Microsoft forms can be used to create surveys, quizzes, polls and questionnaires for businesses of all sizes. With expansion in businesses undertaking Microsoft forms for their business,  the idea of data collection and analysis has got simpler.  More and more businesses are taking advantage of this and getting real-time updates  and responses on customers queries. This makes Microsoft Forms an inseparable part of customer business. So, our SharePoint experts has decided to bring  more information on Microsoft forms. In this blog, we will see how to create Microsoft forms and its integration with other Office 365 apps . So, let’s get started with what Microsoft Forms are.

What is Microsoft Forms?

The users wanted a unique application that would cater their needs of building an app for collecting survey data. Microsoft Forms is an expert in building unique surveys, quizzes, polls, and questionnaires. The web-browser on any device or computer may also send an invitation to other users to fill out the Microsoft Forms. The creator may check the outcomes in real time and analyze the data collected.  Generally, In many institutions, companies and government agencies, Microsoft forms services may be utilized to satisfy their data collecting requirements and to generate an actual report.

Platforms and Versions Supported by Microsoft Forms

Microsoft is a smart player as they know their users are wide spread and develop apps that are compatible across all major platforms. So when it comes to versions and compatible operating systems, Microsoft has taken care of everything. They have covered almost all main platforms such as Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS and Web . Desktop and mobile browsers allow  access to forms. This helps Microsoft Forms to make large polls and surveys among individuals outside your company easier and better. Forms surveys without installing a specific software are simply accessible.

How to Get Started with Microsoft Forms?

Not many of you might know that Microsoft forms started specifically for the education industry. But now it has spanned across many industry verticals. Microsoft Forms may be accessed using your Microsoft office 365 applications or with your Microsoft account. Here’s how you can begin:

Step1

You need to start with  the basics by Logging into your Microsoft account. It can be your Microsoft 365 business or education school account, or your Microsoft Outlook account.

Step 2

Find “Forms” in the list of Microsoft office 365 applications.

Step 3

Select “Forms”. You may also go straight to the Microsoft Forms page and sign in using your Microsoft account credentials.

At the top of the Forms page, there is a row of templates with choices to create a new form or a new quiz. If you’ve previously generated one or more forms, they’ll appear in the “Recent” section, where you can view a list of recent forms as well as those you’ve pinned to the page for easy access. You can now click on “All My Forms” to view all of your previous forms.

Ways to Create a New Microsoft Form

1. On the Homepage tap on, click “New Form.” if you want to create a survey or a Poll. Microsoft Forms will open in a new tab of the browser. 

Now it’s time to give name and description to your “Untitled Form”

You can also add a picture to the form’s top by clicking the image icon on the right.

2. Select “Add new” if you want to add any question.

3. In the pop-up box, select the type of entry you wish to make from the options for your form. You have multiple choices for adding different question types or options on the survey form.

It might be a Choice button, a free-form fill-in-the-blank text entry, an entry in which the user must provide a star rating, a date input, or something else.

With the help of the “Choice” button you can add multiple-choice questions as well as many answers. You can also decide whether the person replying can give multiple-answers or not.

Using the “text” button a respondent can give an answer by typing or writing anything they want in the text box.

The form is ready with all the questions now, all you need is to check how it looks.

It’s now time to preview your form

4. To preview your form, you will see the “Preview” option on the toolbar at the top of the page on a computer or mobile device.

To test your form, fill out the questions in Preview mode and then click Submit.

Select Back to continue editing your form.

When and How to Use Microsoft Forms?

It is extremely simple to use Microsoft Forms: You can create forms (such as a poll or survey) or  quizzes; the difference is that quizzes include right answers and can be scored. After you’ve created your form, you can share it with the appropriate audience and evaluate the real time results using Forms’ built-in analytics display.

The question of when to use Microsoft forms depends on its implications. Many organizations, corporations, and government agencies can utilize the Microsoft Forms service to gather data and communicate information with their staff and consumers. The following are some instances or options in which you might want to use the Microsoft Forms service.

• You may rapidly build a quiz and share it with anonymous people.
• Developing a small business order application
• Microsoft Forms may be used by teachers to assess their pupils on a certain topic.
• When you wish to integrate the survey, quiz, and registration forms on your website, blog, or Learning Management System.
• When you wish to personalize forms and link your forms app with other Microsoft services such as Microsoft Teams and Micros.

How to Share Microsoft Forms?

There are several alternatives for sharing your forms inside your company or with anybody outside of it. When your form is completed, you can tap on the ‘Share’ to view the link. The first method is to simply copy and paste this URL into your email. Anyone who clicks on it will be sent to a form where they may provide their response. Utilizing Microsoft Forms, the procedure of sharing your survey becomes super easy. You can choose whether the survey is exclusively accessible to your team members  or to everyone who obtains the link. You may also cooperate on survey design by sharing survey templates. Due to this even they will be able to create similar forms when needed.

You can also share the form by generating a QR code – the respondent just needs to scan this QR code through mobile to use the forms. Other options for sharing are ’embed’ and ’email’. The ability to share your forms with other Microsoft products will be a favorite feature. Because it is so simple and easy to share. So it’s time to incline more towards form integrations and ways of doing it.

How to see Responses and Results?

Once the users have taken the survey, it’s now time for you to review the responses. The process of review is simpler and there is no much hassle. In your survey, there is a responses tab, click on that and it will open up to a dashboard.

After clicking on the responses tab, you will find there  analytics attached to the data which will visually tell you the response ratios. Just like the one shown in the image below. You can also export results to Excel for checking the responses.

You can immediately learn a summary of all the responses like how many people have responded, the average time it takes a respondent to finish the form, and what are the maximum answers received and so on. It can be represented visually like with some charts or bar graphs. A pie chart and the amount of replies for each option are displayed for a multiple-choice question.

Integrating MS Forms with Power Automate and Power BI

MS Forms provides us with the easiest way to create a form which can be used for multiple purposes such as surveys, polls, feedback, and many more. We can also expand the functionalities of MS Forms by using it with other Office 365 apps like Power Automate, with which we can automate tedious day to day life tasks. For example, we can save the responses of MS Forms to a certain third-party database dynamically. We can also use MS Forms with Power BI to represent the responses of MS Forms in a custom visualization.  You can gather survey data, and utilize Microsoft (MS) Forms, and then we use Power BI to show the findings, allowing for real-time changes as replies come in.

Objective

In this demo, we will integrate MS Forms with Power Automate and Power BI. We will be using a COVID Survey Form in this demo as displayed in the image below. For the survey, the form will be having following fields:

1. Have you taken the first dose of the vaccine? (Boolean field)
2. Have you taken a second dose of the vaccine? (Boolean field)
3. Have you been tested for COVID-19? (Boolean field)
4. If you have tested for COVID-19, have you tested positive? (Boolean field)
5. When was the last time you were tested as COVID positive? (Date field)

Using Power Automate, we will save the responses from this form to a SharePoint list, then we will transfer those values to a Power BI streaming dataset, using which we will generate a dynamic Power BI report

Integrating MS Forms with Power Automate

The only shortcoming of Microsoft forms is that it does not have many connectors. While Power BI has multiple other direct connectors. To overcome this issue, we can use Power Automate to automate the data import procedure into Power BI.

