Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Fundamentals exam study guide 2024

Power Apps provides a rapid low code development environment for building custom apps for business needs. It has services, connectors, and a scalable data service and app platform (Common Data Service) to allow simple integration and interaction with existing data. Power Apps enables the creation of web and mobile applications that run on all devices. People use apps for every area of their lives, and business should be no exception. Most out of the box solutions do not meet exact business needs or integrate well with other business programs. Power Apps eases users into app development with a simple interface so that every business user or pro developer can build custom apps. Brainpower Read More 0:01 / 0:15 Power Automate lets users create automated workflows between applications and services. It helps automate repetitive business processes such as communication, data collections, and decision approvals. Don't waste important productive hours on drafting the same email for a weekly update or walking approvals through. Not only for the individual user, Power Automate allows for the creation of enterprise-grade process automation. Power Automate's simple interface allows every level of user to automate work tasks from beginners to seasoned developers. Power BI (Business Intelligence) is a business analytics service that delivers insights for analyzing data. It can share those insights through data visualizations which make up reports and dashboards to enable fast, informed decisions. Power BI scales across an organization, and it has built-in governance and security allowing businesses to focus on using data more than managing it. You can consider Power BI as the analysis and insights leg of the Power Platform. It takes business data and allows you to display it in ways that makes the most sense to users. A Power BI dashboard could potentially replace a standing meeting to report out on company metrics such as sales data, progress against goals, or employee performance. Power Virtual Agents enables anyone to create powerful chatbots using a guided, no-code graphical interface, without the need for data scientists or developers. Power virtual agents addresses many of the major issues with chatbot building. It eliminates the gap between subject matter experts and the development teams building the chatbots. It removes the complexity of exposing teams to the nuances of conversational AI and the need to write complex code. It minimizes the IT effort required to deploy and maintain a custom conversational solution by empowering subject matter experts to build and maintain their own conversational solutions. AI Builder lets users and developers add AI capabilities to the workflows and PowerApps they create and use. AI Builder is a turnkey solution that allows you to easily add intelligence to your workflows and apps and predict outcomes to help improve business performance without writing code. Common Data Service is a scalable data service and app platform which lets users securely store and manage data from multiple sources and integrate that data in business applications using a common data model to ensure ease and consistency to users. Common Data Service is the common currency that enables the components of Power Platform to work together. It's the foundation that enables the consolidation, display, and manipulation of data. Connectors enable you to connect apps, data, and devices in the cloud. Consider connectors the bridge across which information and commands travel. There are more than 275 connectors for the Power Platform, enabling all of your data and actions to connect cohesively. Examples of popular connectors include Salesforce, Office 365, Twitter, Dropbox, Google services, and more. Power Virtual Agents is part of Power Platform, therefore integration into existing systems is streamlined with out-of-the-box integration with Power Automate and its ecosystems of hundreds of connectors. Users can enable bots to perform an action by simply calling a Power Automate flow. Flows help users automate activities or call back end systems. Users can utilize existing flows that have been created in their Power Apps environment or they can create a flow within Power Virtual Agents authoring canvas. Data Connectors Power Platform is made powerful by its ability to leverage data across many platforms. To do this, components of the Power Platform use connectors. You can think of connectors as a bridge from your data source to your app or workflow which allows information to be conveyed back and forth. Connectors allow you to extend your business solutions across platforms and add functionality for your users, and Power Platform has more than 275 connectors with the ability to build custom connectors as well. It is important to note that premium connectors require a paid plan for use. The connector reference in the summary and resources unit lists all connectors and whether they are considered standard or premium. Custom connectors are also considered a premium feature. Data Sources In order to understand the types of connectors and what you can do with them, you must first understand the types of data sources to which they connect. The two types of data sources are tabular and function-based. Tabular data A tabular data source is one that returns data in a structured table format. Power Apps can directly read and display these tables through galleries, forms, and other controls. Additionally, if the data source supports it, Power Apps can create, edit, and delete data from these data sources. Examples include Common Data Service, SharePoint, and SQL Server. Function-based data A function-based data source is one that uses functions to interact with the data source. These functions can be used to return a table of data, but offer more extensive action such as the ability to send an email, update permissions, or create a calendar event. Examples include Office 365 Users, Project Online, and Azure Blob Storage. Both of these data source types are commonly used to bring data and additional functionality to your solutions. As you can see, connecting to data sources allows you to integrate disparate parts of your business solutions to build them out cohesively. Connectors Now that you understand more about data sources and delegation, you are ready to learn about connectors. Connectors are the bridges from your data source to your app, workflow, or dashboard. The Power Platform has more than 275 connectors available to common data sources. Connectors are divided into standard and premium. Some popular standard connectors are SharePoint, Outlook, and YouTube. Premium connectors require additional licensing for your app and/or users. A few premium connectors are SQL Server, Survey Monkey, and Mail Chimp. Triggers and Actions Once you have established a data source and configured your connector, there are two types of operations you can use, triggers or actions. Triggers are only used in Power Automate and prompt a flow to begin. Triggers can be time based, such as a flow which begins every day at 8:00 am, or they could be based off of an action like creating a new record in a table or receiving an email. You will always need a trigger to tell your workflow when to run. Actions are used in Power Automate and Power Apps. Actions are prompted by the user or a trigger and allow interaction with your data source by some function. For example, an action would be sending an email in your workflow or app or writing a new line to a data source. Custom Connectors While the Power Platform offers more than 200 connectors, you also have the option to build a custom connector. This will allow you to extend your app by calling a publicly available API, or a custom API you're hosting in a cloud provider, such as Azure. API stands for Application Programming Interface and holds a series of functions available for developers. Connectors work by sending information back and forth across these APIs and gathering available functions into Power Apps or Power Automate. Because these connectors are function-based, they will call specific functions in the underlying service of the API to return the corresponding data. An advantage of building custom connectors is that they can be used in different platforms, such as PowerApps, Power Automate, and Azure Logic Apps. Creating Custom Connectors You can create custom connectors using 3 different approaches: Using a blank custom connector From an OpenAPI definition From a Postman collection