it's very easy to create power bi dashboards, on top of the common data service which, allow them to go get insights that they couldn't do before and this, again, is a story of how you can go transform, the, way you engage with your products in the, third example its trans Alta so trans Alta is a very, large company it based out of Canada that manages, repairs of electric. Wind turbines and to do that one of the common problems they had is if a turbine breaks off hours how, do you determine whether or not to go and inspect and repair it at that moment or to wait until business hours or more scheduled, repairs, and the. Way it worked before was. Either you always, send people or you had to make a judgment call about whether or not it made economic sense however. They're able to go convert this to a digital process, to digitize that decision-making, framework. To, decide whether or not they wanted to go actually and repair these. Wind turbines and this process, was. A huge, success in terms of actually driving significant, savings and in just a matter of a month actually paid for the development and the power apps of, the power of itself because they're able to go improve, that business process of, wind turbine repair by bringing that into a digital framework, and digital system. So, that's, what's so important, so unique about power ops across these three customers is the real story of how you can transform, that last mile of engagement, with your customers or that last mile of how you track your, products or again. That last mile in the case of trans alte of how your employees interact with your products and this, really. Tells that story of, the complete digital transformation, and digital feedback loop that, we were talking about earlier, what. We're seeing across all these different customers, and across all these different industries is two. Basic principles of what application, development is trending like the, first is that IT application, development is shifting. Towards low, code high, productivity, environments. And the reason for that is because it, enables incredibly, rapid, application development to, respond, to the changing business needs and regulatory needs of a modern company and that. Is only really possible, with a platform like some like power apps because, it makes it so easy to actually go build an application and, a second is those. High, productivity application, platforms, orbit. Around the data that you actually already, collect for your business your CRM, data your ERP, data and the reason for that is what we talked about earlier it's all about transforming how you engage with your customers, your products and your employees and that data is naturally, stored inside, your CRM and inside your ERP so you really want to have that tight connection, between your higher productivity application, platform, and these. Business. Applications, like CRM and ERP in this, story and these two, basic trends that we're noticing in industry are what have driven us as Microsoft, to, ship these, three products. Power bi power ops and Microsoft flow to really deliver on that promise to our customers, and we have major investments, of them in the spring release of this year to go make them be even more unique in the marketplace and what's, super, core to each of these application, platform components is that their cloud first that, means very easy signup very easy setup and no deployment, you can get going in just a few minutes second.
Is It has all built all around a single data store what, that means is we have the common data service behind power, apps behind Microsoft flow and enabling, intelligence. And power bi on top of it and we make that very easy without having to go do data movement or data integration and what's, great about that as well is that Dynamics, 365, natively. Stores, all this application, data for, sales service and marketing directly. In the common data service and, the third bit is we, recognize all your data may not be in the common data service may be in other systems and to make that just as easy we, ship with over 200, connectors, to, the industry-leading system, of records and business applications to. Make it so that you can connect to where your data is today. And that's an incredibly, key element of the platform, it's something we support natively, out of the box with, no coding and for no additional cost, additionally. We, support, an incredibly, rich cross-platform. Development, framework. Which makes it easy to go build applications, and workflows, and bi that, may run on iOS devices Android. Devices in the browser or on a Windows PC all of, those are supported natively out-of-the-box and you only have to build your, applications. In your experiences, once and the work across all those different platforms, additionally. Everything, is centrally manageable, when the biggest concerns we have when we talk to customers is that with this easy-to-use, platform you're, going to have an explosion, of applications, and workflows and bi inside, your company, but, we make it easy as an IT department to take control, to have data loss prevention policies, or DLP policies, to make sure that data doesn't leak out of your organization. There's also incredibly, powerful. Reporting, and auditing, support as well so you can track what people are doing in your organization, and make sure they're only behaving, according, to your policies, and compliance, and regulations, and lastly. And something, that is particularly, unique for what we have with our platform is that there are no cliffs you, can start with something incredibly, simple and get more and more advanced, all the way to building an entire end-to-end, application without. Having to go abandon this high productivity application, platform we do that because of our integration. Office integration, our dynamics integration for each of these three offerings, and to, make that story real let's, look at this diagram of the know cliffs for, SharePoint, embedded forms there's, tens of thousands, of authors already, building experiences, embedded, in SharePoint, which are reaching an even larger number of users using, the power apps capabilities, whenever, you build a power app you can embed it right on a SharePoint list to replace the default, form experience, and that means the same skills you use for your business applications, you can also go put in your productivity applications something. Unique to what microsoft offers, next. You can go build relatively. Simple or straightforward line of applications, and to demonstrate this we'll talk about a real story Brian, dang is a teacher based out of Orange County who went and built power apps digitally, transform, how he runs his classroom and he actually did this in a way where he built different, power apps to help the students learn more, efficiently as well as a gamification app, to help students track how, well they're doing on tests and how well they're doing from a tenant's perspective, and Brian, tells, a story about how power apps change his classroom in that it dramatically, improved the results on tests, as well, as efficacy, of the coursework that they've learned so far and Brian has no coding, experience he's not an engineer he's a teacher by trade went to school to be a teacher but, he was able to go take power ups off the shelf and start to transform, that, last mile of his classroom another.