We’ll be demonstrating this with an example. This will help you utilize a steaming data set to import the data into Power BI. We’ll then retain a master record store of the data obtained via Forms in a SharePoint list. After that, we used Power BI Desktop to build the report by connecting to the streaming data set.  Now for that, we would first need to see how to create a SharePoint list.

The first step to this is to ensure that the data collected is through Microsoft forms. Only then, we can go to the next section of aligning it with SharePoint. We will create a SharePoint list of survey data and then start with automatically streaming data. Let’s start with first creating a list on SharePoint.

• We will first create the COVID-19 Survey MS Form shown in the image above, and then get its response in a Power Automate flow.
• To store the response from MS Forms, we will use a SharePoint list. Login to your SharePoint site and then click on the gear icon on the upper right corner. Click on “Site Contents”.

• In the Site Contents page, click on New 🡪 List.

• Click on “Blank List”, and then we will give the name “COVIDSurvey” to the list. You can tick “Show in site navigation” if you want the list to be displayed on the SharePoint site navigation menu. Now, click on create and your SharePoint list is now created.

• Once you are on the list page, click on the gear icon, and then click on “List settings”.

• On the list settings page, we will create columns corresponding to each field in the MS Form. Click on “Create Column” and enter the name of the column. Here we have kept the type of all columns as “single line of text” except the “ResponseSubmitter” column which is “Person or Group”.

• Now that our SharePoint list has been created, we will proceed to create a Power Automate flow. Login to Microsoft Office 365 and open Power Automate. Click on “New flow” 🡪 “Automated cloud flow”.

• Type the flow name, we have entered “MS Forms integration” as the flow name here. Now, in the “Choose your flow’s trigger” we will use the MS Forms trigger named “When a new response is submitted”. You can also type “forms” in the search bar and the trigger will be displayed.

• This will create a Power Automate flow with the name “MS Forms integration” and you will be redirected to the flow screen. Select the Form Id by clicking on the dropdown arrow button, and then select the MS Form we recently created. Once you have selected the form, click on the “New step” button displayed below.

• We will now fetch the response details of the selected form, for that we will use the “Get response details” action. Type in the action name in the “Choose an operation” section and select the action.

• Select “COVID-19 Survey” in the Form Id field and for entering the Response Id, click on “Add dynamic content” displayed below the field which will open the dynamic content panel, and then select the “Response Id”.

• Now, we will use the above created “COVIDSurvey” SharePoint list to store the responses via Power Automate. For that, we will use the “Create item” action which we will add following the same steps mentioned for “Get response details” action. Select the SharePoint site URL in which the SharePoint list is located and the list name.
• As soon as we select the list name, all its corresponding fields will be displayed in the action. Select the appropriate dynamic content from the “Get response details” action for each column as shown in the image below.

• Now save the Power Automate flow, and then you will notice an entry in the SharePoint list as soon as a new MS Form response is submitted.

Integrating MS Forms with Power BI

Other ways of doing it is through Power BI, in the next section, let us explore how we can use Microsoft forms along with Power BI. You can gather survey data, and utilize Microsoft (MS) Forms, and then we use Power BI to show the findings, allowing for real-time changes as replies come in.

Power BI has a plethora of direct connections, while MS Forms does not. So, to overcome this shortcoming, we have introduced Power BI software in the development plans. 

Power BI is a powerful tool for creating visually stunning reports and visualizations from a variety of data sources. For data analysis and reporting, you may import your Microsoft Form data into Power BI. On the web and through mobile devices, you may exchange reports with power users.

• We are now going to integrate MS forms with Power BI. For this, we will be using the same “COVID-19 Survey” form that we used for integration with Power Automate.
• We are first going to create a streaming dataset in Power BI. For that, head on to Power BI and select any workspace of your preference. Here, we have selected “My Workspace”.
• Click on “New” 🡪 “Streaming dataset”.

• In the left panel, select “API” and click on next.
• We will keep the name of the dataset as “COVID Survey Demo” and in the “values from stream” section, we are going to enter the fields that are to be stored from MS Forms to the dataset. Here, we have entered the 6 fields that are being used in MS Forms.
• Set “Historic data analysis” as on, and then click on the create button.

• This will create a new dataset with the name “COVID Survey Demo”.
• We are now going to make changes to the existing Power Automate flow we created above. For that, head on to the Power Automate page and under “My flows”, hover on the “MS Forms integration” flow and click on the edit button.

• Now add a new step to the flow and we are going to add an action named “Add rows to a dataset”. Select the Workspace in which the dataset has been created and select the dataset from the dropdown. Keep table as “RealTimeData”. 
• Once we select the dataset, all it’s corresponding fields will be displayed in the action. We will select the dynamic content from the “create item” action in the flow.
• Now, whenever a new response will be submitted in MS Forms, an entry will be made in the dataset as well.

• Our Power Automate flow is completed here. Now we will proceed to create a Power BI report from the dataset. For that, navigate to Power BI and go to “My workspace”. Click on “New” 🡪 “Report”.

• You will be redirected to a new page. Select “Pick a published dataset” from the two options.

• A panel will be opened asking to select a dataset for the report. Select the “COVID Survey Demo” dataset which we created earlier and click on create button.

• You will now be redirected to the development area for the Power BI report. Check all the fields from the right panel as shown in the image below.

• Once all the fields are checked, you will be able to see the data in tabular format. Expand the report as shown in the image below to accommodate all the fields into the area.

• Now use the Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut to save the Power BI report and type the name of the report as per your preference and click on save.

• Our Power BI report has now been saved. As soon as a new response is submitted via MS Forms, the report will automatically be updated, and the data will be reflected on the report.

Integrating MS forms with One Drive

The integration of MS forms with One drive and integration of SharePoint with MS forms  is almost the same. The ideal approach includes the elimination of the requirement for humans. Thus, this means forming a trigger will automate the form generation from OneDrive instead of the home page. Let’s see how we can do this.

We will utilize OneDrive for this solution. However as mentioned within a SharePoint group the same procedures also may be implemented. For example, in Onedrive, you will first construct the form in files folder in OneDrive for a company browser account then find that account. The best approach to find  OneDrive folder online and browse it to my Explorer OneDrive folder. Now click the OneDrive folder and choose the Online view. Later, the whole procedure is the same as we did in SharePoint.

Microsoft forms recently released a new version called Microsoft Forms Pro (Dynamics 365 Customer Voice) which allows us to set up workflow automation and integrate it with Dynamics 365 as well.

Advantages of Microsoft Forms

There are many benefits of Microsoft Forms that were designed with keeping the educators/trainers and students in mind. But it also has a wide range of uses for people and businesses.

• You may create a poll, quiz and survey to gauge your colleagues preferences or to collect structured input of teams on collaborative initiatives and activities.
• Use images and video in your polls and quizzes and create different questions based on the content of those visual components.
• The other segmented questions can be used to customize a form based on how a user responds to the first array of questions. Then they can modify it creatively and can be used to create their own style of story.
• Forms may be used to construct math tests with mathematical symbols.
• It’s simple to distribute polls and quizzes, and you may restrict access to people co-workers in your organization (if you work or go to school) or make it available to everyone with a link to the form.
• You may distribute polls and quizzes in whatever manner that works best for your audience, such as links in emails or through QR code that can be scanned with a mobile phone.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, this entire blog on Microsoft forms has taken us through the exact definition of Microsoft forms, ways to create Microsoft forms, how to share and integrate platforms with other users. The demand for forms is continuously increasing as it offers multiple benefits to businesses. If we go by analysis for the next few years there is no downfall and hence companies should not think twice before taking up Microsoft forms. It is a simple, easy to use and initiative application that will always be favorable in the long-run. So, take the best opportunity up and utilize it for your business.

