Minimum Path to Awesomeness

Power Automate can help you improve your productivity, efficiency, and innovation by enabling you to build solutions that suit your specific needs and scenarios. However, to get the most out of Power Automate, you need to follow some best practices that will ensure the quality, performance, and security of your flows. In this blog, we will share some of the best practices that you should follow when using Power Automate. Understand Power Automate in the Power Platform ecosystem Power Automate is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, which also includes Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents. These tools work together to enable you to create end-to-end solutions that automate workflows, build apps, analyze data, and create bots. You should learn how to use Power Automate with the other tools in the Power Platform to create powerful and integrated solutions. For example, you can use Power Automate to handle the business logic and data integration for your Power Apps, or to trigge...

One of the common scenarios that you may encounter when using Power Automate is to retrieve data from a SharePoint list and perform some actions on it. However, if your SharePoint list has more than 5000 items, you may run into some challenges and limitations. In this blog, we will explain why this happens and how to overcome it using pagination. Why does Power Automate have a limit of 5000 items for SharePoint lists? The reason why Power Automate has a limit of 5000 items for SharePoint lists is because of the underlying SharePoint API that Power Automate uses to connect to SharePoint. SharePoint has a feature called list view threshold, which limits the number of items that can be returned in a single query to 5000 by default. This is to prevent performance issues and ensure optimal performance for all users. If you try to query more than 5000 items from a SharePoint list, you will get an error message like this: This error message will also appear in Power Automate if you use the Ge...

One of the key features of Power Platform Dataverse is its rich security model that can adapt to many business usage scenarios. This security model is based on the concept of security roles, which are collections of privileges that define what users can do with the data and resources in Power Platform Dataverse. In this blog, we will explain what security roles are, how they work, and how to use them in Power Platform Dataverse. What are security roles? Security roles are groups of privileges that control access to data and resources in Power Platform Dataverse. Privileges are the basic units of security that define what actions users can perform on a specific type of data or resource, such as create, read, write, delete, share, or assign. Privileges are combined with access levels, which define the scope of access that users have to the data or resource, such as user, business unit, parent-child business unit, organization, or none. For example, a user with the read privilege and the ...

But did you know that there are two types of apps you can create with Power Apps? They are called canvas apps and model-driven apps, and they have different strengths and limitations. In this blog, we will compare and contrast these two types of apps and help you decide which one is best for your scenario. What are canvas apps? Canvas apps are apps that start with a blank canvas, like an artist’s canvas, and you can design the user interface by dragging and dropping controls, such as buttons, labels, galleries, forms, and charts. You can connect to various data sources, such as SharePoint, Excel, SQL Server, or Microsoft Dataverse, using connectors. You can also add logic and expressions to make your app interactive and dynamic. Canvas apps are good for creating pixel-perfect, customized user experiences that work across different devices, such as phones, tablets, and PCs. What are model-driven apps? Model-driven apps are apps that are based on the data model and business logic defined...

Power Apps, with its ability to seamlessly create custom business solutions, has revolutionized the way businesses operate. However, like all tools, there might be instances where an app doesn't function as expected. Enter Power Apps Monitor—a tool to save the day! Coupled with the Trace function, it becomes a formidable duo in troubleshooting issues in Power Apps. Here's how to wield this combination effectively. Power Apps Monitor: A Quick Overview Power Apps Monitor is your go-to tool for real-time insights into the workings of your app. It displays events such as network calls, variable tweaks, and control interactions, making it simpler to pinpoint where things might be going awry. Introducing Trace: Your Custom Logger The Trace function is essentially a custom messaging system that feeds into the Power Apps Monitor. By strategically placing this function in your app, you can monitor the app's flow and easily spot problematic areas. Step-by-Step Troubleshooting with Po...

 The advent of chatbots has revolutionized customer service, automating responses to frequently asked questions and assisting in troubleshooting. Power Virtual Agents, Microsoft's tool for creating chatbots, has played a key role in this revolution. However, keeping track of your bot's performance is essential for continuous improvement and maintenance. That's where Microsoft's Application Insights comes into play. In this article, we explore how to use Application Insights for monitoring your Power Virtual Agents' performance. What is Application Insights? Application Insights is a telemetry service that collects data about your applications and provides detailed analytics, enabling you to understand your applications' performance, uncover potential issues, and track usage. Data points gathered by Application Insights include: The frequency of requests your application processes The response time to requests Errors occurring within your application The usage me...

Welcome back, fellow Power Apps enthusiasts and developers! Today we're diving deep into the fascinating world of Power Apps and exploring some of its key components: variables, named formulas, and collections. Each of these tools plays a crucial role in creating dynamic, intuitive apps - but the key to unlocking their potential lies in understanding when and how to use them.  A Crash Course on Variables, Named Formulas, and Collections Before we discuss when to use these tools, let's briefly define what each of them does. Variables are the simplest of the three. They're essentially containers that store a single value. These values could be anything - a number, a string of text, or a Boolean value (true/false). Variables are extremely useful for storing temporary data, like the number of times a user has interacted with a button or the result of a specific calculation.  Named formula s are the next level up. They're an advanced form of variables, with the capability ...