Great Story is Mohammed, from Hari pharmaceuticals. Based out of Iraq a real, consumer, of power apps they, had a process, which was heavily manual, between email paper, and Excel files to go track visit, visits to, pharmaceutics. And doctors, but, Mohammed, again, with no technical. Training, without, being developer, he's actually a pharmacist, by schooling was able to build a completely, digitally, transformed, process with power apps Microsoft, flow and power bi to, change how, hot curry Pharmaceuticals engages. With and helps. Their customers, operate. Better and then make sure that their employees are able to better track the work that they do and, what they're doing from a territory, management perspective again, no, development, experience, but able to go transform, that last mile for his company, using this platform the. Fourth item this. Is Evan he works, at a consultancy, called confluent. Which helped a company called IPs, and Evan. Is is a developer, or, basically. An, engineer by trade however, he was able to use power apps to build an incredibly, robust, complex. Application, to change the way IPS does electric, motor inspection, and repair and they did this using, the powerful. WYSIWYG, capabilities, available in power apps you can have a picture of a particular. Motor and as people go in and inspect it they can click where they've actually inspected, where they see issues and rate different problems and by, doing this they were able to go from a pen, and paper whiteboard, process, that a fully digitized, process, and this digitized, process, is able, to actually enable all kinds of new customer experiences, before, they wouldn't be able to reach out to their customers and let them know that the repair is almost done but now they can do that because the each stage, and and piece, of the process to go repair the motors is track, visually and go to generate, things like emails and so forth and again, something that's not. Available off-the-shelf. Not even available by customizing, something, off the shelf but a custom, line of business application. That's very complex, I had to go be built using, the power apps platform, to, go make that real and lastly, I say the most complex, we have is. Fees and partners, who are building on top of the same platform this is a picture of the bank's site team they're, a professional development. Organization, they sell software and they're building their entire application, around me better engaging, customers, when, they go walk into banks on top of the common data service on top of power apps integrate, with Dynamics 365, this, is a, full, development team with, source control. Dozens, of engineers and they're able to go make it work using the same platform they don't have to go look, into building everything from scratch from. The most simple SharePoint form to the most complex. Is the application, all of, it can happen without cliffs, on this single business application, platform, which includes power apps power, bi and Microsoft flow and this is really what our vision is we're, all about democratizing, app, creation we, want to make it possible for people who could never change their business to start changing their business today and this, is something that Microsoft, is not new, at this is something Microsoft has an incredibly, rich legacy of doing from, Excel access.
InfoPath. Visual studio and visual basic across, all these different things Microsoft. Has been at this for decades and really what, we look at with power apps Microsoft, flow and power bi is the cloud reimagine. Ation of those, particular, capabilities, and we. See that momentum in the market if we go look there's tons. And tons of huge logos that you may recognize there's, over 1.1, million monthly active users on this power, apps and Microsoft flow there's over two hundred and thirteen thousand, organizations all of, them are using these capabilities, to. Transform, how they actually, run their business and we'll talk about through, another demo in just a couple minutes a real, example of how a customer has done that and, just another. Element, of it is PC. Mac they, did a review of the Lowe code Harvick tivity application platforms, out there and power, apps was their editors choice and that's because it just has so much power that, you could go use and again really, what that means is no cliffs you can start simple basic, UI basic, forms over data but, as needed you can add more and more expressions, in more, and more capabilities. Without, having to go to a different platform in this, broad. Spectrum. Of capabilities including. The ability to go dive into Azure is something, that only Microsoft, can do and to, show how real that is we're, actually going to turn it over to Ryan Cunningham, who's, going to do a live demo and actually build a real power app for, one that matches one of our customer scenarios. I want. To talk about inter cars today inter cars is the largest distributor, of automotive, spare parts and repair supplies in the EU they serve 16, countries they call on more than 10 thousand. Individual, customer, locations, now, their field sales force of more than 600, people and, means they're visiting almost, a hundred locations, of month for some people that's a constantly. Mobile on-the-go, frontline, workforce, now. What we'll talk about is how power apps can start to help with some of those frontline. Business, scenarios, automate, the types of processes, and build the applications, that you just can't find anywhere else or or buy off-the-shelf let me give you an example of one of those scenarios now, inter cars cells not only automotive.