We have also covered the features of Microsoft forms in another article here.

The post How to Use Microsoft Forms? appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

This becomes possible with the help of Nintex Forms. It provides a wide range of designing options, advanced functions, better data control, the ability to store signatures, geolocation and much more to come.

1. What are Nintex Forms?

Nintex provides a robust platform for building forms with a wide range of options. There is a broad array of features it offers to businesses such as:

• Barcode scanner
• Signature
• Geolocation
• Conditions
• Themes
• Responsive Design

With these features, users have a wide range of options for building their forms for Office 365. Compared to Forms provided in SharePoint Online, SharePoint Developers can make a lot of changes using Nintex forms. For e.g., Users can change the theme of the forms and also add functionalities like dropdown cascading, custom validations, regular expression validations, etc.

2. Types of Designing a Nintex form

Add two lines description on Forms Designer and also use the keyword “drag and drop”.

Currently, there are two options for designing a Nintex form:

1. Responsive Designer
2. Classic Designer

Responsive Designer

The Responsive Designer is an updated version of the classic designer which is used more widely compared to the classic designer for Nintex forms. It allows us to create responsive Nintex forms with the design experience being responsive as well. With the Responsive Designer, users can just drag-and-drop controls to change the single-column layout to a multi-column layout.

Also, New Rows are automatically created when the user adds a new control to the canvas. We can resize the control easily with the buttons to resize on each control.

The Responsive Design also provides a new theme feature where we can easily change the colors and fonts, without the need for CSS.

The Rules Pane has also changed considerably in the new Responsive Design. We will see the changes for the same in the later stages of the blog.

Although Responsive Design has some great features and advantages, there are times when we can still prefer the Classic Designer for designing Nintex forms. The Responsive Designer doesn’t support custom CSS or JavaScript. Hence we can use classic designer for custom CSS and JavaScript.

Classic Designer

The classic designer enables you to create a customized form in the environment of SharePoint technology without making much effort. The classic form designers enable the businesses to create a pixel-perfect form with the use of different layouts that controls the look of the form and sees to it how the form will appear in each form.

When it comes to configuring controls on the designer canvas, the classic designer creates the form by adding, moving, and grouping all the controls. Besides, the classic form designer comes with a simple layout that enables the user to enter the fields and save the form after attaching the required files.

Unlike responsive designers, there is no delete button for the attachments in the classic form designer. This means that once any document is attached to the form, it cannot be deleted, all you can do is cancel the entire form and enter everything again if you have attached a wrong file.

Besides, when the user wants to work with custom CSS or JavaScript, the classic form designer is the best option as this is something that responsive designer fails at providing.

Here is how the Nintex form will look like in Classic Designer and the Responsive Designer:

3. How to Create a Leave Application Form using Nintex Forms?

To demonstrate the Nintex Forms, we have prepared a Leave Application Form which a user can fill in an organization for leave approval. We will also prepare a single-stage approval workflow for the same using Nintex Workflow for Office 365.

This is how our Form will look like after we have prepared it using Nintex forms:

And this is how our workflow will look like:

And this is how our workflow will look like:

Here, we will be focusing more on creating the Nintex Forms for Office 365, you can check out the steps for creating a workflow automation software from our previous blog.

4. Steps for Creating the Nintex Forms in Office 365

• Add Nintex Office 365 to your Office 365 account. You will be able to get this application from the Microsoft Store.
• Login to the SharePoint online site and create a SharePoint list. We need to add Nintex forms to SharePoint Online sites to customize list or library. Here, We have created a Leave Application List from the SharePoint list with the following columns: Name, Start Date, End Date, Type of Leave, Other Type of Leave, Total Days, Reason of Leave, Contact Number, Leave Status.
• As you can see, there is a “Nintex Forms” option in the command bar.
• We will need to hide the Leave Status column from the form. So that the users cannot change the leave status from the form. For that go to list settings from the settings option.
• Then, click on advanced settings. Now you will see the first setting “Allow Management of content types?”, select “Yes” for that.
• You can now see the content type section in list settings as shown in the image below. Click on the item content type now.
• You will now be able to see all the columns. If you want to hide some columns then you can click on the hide option of the form and select the ‘hidden option’.
• Note that a new column “Leave Approval” is created when we create the Nintex Workflow, we’ll need to hide that column as well with the same steps used for hiding the “Leave Status” Column.
• Now that we have set up the list let’s start the designing of the Nintex Forms. Click on the “Nintex Forms” option now.
• Now, The Nintex Forms Designer will open up as shown in the image below. Click on the “Responsive Designer” option in Forms Designer.
• Clicking on the “Responsive Designer” option will open up the designer for us as shown in the image below:
• Now, let’s start designing our form. As you can see there is a Nintex Forms image at the top of the form. We can change this image as per our preference. To do that click on the image and change the Image URL from settings, we can store the image in any part of our SharePoint Online site, here we have stored it in the “Site Assets” part of Site contents and provided the URL of the same.
• Users can change the dimensions of the image from the appearance section.
• When creating a Nintex Form, there will be an attachment field by default at the end of the form, to remove that field, hover on the field and click on the delete button of that field.
• Now let’s change the look of our Nintex form, from the designer tab in the top navigation, select the Theme option and change the color of the form, background, button, etc. Here is the image demonstrating the theme options and where they apply to.
• Now that we have made changes to the design of the Nintex form, let’s make some changes in the form’s functionality. First, we want the “Total Days” column to be a calculated value based on the “Start Date” and “End Date” provided by the user.
• To do that first, delete the Total Days field which is being displayed by default. Then add “Calculated Value” Form Control from the Form Controls Panel and go to more settings for the control.
• In the Formula, you can insert references from the right panel of the window.
• Here, we have selected the “dateDiffDays()” Function from the “Runtime Functions Section”. Now, insert “StartDate” and “EndDate” from the Named Controls Section.
• The function dateDiffDays will calculate days between two provided Dates.
• Enter the Name, Title and Description of your preference. In the Connected to part, we have to select the SharePoint Column that this control would be connected to. Here we have selected Total Days for the same. Now, click on the Save button.
• Now, let us preview the form to check if the given functionality is working as expected or not.
• To do that, click on “preview” from the top navigation. Here, we can select the device like Desktop, Tablet or mobile smartphone to check for responsiveness.
• Select any mode from edit, new or display.
• Then, click on Generate preview and then we can test the working of our functionalities in the preview.
• We have populated the Dropdown Type of Leave with the following values shown in the image below:
• Now, when the user selects the Other value in the dropdown, we want to display the textbox field “Other Type of Leave” to specify the Other value. This field will enable you to see the drop-down list named “Type of leave” with the value “Others”.
• To do that, we will need to add a Rule so that the control will stay hidden when the dropdown value is not equal to “Other”. For that select the control and then click on the “Add Rule” button from the top navigation. Using Rules, we can Disable, Hide or Invalidate any control.
• Now, we have added a condition that when “TypeOfLeave” is not equal to “Other”, this field will stay Hidden as shown in the image below.
• Now, let’s preview the Nintex form and check if this functionality is working as expected.
• As you can see, when “Type of Leave” has any value other than “Other”, the “Other Type of Leave” Field will stay hidden. But when “Type of Leave” has the value “Other”, the “Other Type of Leave” Field will be visible to the user.
• Here we have set the required field validation while creating the list itself from SharePoint list. We can also add required field validation through Nintex Form.
• Let’s demonstrate it by adding the required field validation in the “Contact Number” control. Add a rule to the “Contact Number” control.
• We have set the Rule name as Required Field. To check whether the field contains any value, we have used the function “isNullOrEmpty”. Thus, this is how we can add a required field validation.
• There is one more validation that is necessary: The start date should not be greater than the end date as it would make no sense in the real world.
• To add that validation, add a rule in End Date control to check whether the End Date is less than the Start Date.
• Now, let’s preview our Nintex form and check. As you can see, when a user enters End Date less than the Start Date, he/she will receive a validation error stating that “End Date must be greater than or equal to Start Date”.

