Everything You Need to Know About Power Platform – October 2020
This month there was lots of fun with Flow and Power BI. I feel like my favorite child, Power Apps, was slacking. O’well. You know what is really crazy? I had a big glass of positivity while I was writing this so everything is so exciting. ? I never know what is going to happen until I write but apparently I liked this month’s updates. Enterprise automation, Power BI more flexible for report consumers, and over 400 connectors top my list of the news I loved.
Enterprise Automation Playbook for SAP with Power Automate
I will be honest, I mostly ignore the RPA stuff. Why? Because it is primarily for large enterprises and that just isn’t a sandbox I like to play in. BUT wow this playbook is really cool. They show you the power of UI Flows and the rest of Power Automate to interact with SAP systems. From the simple no code to the professional developer story this guide has it all. Colored me impressed. Using UI flows to get data and make changes directly in SAP is crazy cool
Power BI Personal Visuals are fully released
PBI now allows users to modify their visuals in reports that have been built and shared with others. This ad-hoc ability means you build a great visual and then users can change visualization types, modify measures and dimensions, do their own comparisons, and more. Power BI is so far ahead of the competition it is crazy and they just keep raising the bar. Learn more about this new feature here.
Why IT Pros should love the Power Platform
In this installment of the MJFChat she interviewed ME!!!!!!!!! And since the chat was perfect and amazing I think it is a must-listen so go listen to MJFChat: Why IT Pros Should Love the Power Platform and get all types of nuggets and perspective on your favorite platform.
Technical things to know
New Connectors: We firmly cross the 400 connector mark with the addition of nine more this month, including Microsoft 365 compliance and Azure AD Identity Protection.
On-premises Gateway Update: Just your friendly reminder the gateway is updated about once a month. And the number one reason you get gateway errors is not being up-to-date. So be sure to update this, and every month, if you use the gateway.
Power BI new look for creators: Pro the new experience is better. Con you will probably have to find things you used to do by muscle memory. Coming soon!
Common Data Service getting a relevance search API: Common data service continues to lead with cool features. If you are using premium data sources and CDS isn’t in the mix it probably should be.
Microsoft is once again a leader in Gartner Low Code: No shocker here. You are reading this because you know Power Platform is awesome. Sometimes nice to have confirmation on how smart you are.
Track your Power Automate action consumption: More and more people have flows everywhere. Which leads to thinking about capacity. Now you can look at the analytics of a flow and get concrete numbers on its usage. Nice.
Power Portals get easier authentication configuration: Portals are so hard to get started with because you need to super nerd just to get auth going. Well, not anymore.