Spare Parts they also sell repair supplies like this tool chest and that comes stocked with tools and and individual. Wrenches and socket sets and, that's a great deal for them the day that they sell it but a year down the line half. Of these wrenches are missing some of the some of the sockets are broken and, and restocking, this tool chest becomes a whole different proposition, entirely, the classic, method of that seller who has 20, minutes a month to be on this site to bring in a 200-page. Parts, catalog and flip through it page by page and try to find this one particular, little socket set to make a manual order just was not scaling, with that business so today we're gonna talk about how a company like inter cars can very rapidly build extremely. Custom applications, for a scenario like this very. Quickly in power ups let's. Dive in and take a look at how it works now we like to talk a lot about how powerful. Power apps is and how quickly you can build and there are a lot of great ways to get started you. Know not even starting from scratch with great templates, and and samples. To jump off the bat but today we, are going to start from scratch from a completely, blank canvas to show just how powerful this platform is now, it's perhaps loads up here you'll, notice that what, you're about to see is not your traditional software. Development environment. In fact it looks nothing like Visual Studio it, looks a lot more like PowerPoint, and that's no accident, I've got screens of an application that I can add just like I would add slides in, a presentation and. Visually, they light up for me right on my canvas here and I can I can use my office skills, to do very simple things I can feme it I can make it look like my company by you know inserting, a logo or an image element and. All this is is very easy to do with my mouse let's go pop in. Our logo, here from our computer, and upload, it and and, I have full control over the visual, appearance, and look and feel of this app this isn't a config. Thing I can make this look and and position. Exactly, how I wanted to now, of course I'm not just pushing pixels around now what I'm also doing is able to work with a whole rich set, of connected, data sources in fact right, out of the box power apps connects to more than 200. Individual. Applications, and services where my company might already have data everything from Adobe, does end desk and everything in between I can do simple, things like you know connect a filtered search of tweets about my company more sophisticated, things like access a sequel, server running on Prem through, a gateway but, of course actually in the in this case of inter cars we don't need any of that because. We have something even more powerful we have the, common, data service, and common. Data service is the data platform, that comes with power apps that as part, of this spring moment is getting a radical, expansion, of its capabilities, and in and for a customers, that are building, net new applications, comes with rich schema and logic, right out of the box for, customers like inter cars that already have data in the Microsoft, cloud in office 365 and Dynamics 365, that data just lights up by default so we're gonna pull in a list of accounts and a list of products and the list of line items of those products, here and power, apps already richly. Understands, the nature of that data and information I can put templates, on this type of information and we know where to put the images we know where to put the titles, we know what rules to enforce when, these things get updated and it all is just coming natively, out of the box with a common data service, now, of course my office skills still apply I can make a title larger, I can go bump up the font size all these things are are very easy, and familiar to do even if I'm not a traditional software developer, but. This, is not PowerPoint, these are not static, boxes. And Static pieces of text these are actually bound, to data under the hood connected, to that list of accounts in my business database in my platform and I can change that binding on-the-fly I can say hey let's make this the full name and over here let's make this one the, address, and, just like that my application is, updating, in real time as I'm designing, it I'm actually using. The app as I'm building it here to get instant, feedback about. How my changes are taking in effect it really helps, the, less you know traditional, software or make very rapid progress here and of course I'm not even limited to a single screen I can go build navigation, into this application, I can say hey when I click any one of these icons go take me back to another screen and keep building now. All, that is powerful and all that is fast but, but I'll level with you you know this is this is something I can do in other loco deforms, as well here's. The thing this is right about where every, other low code platform, on the planet stops, being low code and what I want to do something a little bit more sophisticated or a little bit more custom, tailored to my business than just formatting.
A List and putting a logo on the top that's, where I really hit quickly you hit a cliff and a lot of other platforms but with power apps we're just getting started and, I want to show you a few elements about what makes this true this ability to, very quickly scale, and sophistication, and amplify, what, what a whole new range of makers. Can do inside of this platform and. We'll start with something very simple as an example right now I can add text, boxes and images, and and and the whole nine to this application and I can you know just like I could in PowerPoint type, add a static, piece of text into this box, but, you'll notice as I'm doing that that's silently, behind the scenes we're updating this excel, like formula, in everything. That I do now, in fact every, single element, and property, of every, single control, in this application, is governed. By an excel, like expression. By, a language that, millions, and millions, of people already know how to speak in fact we honor the entire excel, syntax right here in power apps and we've added a few things to it to help you build applications quickly, it means that I can very quickly get. Productive and do sophisticated things, without having to learn an entire programming, language the, Delta to get here is just much smaller so, let me show you a really simple example let's, instead, of just typing a label into the top of this page let's. Go grab the, thing we selected. Out of the gallery on the previous screen and you'll, notice here that that intellisense, is actually helping suggest, to me all those same fields all those things I know about this account I can go back and pull through the full name out of intellisense, and it's going to update right, inside of my application, just, like that now I could build myself a little bit of a back button and and now we have an app that's actually responding, to context, across screens. Passing, the value of the of the customer, that I've selected here now that's a very simp. Principle, but it applies very powerfully, to the rest of this application now let's use it now remember we're trying to prove the process by which we restock, a tool drawer here so let's go add a list of those tool drawers and let's, wire it up to our list of products and, again let's pick a rich template, for this this particular list let's get something nice and visual here now we don't want to show all, the products we just want to show the last one that this particular customer but so we're gonna pop, it in here and tighten up this particular, little gallery to, get to this tool drawer but we want to go further than that we want to look inside the drawer and see what particular sockets. And wrenches we, want to restock well we can do that too will add another, list we'll bind this one to the items, that come inside, of the of the tool drawer now we, don't want all of the socket wrenches in our entire database we want to filter it down just, to the ones relevant, to this particular product, and, again we can do that with this very simple Excel syntax, that we can learn very quickly I can say hey let's filter this product items list and again just like in Excel powerups is gonna walk me through it it's gonna give me a nice template, to fill out the intellisense is gonna help me I'm gonna say hey show, me all the product, items where the ID of that product item equals.