• After this, Save the form and Click on Publish button from the ribbon.

5. Conclusion

With the help of this blog, we have understood how to use Nintex Forms to build any form easily. Also, we get to know how using Nintex Forms is so simplified with its rich user-friendly interface compared to the standard SharePoint Online form. Users can build many other forms for their business without any need for programming knowledge. With many other features released regularly, Nintex Forms is improvising day after day and it sure holds a bright future ahead.

The post Nintex Forms: How to Create Form in Office 365? appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

1. What is Nintex Workflow?

Nintex is a platform that consists of tools for Process Management, Workflow Automation, Robotic Process Automation, Document Automation and eSignature. Using Nintex, we can easily manage, improvise, and automate business processes quickly in any industry. It also comes with an advanced form builder that can contain complex logic and helps in creating Nintex forms.

Nintex targets both business and professional developers. It facilitates clients to create workflows without much technical or coding proficiency.

Nintex provides 3 types of Workflow automation tools:

• Nintex Workflow Cloud
• Nintex For SharePoint
• Nintex Office 365

Here, our SharePoint Development team will be focusing more on Nintex for Office 365.

2. What is Nintex Workflow Cloud?

The simplest version of Nintex Office 365 is Nintex Workflow Cloud. Users can simply draw out their processes and drag and drop the required actions. It was released in the year 2016, so it is the latest version of Nintex Workflow. Even then, it is getting power and better every day. Also, it is very easy to use and users do not need prior system knowledge or programming skills to create a workflow. Nintex Workflow Cloud is not installed in the SharePoint environment as it is cloud-based.

• Nintex Workflow Cloud Dashboard
• Nintex Workflow Cloud Designer

3. What is Nintex for SharePoint?

Nintex For SharePoint is made for On-premises versions of SharePoint. There is also a difference between the actions for Nintex for SharePoint On-Prem vs Office 365. Nintex workflow For SharePoint consists of the following different products:

• Nintex For SharePoint 2019
• Nintex For SharePoint 2016
• Nintex For SharePoint 2013
• Nintex Hawkeye
• Nintex App Studio
• Nintex Workflow for Project Server 2013

This version of Nintex also consists of Workflow Reporting which doesn’t exist in the office 365 version and also it is more matured compared to office 365. Although Nintex For SharePoint only works for On-Premise versions of SharePoint, you cannot deploy it in SharePoint online. New features and updates don’t occur very often on Nintex Workflow For SharePoint. So, it sometimes lacks behind office 365 for workflow performance.

4. What is Nintex for Office 365?

This version of Nintex Workflow is widely used and that is for a reason. We can create workflows for SharePoint online using Nintex for Office 365. It consists of a much more friendly and robust user interface and a Rich UI Design compared to the traditional SharePoint Designer 2013. Users can easily build workflow using out-of-the-box controls without any programming skills. Conditional steps and Branching logic are also easily supported here. Making workflow development becomes much faster and easier using Nintex Office 365. It may still lack some of the major features which can be advanced through future releases. You can get Nintex for Office 365 from the Microsoft store.

5. Create a Two-Stage Approval Workflow using Nintex for Office 365

To demonstrate workflow using Nintex Office 365, we have prepared a two-stage approval workflow for the document approval process in a SharePoint Document Library. The author will upload the document which then will go through two groups for approval: Nintex Reviewers Group and Nintex Approvers Group.

1. Scenarios for the Two-Stage Approval Workflow:

First, the Author will upload the new document:

• Any user from the Nintex Reviewers Group will approve the document and it will be forwarded to the Nintex Approvers Group. A user from the Nintex Approvers Group will then approve/reject the document. Mails will be received accordingly to the Author and both the groups.
• Any user from the Nintex Reviewers Group will reject the document and the workflow will stop. Mails will be received accordingly to the Author and both the groups.

Permissions will be assigned in the following ways:

• Administrator users will always be allowed to contribute permission for the document library.
• The Author will be assigned ‘read-only’ permission after uploading the document as he/she shouldn’t be able to make any changes to the document during the approval process. The Nintex Reviewers Group will then be assigned contribute permission.
• After someone from the Nintex Reviewers Group will Approve/Reject the Document, both the Author and the Nintex Reviewers Group will be assigned read permissions. The Nintex Approvers Group will then be assigned contribute permission.
• After someone from the Nintex Approvers Group will Approve/Reject the Document, the Author, Nintex Reviewers Group and Nintex Approvers Group will be assigned read permissions and the workflow will be completed.

2. Steps for Creating the Flow in Nintex Office 365

• Now you can combine and add Nintex Office 365 to your account. You can get this application from the Microsoft Store.
• Login to the SharePoint site and create a SharePoint document library. Here, We have created an Invoice Document Library with the following metadata columns: Invoice Number, P.O. Number, Invoice Date, Description, Review Status, Approval Status, etc.
• As you can see, there is a “Nintex Workflow” option in the command bar.
• We will need to hide the columns Title, Review Status and Approval Status so they would not be displayed in the form. For that go to library settings from the settings option.
• Then, click on advanced settings. Now you will see the first setting “Allow Management of content types?”, select “Yes” for that.
• You can now see the content type section in library settings as shown in the image below. Click on the document content type now.
• All the columns will be displayed now. You can now click on the column that you wish to keep hidden from the form. Later select the Hidden Option.
• Now that we have set up the document library, let’s start the designing of the Nintex Workflow. Now you can tap on the “Nintex Workflow” option
• Now, The Workflow Gallery will open up in the Nintex Workflow Platform as shown in the image below. You can tap on the “Create list workflow” button.
• This will open up the Workflow Designer for us as shown in the image below:
• This is how the two-stage approval workflow will look like:
• We have created two groups using SharePoint OOTB functionalities: Nintex Reviewers and Nintex Approvers. First, we’ll initialize variables for these two groups. For that drag and drop the action “Set Workflow Variable” from the Actions Toolbox and then click on configure option.
• Now we’ll create two variables: Reviewers Group and Approvers Group. Select the “Create New Variable” option. Write the variable name with type text. Here we have kept the value of Reviewers Group as “Nintex Reviewers” (Same as the SharePoint Group Name) and the same for Approvers Group.
• Now, we will use the “Office 365 update item permissions” action from the Actions Toolbox and configure it.
• Here, we can use the advanced lookup to get values from our workflow variables, workflow context or from our list dynamically.
• Now, let’s create a new connection for connecting to our SharePoint Tenant Site so that we can create and assign permission for the list item. Note that only an Administrator can create connections for this. Here, we have created a connection called “Nintex Update Item Permission”.
• After creating the connection, fill the fields for the action as shown below. In the field “List Name” we have passed the current list name. Also, we have set the item to update only when the ID of the Invoice Document Library is equal to the current item ID. So, the permission will be set only for that particular list item.
• Now, we have set the “Inherit Permissions from parent” value as null. With this, it will restrict businesses from granting permission of the items inherited from the parental sites. Also, we have kept the value of “Remove Existing Permission” to yes to remove all existing permissions.
• Now, we want to assign read-only permission to the author after He/she has uploaded the document. The “Created by” metadata column will have the same name and details of the person who has uploaded the document.
• Now, we have to assign the contribution permission to the members of the “Nintex reviewers” Group. So, we’ll add the same action again. But now, there will be a few changes. We’ll set the value of “Remove existing permissions” to no since we do not want to remove the read-only permission of the author.
• Also, we’ll change the target to a group instead of the user.
• Now, we’ll set the permission of the Reviewers Group to Contribute. Here, we have used the variable “Reviewers Group” which we initialized in the first step of the workflow.
• Now, we’ll send an email to the author notifying Him/her that their item has been sent for the Two-Stage Approval process. For that, drag the “Send an Email” action and we’ll configure the action as shown in the image below:
• Now, we’ll start with the first stage of the approval process. For that, we’ll send the email to all members of the Nintex Reviewers Group. If any member of the group approves the document, the document will be sent for the second stage of approval and the “Review Status” field will be assigned Approved Value. If any member of the group rejects the document, the workflow will be stopped and the “Review Status” field will be assigned a Rejected Value.
• From the Toolbox called Actions, you can drag and drop the “Start the task process” and get that into action. Enter the group name in Participants. Set task title to any value of your preference.
• Here, we have kept two task outcomes: Approved and Rejected. Users can add more outcomes if necessary.
• Here, we have checked “Allow Lazy Approval”. With the help of lazy approval, the user can approve and reject tasks from the mail itself. We have kept the sender display name as “Admin” which will be reflected on the front of the email.
• Also, in the “Assignee Options” section, we have kept “Assignment Behaviour” as Parallel to send mail to all members of the group at once.
• Now you can set the completion criteria to the option “wait for first response”. This will make the workflow wait until the first response is received.
• “Enlarge” the initial email options”. Fill out the necessary properties for the same.
• In the “Email body” part we have returned the metadata column values: Document name, P.O. Number, Invoice Number, Invoice Date, Description.
• Also, we have sent the link to the document itself. We can set that with the “Encoded absolute URL” parameter in List Lookup.
• Now, we will be updating the Review Status to Approved/Rejected based on the outcome. For that, we will use the drag and drop method to “Update List Item” action from the Actions Toolbox. Using this action, we can update multiple columns of list items. Here, we have set the Review Status as “Approved” when the task outcome is “Approved” by the Reviewers Group. It will be set to “Rejected” when the task outcome is “Rejected” by Breathe Reviewers Group.
• Now, we’ll send the email to the author notifying them that their document has been Approved/Rejected by Reviewers Group.
• Also, now we need to assign read permission to the Author and Reviewers Group irrespective of the outcome and Contribute permission for the Approvers Group if the item is approved.
• For that, we’ll set “Inherit permission for parent” to “no” for all permissions and “Remove existing permissions” to “yes” for remaining permissions in the first stage of approval.
• This is how our First stage of Approval will look like:
• For the second stage of approval, we will follow the same steps as we used for the first stage of approval with the following changes: This time the group name will be Nintex Approvers group and we’ll update the list item column “Approval Status” as Approved/Rejected based on the outcome.
• Then, mail will be sent to the author. If the outcome is “Approved” then the author will receive a mail notifying that his/her document has been approved by both reviewer and approver.
• If the outcome is “Rejected” the author will receive a mail notifying that his/her document has been approved by the reviewer but has been rejected by the approver.
• Permissions to the item will be assigned as shown below:

6. Conclusion

With the help of this blog, we can understand how to use Nintex Office 365 to build a two-stage approval workflow. Also, we get to know how using Nintex Workflow is so simplified with its user-friendly interface. Users can build many other Nintex workflows and Nintex forms without any need for programming knowledge. We can also build many other Nintex workflows by just using the logic required for the same. With many other features released regularly, Nintex for Office 365 is improvising day after day and it sure holds a bright future ahead.

The post Nintex Workflow Automation: How to Create for Office 365? appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

Additionally, one can choose to run lightweight services on the front-end or application servers. One can easily add or remove a server in the farm and also one can move services to newly added servers without torment. That’s really great for the farm but this leads to some questions like below:

1. How many servers are required on the farm?
2. On which server service is required to configure and run?

Microsoft has answered these questions for users in its blog but also came up with a new farm topology in SharePoint Server 2016 & 2019 called MinRole. The basic concept of this topology is to explicitly run the set of services based on a server role in the SharePoint farm i.e. no other service can be run. In other words – on predefined server roles set-up, MinRole farm topology depends. This farm topology is applicable in both servers – SharePoint 2016 and 2019.

This alternative farm topology to the traditional farm design is designed to optimize the system resources and to maximize performance for users via the predefined server roles. A SharePoint Administrator can assign a server’s role in the SharePoint farm without much effort using this new farm topology. To create a SharePoint farm or to join a server to an existing farm, a server role is required to specify. SharePoint consequently configures the service it needs dependent on a selected specific server role and enhances the performance of the farm according to this farm topology. 

Let’s put in other words, no more creation of service applications 🡪 no more starting of service on different servers in the farm as per the need. 

1. MinRole Farm Topology Advantages

The MinRole farm topology simplifies the work of an end-user related to the installation and configuration of Service Applications and their instances in the SharePoint farms. Along with that below are some of the main benefits of this farm topology.

1. Simplified deployment
   • MinRole topology will take care of the services of the server. 
   • If the farm is set-up as per the recommended MinRole topology then an end-user is only required to pay attention to the functionalities which are required in the farm and SharePoint will deal with the rest part.

2. Improved performance and reliability
   • For quite a long time, Microsoft has been working on SharePoint Online. Under different scenarios, including CPU, disk I/O, memory and network latency, it has broken down the performance attributes of SharePoint.
   • By performing various analyses, we can conclude that both the versions of SharePoint Server 2016 and Sharepoint Server 2019 are enhanced for MinRole Farm Topology.
   • If the farm is set-up as per the recommended MinRole topology then an end-user is able to reduce the network latency and increase the reliability.

3. Simplified capacity planning and farm scalability
   • With respect to the MinRole topology, Microsoft focuses on capacity planning.
   • As per the suggested MinRole topology, if the farm is set-up then one can increasingly use predictable and prescriptive guidance for capacity planning.
   • As SharePoint naturally configure the servers based on MinRole topology, it is currently simpler to add servers into the farm as per the requirements in addition to the above point.

2. Server Roles in MinRole

There are 8 server roles in this farm topology which are roofed under 3 categories.

1. Dedicated Roles
2. Shared Roles
3. Special Roles

1. Dedicated Roles

These roles increase the performance and scalability. Mainly, this type of role is used in large scalable farms. By the use of shared roles, can be used specifically for medium-scale farms.