The Thing that I just selected on the previous step, in fact intellisense, is smart enough that I - barely need to type it all to get this done so I wrapped that up and if power Ops is going to go off to the server grab back from the common data service just, the wrenches in my particular tool, drawer now of course I still don't want to hunt and peck through a list I want to see what this thing is supposed to look like in real life and it turns out that we're laying out our tool, drawers on a predictable grid and in power apps I can build that with just a few strokes of my mouse I can literally. Recreate exactly. What this tool drawer is supposed to look like so, now my employee rather than walking in with a big book of spare parts just, opens up a drawer and sees what it's supposed to look like sees what's missing and can do the difference now let's let's finish this scenario out I want to when, I actually select. What's missing go collect that information and start to build the order of what I'm restocking I can say hey when somebody presses a button go, collect, together the the items that they tap on again I'm just using my mouse to collect these things and. I can then do things with that with that collection I can go to the fill property, the color behind this particular wrench. And I can write logic, this is rocket, science cutting software development here but we're making it so, simple I can just say hey if this, item is. In that. Collection, I just created again intellisense, helps me out let's, make it blue, actually. Blue, violet beautiful, color now, as I start to build that collection I also obviously want to see what I've collected so I'm gonna go insert a table, I'm gonna drop it to the bottom I'm gonna bind it to that collection we just created on the fly I'm gonna say hey give me the name and the say. How about the quantity, of the thing that we've selected it.
Tighten That up and just like that I've built a process that is extremely. Custom, to my business where I walk in I pull up in the drawer and I say oh that's missing and that's missing and that's missing and that's missing and we knew one of those two and just like that we're building this custom border there is not another platform, on the planet that can go that fast and build this custom of a process, without touching a single line of code powerups. Is extremely, powerful in that regard. But, of course there, will still be problems for, which we, need to write code and for, example I'll come back to this first step you know we skipped over a detail, here it turns out it's not actually, all that useful to give, every single one of my 600, filled sellers the list of every single one of the 10,000, accounts in the database I don't want them to have to hunt for where they need to visit I want, an employee to know exactly, where to go in the morning given, their geolocation which we know cuz this is running on your phone given their identity, which we know because you're logged in with Azure Active Directory tell. Me exactly where to go now that's not something I'm gonna write in an Excel expression, more power to you if you, can but that's a great opportunity for a professional, developer, to create a building, block that, comes in and augments, this experience, without having to throw out all the goodness that we've got here in power apps and we've done just that in fact we've stubbed out this Azure function that's gonna run serverless and on-demand this, professional development didn't, have to worry about infrastructure, or anything they just write the code that that. Says hey given this geolocation of latitude longitude where, should I send my person, next and you'll see we've kind of stubbed out the answers there and if you do this in in Azure if you do it to in Azure functions, or API management, or a number of other azure services we make it real easy for you we give you this nice export, to power apps and flow button right, within the professional, developer, experience, that lets you light this up in a few clicks for a low, code developer, working here in power apps and in fact just like that all, these data sources that we showed earlier the whole 200, that come out of the box we can add to that list with any custom, data source any service anything we can we can put a REST API in front of and wrap in a swagger file we can bring here into power apps and allow, our loco developers, to go even further without, you, know hitting that cliff so I can say hey don't just point this at the list of accounts let's, actually go point this at the route, mapping, function that we just added and let's pass, it our location, I'm, using all the same tools that I just learned before I'm gonna pass it my latitude and my, location. Longitude. And. Just, like that it's gonna go fire off to that as your function and bring me back in a few seconds the list of four, stores that I should visit not, the list of 10,000. That I might want to go to in in, the whole database and and, that's how we hit a whole nother level of sophistication in, these applet patience now of course that's. Still not all. At, the end of the day it's not just about, this one application, or this one screen or this one tool drawer it's also about how these things work into the fabric, of our business processes, across all, of our applications and, to give you a simple example of that if we if we continue, building this app out we'll will cut forward here in a second to a more finished version at some, point I'm gonna place this order at some point as a seller I might want to request a discount, for this order now I may or may not actually have the authority to approve. That discount on the fly and in fact for it for a distributed. Sales team different, sellers have different levels of ability to to approve different discounts when they're out in the field now still, I can automate that business process and I still don't have to break into code or expensive, customization, in fact I can build that whole approval, process in Microsoft, flow the Microsoft flow comes with the platform it allows me to visually. Logically, design business processes, like I would draw them on a whiteboard it's connected to all the same data sources that power apps can pull in and I can very quickly build, logic just like this when, a new order hits the system let's go grab everything we know about the user requesting, it out of the Microsoft, graph and then if that discount, request is over a certain threshold in this case 25%.