Under this role, below 4 server roles are placed:

1. Front-end
   • The front-end role servers are optimized for higher performance and performance-sensitive.
   • These servers handle and serve user traffic by executing service instances appropriately based on the user requests on the local server.
   • Basic parts of the Front-end server are the service applications, services and user requests serving components. 
   • The Front-end server and Application server roles have almost the same services set but each server role has a different purpose.

2. Application
   • Basic parts of the Application server are the service applications, services and back-end requests serving components.
   • The purpose of the Application server role is to provide the background processes like Timer Jobs.
   • It can also be the objective of the requests related to search crawl.
   • The servers are streamlined for high throughput.

3. Distributed Cache
   • The basic parts of the Distributed Cache server are the service applications, services and a distributed cache requiring components.
   • The other servers support High Availability but Distributed Cache doesn’t. 
   • These servers provide high-speed caching for particular data types like Newsfeed.
   • In a SharePoint farm, multiple Distributed Cache servers can be added to distribute the load. 
   • Each server is having its own cached data and this cached data is not replicated to any other Distributed Cache server.
   • If suddenly the Distributed Cache server sinks and is not working so, the cached data stored in that server will be lost.

4. Search
   • The basic parts of Search servers are the service applications, services and search-related components.
   • You need to configure the Search topology management when the designated server is defined in the Search role.
   • Search functionalities (e.g. indexing) are handled by these servers.

2. Shared Roles

For fewer servers in a SharePoint farm, these server roles were introduced. The Shared Roles unite with the Dedicated Roles so they can be used in medium-scale farms. As they are running more service, they may achieve higher available system resources.

Under this role, below 2 server roles are placed:

1. Front-end with Distributed Cache
   • On one server, the Front-end and Distributed Cache roles are associated with this server role.
   • You need to meet all the needs of the system if you want to host the server as a shared server.
   • There is an advanced feature introduced in SharePoint Server 2016(Feature Pack 1) during the public update in November. This states that the Minrole is an enhancement to the Share Role. 

2. Application with Search
   • On one server, the Application and Search roles are associated with this shared server role.
   • For hosting a shared server role, a server is required to meet the system requirements.
   • In the November Public Update for SharePoint Server 2016 (Feature Pack 1), this shared role was introduced as an enhancement in MinRole.

3. Special Roles

For testing or development environments, these Special Roles are used. Some services which are not integrated into MinRole are also used in this role.

Under this role, below 2 server roles are placed:

1. Single-Server Farm
   • The Standalone Install mode which is accessible in the previous SharePoint Server releases is supplanted by this Single-Server Farm role.
   • The basic parts of this server role are the service application, services and single-server farm-related components.
   • This server role is used mainly for development and testing. It can be used for production to some extent.
   • In this server role, Only one server is allowed to be used in a SharePoint farm.
   • As the SQL server is not part of this server role, the SharePoint Administrator is required to install and prepare the Microsoft SQL server which is exactly the opposite of the Standalone Install of the previous releases.
   • The Farm Administrator needs to configure the SharePoint Web Application and Farm Services either manually or by executing the Farm Configuration Wizard.

2. Custom
   • The basic parts of the Custom Server role are the service applications, services and other components that an end-user likes to manage, instead of using MinRole for managing them.
   • The Farm Administrator is having full control/responsibility of the service instances which are running on a server of this server role type.
   • To run the services which are not integrated with MinRole, this Custom server role is used.
   • The servers which are assigned to this role are not managed by MinRole.

After adding a new SharePoint server in a SharePoint Farm by an end-user, the user runs the SharePoint Configuration Wizard and the below screen appears for the selection of the server role.

Based on the selected role, SharePoint will configure all the required services based on the selected role for the server. 

Note: At least two servers for each server role is required to be deployed in a SharePoint farm for achieving high availability (HA) in the SharePoint farm.

3. MinRole Topologies

Below farm topologies are recommended to configure services and service applications in the default SharePoint Server.

1. Traditional Topologies

• The traditional 3-tier roles of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 farm can reside on a single server for the development or evolution, or on multiple servers.
• It has the conventional method of architecture. Its architecture includes Application servers, database servers and web Front-end servers.
• To study this topology in more detail, refer to this link.

2. Streamlined Topologies

• Streamlined Topologies, one of the farm topologies is a new approach to SharePoint farm design and can be used as an alternative to the traditional architecture of farm topology.
• Microsoft has designed this topology to advance the system resources and to boost performance.
• In this topology, the distribution of services and components in the SharePoint Server Farm is primarily focused on the maximum system resource of the server hardware.
• The Front-end servers, Batch-processing servers and Database servers are incorporated in this new streamlined topology. 
• To study this topology in more detail, refer to this link.

While the MinRole Farm Topology provides 3 mentioned ways to set-up a SharePoint farm:

1. Content Farms
   • The sites and service applications are hosted on this farm.
   • Additionally, this farm can also consume the service applications of the different farms.
2. Services Farms
   • The service applications which are devoured by the different farms are hosted on this farm.
   • In this farm, Service Applications like Managed Metadata, Search, User Profile, etc. are hosted.
3. Search Farms
   • The Search Service applications which are devoured by the other farms are hosted in this farm.

Different MinRole Server roles are required by each of the above SharePoint farms. Refer to the below table with the mapping of the server role and farm types – Content farm, Services farm and Search farm.

Now you can easily set-up multiple farm SharePoint technologies using MinRole content farm topology. For more information on this, refer to the table and image given below.

Table Reference: Microsoft

4. MinRole simplify the deployment

On the basis of server role, MinRole is initiated and terminated based on multiple service instances of each server that can be operated using MinRole.

Also, the SharePoint starts the basic set of service instances to create a new farm or a new server is added to an existing farm as indicated by the server role. Moreover, the additional services which are required to enable and start their matching service instances in the farm as per the server’s role are also recognized. Finally, they are now able to differentiate between services created in the farm and services that require assistance with the service application.

Thus based on this information, it also starts those service instances according to the server’s role, too.

The appropriate management of service instances doesn’t occur just when a server is joined to a farm by MinRole. The MinRole plays its role by starting or stopping service instances on the existing servers of the farm according to their server role as soon as any service is enabled/disabled in the farm or a service application is created/deleted in the farm. This assures that every server of the SharePoint farm is running precisely as per the services it wants.

The SharePoint Farm Administrators would now be able to concentrate on what services are required to run on the farm administration instead of worrying about where to run them as an outcome of this topology. For whatever length of time, SharePoint deals with these types of details if the SharePoint Server farm is set-up using MinRole farm topology.

5. Opting out of MinRole

By the adoption of this customer Server role, we can now easily configure like-alike versions of SharePoint like SharePoint 2016 03 2019 and their previous versions. The SharePoint Administrator who is not planning to use the MinRole Farm topology can achieve it by assigning some or all servers in the farm to the Custom role and then can manage those servers manually i.e. managing their service instances on those servers. If there is a need to make no change in the deployment scripts then the SharePoint Administrator is required to consider the ServerRoleOptional parameter.

6. Conclusion

With this new farm topology in the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019, the manual work of the SharePoint site administrator is decreased up to a certain extent. This SharePoint farm topology manages all service instances on the servers of the farm based on the server’s role, increases the performance and provides the high availability of the servers. It also provides options to an end-user to follow the traditional farm topology by its Custom role. It is content farm topology facilities the various options to farm set-up as per the organization scale. Choose the best suitable MinRole farm topology and give it a try!!!

More useful Resource:
8 Best Practices in SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Development
Search Experience in SharePoint Online

The post SharePoint Farm Topology in 2016 & 2019 Servers appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

Enlisted below are the tools and services that should be installed or configured prior to proceeding with this blog:
SharePoint Designer 2013.
Business Data Connectivity Service. Refer here to configure.
Secure Store Service Application. Refer here to configure.
Now we will start exploring how businesses can create and connect with external data using SharePoint services. Let us start with how to create an external content type.

1. How do I Create an External Content Type in SharePoint?

Let us understand step by step how we can create an external content type in SharePoint.

1. Open SharePoint Designer 2013 🡪 Open Site 🡪 enter the URL of the site and credentials.

2. The next step is to click on External Content Type from the left pane 🡪 click on external content type from the ribbon, it will create a new external content-type:

3. Give content type a name and then specify Display Name. If the Display Name is not specified, the SharePoint designer will take Display Name the same as Name.

4. Now the next step is to press on the “Click here to discover external data source and define operations” and it will add a data source.

5. Click on Add connection button 🡪 select SQL Server from the drop-down. We can select .NET Type or WCF Service as a data source, but for this article, we will go with the SQL Server.

6. Enter Database Server, Database Name, check radio button Connect with Impersonated Windows Identity, and enter Security Store Application ID that is created during Secure Store Service Application configuration. Click on the OK button.

7. Expand the connected database and tables’ tabs 🡪 select a table that needs to be created as an external list. Right-click on that table and click on Create All Operations.

8. It will open a wizard 🡪 click Next 🡪 Select the column which is an identifier for the table and check the checkbox Map to Identifier.

9. Now, select a column that the user wants to show in the picker and tick the checkbox Show in Picker.

10. Users can select any column that they require and check the checkbox option ‘Required’ and ‘Read-Only’ accordingly.

11. Click on next, this screen will be used to set filters on the external content type.

12. It is recommended to add a limit filter to avoid larger result sets. To add a limit filter, click on Add Filter Parameter button.

13. From the right pane, click on Click to Add, provide a name for the filter, and select the Limit option from the Filter Type drop-down list. Click on the OK button.

14. Enter a value in Default Value, now you can insert a limit as per the requirement. Click on the Finish button.

The next step is to understand the necessary constraints and add rules and permissions to specific content types.

2. Permissions: BCS External Content Type

1. To grant permission on external content type, open Central Administration 🡪 Application Management 🡪 Manage service applications.

2. Click on the Business Data Connectivity Service Application.

3. Select the External Content Type and select Set Permissions from the drop-down.

4. Enter Users/Security Groups that require permission and click on Add.

5. Check the available option Execute, and check ‘Propagate permissions to all methods of this external content type. If you do so, you will overwrite existing permissions’ if permission is required to set in all methods of the content type only. Then click OK.

3. Permissions: Members to ‘Secure Store Application ID’

1. To enable CRUD operations on an external list, the users can give necessary permissions to the Secure Store Service Application.

2. Users who want to consume external lists must be members of the created Secure Store Application ID.
3. To set a member of the Secure Store Application ID, open Central Administration 🡪 Application Management 🡪 Manage service applications.

4. Click on Secure Store Service Application.

5. Select the Secure Store Application ID and click Edit. To create a Secure Store Target Application follow this article.

6. Click Next.

7. Click Next.

8. Add Users/Security Groups who are going to use this external list for the members and then click on OK button.

4. How to Create an External List in SharePoint?

1. Open SharePoint site in SharePoint designer, click on External Content Types from the left panel and select the newly created external content type.

2. From the ribbon, now you can click on the Operations Design View.

3. To create an external list, expand the connected database and tables’ tabs 🡪 select a table that needs to be created as an external list 🡪 click Create Lists & Forms option from the ribbon and it will open “Create List and Form” pop-up to create an external list.

4. Check the radio button Create New External List and provide List Name.
5. Provide Read Item Operation and System Instance. They will take you to the default value if the user does not want to modify the value to some other.

6. Click on OK and a new list is created.
7. To check the newly created list, go to the Site contents of the site.

8. As shown in the image below, now you can Click and see the newly created list and take a complete look and feel of how it should appear.

9. Records in SQL Server table.

New item list SharePoint

10. Now if you want to add a  new item to the list, you can do it by clicking on the new item button.

11. You can easily add a new item to the list after this process and the below image shows how the new list will look like.

12. You can effortlessly insert all the newly created items into the SQL server table.

13. All you need to do is- select an item that the user wants to edit and click on Edit Item option from the ribbon.

14. This will enable you to edit the item and then click on Save to store new changes.

15. After clicking on save, the changes made in the list will also be reflected in the SQL Server table.

16. In case of deleting an item, select the item that the user wants to delete. Press Delete key or click Delete Item option from the Items menu in the ribbon, a confirmation message will be displayed. Click OK if the item is required to delete.

17. The record will also get deleted from the SQL Server table.

5. Conclusion

In this blog, finally using Sharepoint you will be able to process the display of external content. To maintain the data of a huge organization at different data sources and to be able to share using various sites developed in a cross-platform environment. If the organization has one SharePoint site and a site that uses SQL Server in the back-end then use the SharePoint OOTB functionalities i.e. external list. A SharePoint site is able to communicate to any table of the SQL Database and also perform the CRUD operations without using a single line of code.

The post Implement CRUD Operations on SQL Table in SharePoint appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

Definitely, there are very few people who aren’t introduced to this powerful tool. Power BI is a SaaS-based data collective business intelligence platform powered by Microsoft. Since the inducement of Power BI in 2014, Microsoft has provided regular updates and made it more useful for Power BI customers. Power BI works on converting your raw and scattered data into interactive visualizations in one place that helps users in making business decisions. Hundreds of certified connectors are provided in the Power BI platform to connect data from different systems and even from files.

With this post, our SharePoint Developers have explored some of the most influential aspects of Microsoft Power BI before we start using it. Let’s know deeper about what is Power BI?

1. Introduction to Power BI

Often what businesses assume is Power BI is just a business intelligence tool. Well, that’s just partly correct because it is much more than that. Microsoft Power BI is actually a data visualization tool that converts data from varied sources into visually interesting and interactive dashboards. 

Define Power BI – is an intelligent business intelligence tool that can be used for cloud-based apps or other organizations to collate, manage and analyze data from different sources in a convenient way. A business intelligence platform powered with excessive information helps businesses make the right decision at the right time.

The operability of the Power BI site is very simple. It extracts the data from multiple sources puts them together and intelligently gets converted into visually compelling data. This data can be used to make informed data-driven decisions. It consumes information on Power BI reports in the form of graphs, charts, snapshots, and other multimedia formats. 

If we were to define some specific sources of Power BI then it would include countless data sources like Excel spreadsheet files, word docs databases, and other information that’s available on-premise data sources or in the cloud. 

The answer is- Power BI is all of this. It is a Windows-based desktop application also called Power BI desktop, and it is also an online SaaS-based app that can be conveniently accessed from all locations also called Power BI service. It is also versioned as a mobile app for Windows, iOS, or Android-based phones or tablets. These all different versions of Power BI like SaaS, Desktop, and mobile Power BI apps are used on different platforms. 

Let’s see how each one of these Power BI tools works distinctly.