Let's Go kick off an approval process and I can write this just like I would I would compose it as a message in fact I can pull in dynamically. Data from those previous steps what we know about the user from office what we know about the order from the common data service and I can use it to build this approval process, Microsoft, flow takes care of the rest so, let's see this whole thing in action end to end I'm gonna pop over to my, mobile phone here now inner cars employees, can can work in a bring your own device culture, and of course the. You, know developer, can publish this application, in an instant, it will run inside a power apps container on iOS on Android it'll run on the web all. I needed to do is log in with my company ID at the front door and I can get a polished, application, that looks awesome and it's just for my business process this was built using exactly. The same tools that we just saw I'm so I'll you, get up in the morning I'll say hey where should I Drive first the, application will suggest me exactly, where to go how far away it is, you know promotion, I can offer that customer, when I get there I can, dive in and I can I can you know see just a slightly richer stylized, version of this process, I can pull up in a door of the tool chest I can say hey we're missing that one and this one and this one and that one and I can build this order all way through in fact I can request my discount here I can even sign it and use all these great touch device capabilities. Inside of of power apps as well now I've requested this discount it's over my threshold you notice as I did that, this. Button for submit an order is actually changing, to a request approval button and as I as I as I request, an approval way over my discount here and I send it off it's not gonna immediately commit, that into the system it's gonna tell me hey your request is pending somebody, will get back to you soon now. For the cake of this demo I happen, to also be the approver and and. So I can see that that push notification, came right in from Microsoft, flow right, here on the mobile device of the approver, I know exactly, who requested, the discount how much they requested, it for and I can approve or reject and, add comments, right here within the the fabric of my experience, and without even missing a beat and Microsoft. Flow handles, the rest soup-to-nuts. It keeps track of exactly, the full approval history and and logs everything in fact logs all that information, right back in the common data service for, me so. Let's switch back to the desktop here and you'll notice that I actually, also got that approval message right inside, of my, email right inside a Microsoft Outlook at the same time that I got it on my phone I can ritually. Use it right inside of the rest of the tools that I'm already using all day long for, productivity and that's really powerful as we start to zoom out further, from this experience again it's not just about the one application, it's not just about the one business process. It's. Really about how we start to use these tools this power apps platform to, richly customize, and extend everything. That we get from office 365, from, Dynamics, 365, from the intelligence, and the action that we can take on top of that for, example the data is in the common data service the model, is richly understood, building, business intelligence on it is a breeze, I can, quickly build a dashboard in power bi that says hey for my back office exactly what did we sell the Stingray auto repair yesterday, and where were they or how many support incidents do they have have open I can even build a rich custom, visual to show me exactly what, this customer, ordered now this whole custom visual on the right was, that developed, by a professional developer, as a power bi custom visual no that's, a power app I built that in exactly, the same way that I built the mobile application, that my field, sellers are using out out at every auto shop now all day long and. In fact that same pattern extends, across the rest of my office experience, and here. In SharePoint, whether we're I'm uploading images of these socket wrenches and logging, which position, in the drawer are they this is not the standard SharePoint form, that comes out of the box this is a power app it's, got a customized button on top of it in fact now every, sharepoint form every custom, form across SharePoint Online has, this same customized, button guess what happens when I press it that, you're right we fire up power apps and you use that exact, same design, experience. That we saw in building, the original application to. Build out custom, experiences, inside, of the rest of your apps as well.
It's. Not just about the, frontline worker scenarios, it's not just about you, know my field sellers out there in the field I'm also, using this, platform to fundamentally, transform my, back office as well and the rest of our processes, and applications, around it see on the other side of inter cars business every time a field seller is out there ordering more socket wrenches we have to maintain a whole network of supplier, relationships. As well and, we have to know where we're gonna get those socket wrenches from and how much they're gonna cost and and if, we can get them from a better place tomorrow now. We can still manage all of that on this rich platform in fact we're here in the in the power apps management. Experience, we can see all of the, entities that we're managing across. Our business right. Here in one place all the individual, accounts, and appointments, and addresses, and products and suppliers in fact, even here we can richly, model and extend, that, data model that comes out of the box and add our own entities, our own fields, our own, particular. Rules about what - about what to track it's super, easy to do right in context, here for. Example I already have one if I want to go create. A status, field and. I want to make, it of a particular, type in fact you know I could make it a static text, box or a number I can even make it a multi select an option set and I can even create that, option set right in line here of my of. My application, I could say hey one status is good and another status, is not. Good and. And very quickly I can I can customize, the surface of this application at, the data layer as well. And then. Power apps gives me the ability to quickly build on top of that now I can build the canvas based applications, that you just saw me create the the, very visual, PowerPoint, like applications, where I start at my user experience, but I also now, have another. Option in power apps I can model, these applications, as well I can start at this data model at these relationships, at the rules that are attached, to these individual. Entities. And I can I can then automatically. Generate, applications, on top of them we show you an example of one of those and we'll pull back and see how it was built now, this is a supplier, management, dashboard. For my back-office to track all the individual, suppliers that we have relationships with and all of their status in in in adding to this system and in fact we're, right in the process of adding a new supplier, ACDelco. Here and i can build a rich application. Completely. Customize the rich forms, and and business processes, that I need to onboard a new supplier into my system in, fact I can even model, this rich business process, that shows me step by step walks, me through as an employee at each stage of the process what, I need to do so, it really cuts down on the training time and and, enforces, consistency. Across this, particular application. I can say hey have we received a proposal from the supplier yes you, know when did we get it we got it today or we if we completed our legal review all these things are mandatory. For me to proceed to the next stage of the process and I can even then you know continue to sign things and it will tell me exactly what, to do as I go and, in fact you'll notice a nice little thing down here it automatically. Is calculating, for me that the contract should start 14 days from today from, the day that I said that that we should kick it off now how did I create all this did I did I build all of these with, individual, you know check marks and lines and arrows and and and fields like I did for the for the toolbox, application. Actually. No I modeled. The application, I modeled, the process, visually. Designed the business process and said at each stage of onboarding, a new supplier here's, exactly what we need to ask for in the order we need to ask for it in and here are the fields that are required to. Go on to the next step and then, I brought all of that data the entities, involved in that and the processes, themselves and I brought it together in a subset, of an application module, and then I press publish, and all that great user experience, which by the way is, sponser right off the bat was just automatically, generated, for me and I can use it everywhere that I needed and so.
Extremely, Powerful, capabilities, to both start, at a rich user experience for your highly custom, processes and started. A rich data model and automatically, generate that user experience for. Your more immersive back-office, scenarios, in application. Now, I can even set these automatic, business, rules attached to to the entities and the data that run on the server I can, say hey for example, that rule that. Automatically. Calculated, the contract start date this is exactly what it looks like to build I didn't have to write any code for that either I said hey when when when, all of the individual, review steps are complete if we have a contract, receipt, date let's go automatically, calculate, 14 days from now that's when the contract start date should be it's just a couple of dropdowns I can publish it and because, that's running on the common data service because both of these applications are, built, on that same data platform, I can leverage that rules and the server-side logic in, my canvas, based applications, as well so back here where we started in power app studio I'm building out a you know this this sort of tablet or web app for for supplier management and status management, I can come in and leverage, exactly, the same logic I can say hey yes we've you know completed. All of our our, reviews, and our receipt data of that contract is today and I can go update this thing and just like, that, the, same rule will run on the server it'll go past that information, off to to. Power apps and the start date itself, has been updated, to the exact same date that it was on the model driven side of the house an, incredibly. Powerful set, of tools we've really just scratched, the surface today and, in fact in a moment we'll go back to Charles and talk in a little more detail about many of the new features that are coming to the platform, but it's exactly these tools that customers, like inter cars are using to transform their business processes from, the front line to the back office and everywhere, in between and it's this same set of tools that you two can use to, bring digital transformation, to your company we'll go back to Charles and talk more about all the details of the new goodness that's coming to the platform in this spring release. And, now we're going to drill down into the new details and new elements, of the spring release for power-ups we're. Gonna talk about the key capabilities, that are included now the first and most important, is that power apps is tightly and Navy integrated, with Dynamics 365, as well, as office 365 and, for, the first time Dynamics. 265, for sales service and marketing data is natively.
Available, Inside the common data service, another. Interesting, and powerful element, is a new model, driven UI capabilities, these, are in addition to the existing WYSIWYG. Canvas. Based app creation that you know and love from power apps an able, a new set and new type of applications, to be created, the, third item is that the common data service and the common data model have taken a huge step forward there's a bunch of new capabilities, included, in the data layer as well, as a new and much more clear or common data model that can be used across applications and, for, those situations where the common data service is not the right choice we, have over 200, connectors, tons. Of great enterprise, connectivity, as well as new data integration capabilities. To bring data into the common data service when and how it makes sense and lastly. Very. Rich enterprise governance, and compliance capabilities, so. That you can go bet your business on the power apps platform and run the most mission, critical workloads, on top of it and not worry, about hamstringing. Or restricting, citizen. Developers within your organization, and make sure that you still are being compliant every day if, we go look at that integration element, this is a great picture to show what, it really looks like we, have Dynamics, 365. Office. 365, in custom, applications, all built. On top of this single platform and this platform spans, things like Microsoft flow, the, canvas based UI creation, capabilities marled. River and UI creation, capabilities and all of it on top of a very, rich common, data model and common, data service, and, if we go look to, the bottom of this diagram there's a few really important, bullet points that we want to make sure that we hit and make sure that you take away from the spring release of power-ups the, first is that all the Dynamics 265, data is now natively, integrated, inside of the common data service just like we talked about before it's available in place it's not a copy it's not a data integration, it's available right, inside the common data service which allows you to build incredibly, powerful applications, against your existing business, with ease and this is what we think about what we talked about when we mentioned.
That The dynamics, 265, integration, between power apps and the common data service is better, than ever and this is really only made possible because of these new common. Data service capabilities, and the new model driven UI capabilities. And power, apps again, it's just an incredibly broad and rich set of capabilities that. Make it possible to go build, application. Experiences, that complete that last mile digital transformation, we talked about earlier in this session today and to. Go make that real if we look at office 365, we can look at four great, examples, of integration, the first is power apps embedded inside of a SharePoint list as a SharePoint, form power. Apps is the natural, and cloud successor, for form customization, inside of SharePoint it, makes it easy to go take your great skills and great capabilities, that you've constructed in the platform and bring them into the office apps, where your employees are working each and every day an addition. To that teams. Is the same way you, can go out of power app or Microsoft, flow so, say with any team channel this. Makes it very easy for people to go interact with your power app in the, context. Of teams where the conversation, is already happening happening, within, your organization, without forcing them to go learn yet another, application, or another place to go discover those capabilities, and, Microsoft flow sits, there as well and enables, all kinds of great automation, on top of interacting. With chat messages, as well, as file movement and things like that next, we also have incredibly, powerful, Excel integration, we, have Microsoft, flow and the common data service natively. Integrated, inside of Excel so they can very easily trigger workflows, based on what you select as well, as go import data from the common data service into Excel and do all the slicing, and dicing that you want and, that you're used to doing and this is all brand new capabilities, announced, as part of this spring release for, the power apps platform and forth, and very interesting element is also the power bi integration, that we have where, you actually have, power apps embedded, inside a power bi as well, as power bi and embedded, inside of power-ups and what this allows you to do is when you're actually looking at your data to get insights you're, able to very clearly embed.
Power Ops to take actions, on those insights and that data and this, makes it easy you don't have to go switched again to another context, completely, in the, experience, you're used to a power bi you, can go take action and a common thing we'll hear from customers is you may be looking at say Salesforce, performance, how your, employees are actually doing and if the performance isn't good you may want to have a power, apps form available right there to go trigger our workflow, or remediation steps, to hopefully go and prove that performance, and that, tight embedding really helps us transform. What the experience, is like for. Our customers, and your employees when it actually comes to interacting with your business data and your business processes it's, available wherever, they are we. Then turn over to. The new UI capabilities. We have the, WYSIWYG canvas. Based app creation which, is super, familiar and very common, commonly. Used today for power apps which allows you to start from a beautiful PowerPoint like UI find. Your data as needed and actually create an experience that exactly, matches what your business process, and tasks, require. Additionally. We have the new model, driven capabilities. And those. Are available just like the canvas based ones on all, types of different devices, out, of the gate whether it be a mobile device or a tablet and for, those model, driven capabilities. Those, allow you to start from your data instead, of using, canvas, to start from the UI and then binding to the data with, model driven you start by defining your schema your relationships, your entities, and then we automatically, will generate. UI on top of that you can go tweak the UI as you need but it's very much driven by the data and the relationships, of those data and these again, are available, across tablet, devices, desktops. With a rich app module creation experience, and, across all different form factors and these two types of applications, allow you to again spend that whole spectrum, of app creation without any cliffs whether it's very, simple basic binding, to data all the way to the most complex, UI that you want to hyper tailor, to what your customers. Or employees require, you can do both of those on one, platform with, power-ups. Additionally. If we go change and drill into the WYSIWYG a little bit more it's, very very easy for you to go manage, that. Experience, of what, the UI looks like by screen by screen and you, can do this to go mash up data across different data sources as well, as actually use templates, so you can get out-of-the-box port for common business processes, that you may have, to go interact with things, like inspection.
Or Field services, are very common, scenarios for our customers we have rich templates, on rich, UI available. Out of the box to go enable those on top, of your existing business application, data, if, we look at the data that actually powers. The applications. That you construct we have the common data service on the common data model and the common data service as you mentioned earlier the important element is now all the, dynamics, 365, data is just available natively right. Inside of CDF's without having to do any data integration data copying, or data movement and that means if you create a power app it. Will automatically, update in place the same data that your salespeople would see in their sales application or your marketing people would see in their marketing application, yes again because it really is a single data store and we've, been able to enable this as. Part of the platform with, complete backwards compatibility, so that means if you already have customizations. And experience on top of Dynamics 365, they don't change at all you don't have to do anything to take advantage of these new capabilities they're, just available out of the box and if we go look at the common data model that's. Something that allows us to find very common, business entities, and objects and this is a very important, thread throughout, the entire platform, because it enables tight integration by our is fees and partners to go do additions and if you look at what adobe has done they're actually going and doing extensions. Of the common data model using. Their own XDM. To create a combined. Unified, view of business, data for, our joint customers and this, common data model is a key kernel. Of the common data service to go make it possible we, go look at customer application development we would recommend to start first, and foremost by looking at the common data service as a place that you store that data but, the reality, is you can't always do that sometimes. You have a huge, number of systems. Already in place, within your enterprise and, for, that Microsoft. Very uniquely, has over 200. Built-in connectors, that you can drop into your application, without having to write any code you can just snap them in and this makes it possible for you to go connect to your data wherever, it is without, having to worry about how you bring it into the common data service or do a data integration project and these connectors, span the full spectrum, of what your employees would require, or what your business would require there, are things like file services, SharePoint.
Box Dropbox. Web. API is - cloud, services like AWS, Azure, and so on as well, as common. Business applications, like workday, Marketo. ASAP. And so on all available out of the box very easily and very natively, integrated, with what you need and it's the same application, platform for UI creation. And. These. Different data sources are again, a really key element that, we make very, easy to use and we do that by what we call mashup or composite, applications, so composite, applications, allow you to go to multiple, data sources say. Dynamics. 365. And SharePoint. And bring them together into a single experience. And this, mashup capability, again is something very unique in the industry that you can do without writing any code and even, if we don't have over, one of those 200 connectors as one that you require you can go create your own you can create a custom connector and drop that in with, your developers, and with your code and that will enable it inside the same system and to, operate on all these different data sources there's, a very simple Excel, like language, built into powerhouse in which we saw in the demo from Ryan earlier this, simple language makes it easier to do lookups filters, and so on without going, and having to learn a brand new programming language since it's like Excel and also without having to go drop into developer, experience, to go code everything up and again, all out-of-the-box on top of those same chemist, base and morale driven app creation experiences. They were just talking about and another, core part of the power apps platform is Microsoft, flow it, enables rich workflow, capabilities as well as business processes, to actually manage the UI experiences, friend users, Microsoft. Flow supports, the same 200 plus connectors, as well as the common data service just, like power-ups and that makes it so you can very easily build automations, as well as applications that, tie it together tightly, and build on top of the same data and not, only can you actually trigger Microsoft, flow based on changes in data with events and triggers you can also trigger it based on a button press or activity, taken inside of you I created, inside a power apps and altogether, this makes it very easy to transform.
Repeatable. Simple tasks with an organization, to actually automate them away and you can also go use business processes, to completely, control the experience, for your end-users to make they complete the necessary steps necessary, gates, as part, of say interacting, with the customer or closing, a support, ticket all of that is possible using, the Microsoft, flow capabilities, which is richly and natively integrated inside of power-ups and across, both, Microsoft, flow and power apps there's, enterprise-grade. Admin, management, and compliance management, and the way this works is we actually have a central, admin center which looks across all your dynamics 365, applications, as well, as power apps Microsoft, flow and common data service to enable a rich set of capabilities, first, is all managed inside Azure Active Directory your, user lists your security policies, like two-factor, authentication as, well as conditional access so that you can have management around devices, with, Windows Intune or other MDM, offerings, additionally. In this admin center there's rich reporting, and rich auditing. Capabilities so, you can see what, people are doing with. Power apps of Microsoft flow inside your organization and make sure that they're behaving according, to what you actually want them to do based, on compliance and security perspective and beyond. Just reporting there's also data loss prevention policies, and these policies, make it so that you can't go, and actually flow data from a high business impacter a very sensitive environment, to a lower sensitivity. Environment. Like say the internet so a common example we may see from our customers they don't want you to say take something from a lockdown SharePoint. Document, library and then send it an email out to potentially. People outside your company and you can actually enforce that with, the data loss prevention capabilities inside, the, platform and altogether, all of these different capabilities, come, together to provide an incredibly compliant, and enterprise. Great experience, to, not only manage the applications, that Microsoft, builds it's our Dynamics 365, but, also what is fees build that also extend the same application platform, as well, as what your IT department, or individual, employees, as citizen developers, may build all of them could fall under the same centralized. Unified, admin experience with, those rich capabilities, for both auditing, reporting. And enforcement. And beyond. That there's also a very important element of the platform, which is app source app source, is the one-stop shop to go install applications. From ISO using third parties as well as partners of Microsoft, right, inside your common data service or your, power apps instance they all interact, and plate together an incredibly powerful and unique way and they were all on top of that same platform so all of those rich governance. Capabi
2018-03-29 21:20