2. Power BI Desktop

Microsoft Power BI Desktop is a free data visualization tool that you install on Windows computers to create reports and visualizations for yourself. It supports different databases and systems to extract business data. It is an extremely handy tool for data scientists and developers to transform your information into meaningful visualizations. Power BI Desktop also offers data warehouse capabilities along with data discovery and preparation. You can prepare reports using this tool but sharing of information is not possible within the tool.

Power BI Users can:

1. Connect, transform, and model data.
2. Connect multiple sources into one dataset and generate reports.
3. A vast variety of visualizations are provided to add to your Power BI report. Additionally, you can install custom visualizations from the market or develop customized Power BI visuals for yourself.
4. Choose a color theme from existing templates and also create a new one with your own set of colors.
5. Setup rules for row-level security.
6. Power query editor and DAX queries to shape your data.
7. Performance check for visualizations.
8. Support Python.
9. Publish reports in Power BI service.

3. Power BI Service

Microsoft Power BI is a cloud service platform that allows users to create interactive dashboards and share the developed reports. It supports light report editing and has a prime focus on the collaboration of teams and organizations. Most of the features of the Power BI desktop are supported in Power BI services too. Power BI service tools, let users share their own reports and among other users who can access these reports and Power BI dashboard using a Power BI website or Power BI mobile apps for Windows, Android, and Apple.

Power BI service has below extensive features to explore:

• Share dashboards and reports with other Power BI users.
• Users can subscribe and set alerts on reports and the Power BI dashboard.
• Setup permissions – who can view and edit your reports.
• Manage row-level security.
• Create different workspaces.
• Create Power BI apps to securely share dashboards and reports of business intelligence to other users in teams.
• Analyze data in excel.
• Securely share reports in other systems via embed API.
• Schedule data refresh and set up on-premise gateways for legacy data.

Few things you could not achieve using only Power BI Service and hence you need Power BI Desktop:

• Add/edit rules for row-level security.
• Create calculated columns.
• Advanced query editor.
• Python and DAX support.
• Data transformation and modeling.

4. Power BI Report Server

Power BI Report Server is known for its on-premises services that it offers as a report server with a web portal that enables the users to display and manage reports and KPIs. Power BI report server comes with paginated reports, Power BI reports KPIs, and mobile reports. This makes the end-user of any business site access reports in various different ways like getting an email of it in their inbox or viewing them on a mobile device or web browser.

Power BI Report Server offers some extensive features like –

• Invert and continuous axis sorting.
• CALCULATE filter
• Smart guides for object alignment.
• CROSSFILTER to support different relationships
• Visual Zoom Slider
• ArcGIS to support Power BI

5. Power BI Mobile

Power BI Mobile enables the users to stay connected to their business data from anywhere and at any time. This means that mobile BI is just a touch away. It enables every business owner and its employees to monitor the business from the phone and help them access on-premises data that is stored in the data cloud or SQL server. Power BI Mobile applications offer a 360-degree view of all the information.

Power BI Mobile offers some extensive features like –

• Flexible and secure mobile access
• Push notifications for data alerts
• Easily annotate reports with a single touch
• Reports for mobile users with a live dashboard 

6. Power BI embedded

Power BI embedded analytics is something that enables the users to embed their Power BI content like dashboards, reports, and tiles, in a website or web application. It helps in offering compelling data experiences to the end-users of your business and enables them to act as per the insights they get from the data. It also offers exceptional customer-facing reports, analytics, and dashboards in the business app. Besides this, Power BI Embedded is helpful in reducing the developer resources as it automates everything from app monitoring to deployment of analytics.

Power BI embedded offers some extensive features like – 

• It offers hourly services without any usage limit.
• It is a cost-effective solution for businesses that want to have powerful business intelligence.
• Helps in merging its capabilities with Power BI Viewer.
• Facilitates implementation of data governance aspects.

7. Power BI Benefits

Power BI is Secure

Power BI comes with various security features that help business owners to protect important and sensitive data. It also enables businesses to meet security and compliance standards. For instance, with the use of Microsoft’s Cloud App Security feature, Power BI offers sophisticated analytics to combat cyber threats. Besides this, sensitivity labels of Power BI make it very easy for admins to alert customers about what data is sensitive. 

Power BI Offers Business Intelligence for All

Power BI is a platform that empowers different types of organizations to create data-driven cultures. This means that the business decisions are made as per the data or information companies have. It results in organizations accomplishing difficult tasks with the help of business intelligence assets. Basically, Power BI enables companies to create an effect where all the employees of the firm can make decisions according to trustworthy and real-time data.

Power BI Easily Connects With Data Sources

Power BI enables the connection of myriad data sources and this includes everything from file data sources such as CSV and Excel to database sources like Snowflake and Oracle database to online data sources such as Adobe Analytics and Salesforce.

Power BI is Improving Everyday

With each passing day, Microsoft is pouring money and time to improve Power BI and this shows its dedication to making it the best data analytics platform in the world. Every now and then new features are added to this tool and the existing ones are improved and tweaked. 

Power BI has Artificial Intelligence Capabilities

Power BI comes with knowledge of artificial intelligence that enables the users to get valuable information, data, and reporting. Besides, it also provides three powerful AI visualisations that are useful to software developers when they need to dive deep into important data and generate insights.

8. Power BI Features

Datasets Filtration

Dataset means the set of data that are created to gather data from different data sources. The developers use datasets to create different kinds of visualisations. The dataset can be created by gathering data from a single source such as an Excel workbook. Then one can filter the datasets and can create smaller subsets that hold important information. In this case, Power BI offers a wide range of in-build connectors like Oracle, Facebook, Excel, Salesforce, SQL database, and more to the users who can easily use these sources and create datasets.

Flexible Tiles

Tile means a single block that comes with Power BI dashboard visualization. Tiles are generally used to separate each informative visualization and this provides a clearer view of data. These tiles are adjustable and can be placed anywhere in the Power BI dashboard according to the user’s convenience.

Informative Reports

In Power BI, reports are a combination of different types of visualization on dashboards that are relevant to specific business topics. A report displays a structured presentation of the business data and also reveals insights from it. This helps the users to easily understand the graph of the business and it can also be shared with other users or employees of the firm.

9. Components of Power BI

Power Query

Power Query is a component for data transformation. It enables the developers to find, connect, and combine the data sources to meet the required needs.  Business analysts use this to transform, integrate and enhance big data into Power BI web service.

Power View

Power View is available in SharePoint, Excel, SQL Server, and Power BI. This technology helps in creating interactive graphs, charts, maps, and more. 

Power Pivot

Power Pivot is a component that follows a data modeling technique to help users develop data models. It uses Data Analysis Expression (DAX) language for modeling both simple and complex data.

Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop is a tool for Power Pivot, Power Query, and Power View. It enables us to have all information under one system.

Power Map

Power Map is used for Power BI and Excel. It is a 3-D data visualization tool that allows the users to map the business data and plot millions of rows to visualize data on Bing Maps.

10. Power BI Connectivity Types

Power BI provides majorly four types of connectivity depending on the data sources connector you are using.

1. Import
2. DirectQuery
3. LiveConnection
4. Composite (Mixed-mode)

These different connectivity types have their benefits and limitations. You should check all types to choose the best suitable options.

Import

Import is the most important yet common feature of Power BI where almost all data sources can be used. It is extremely important for businesses to understand all the data that is to be imported and can be stored in a PBIX file. Storing data within the file and in-memory increases the performance for retrieving, querying, and loading reports and thus makes this connectivity type the fastest among all types. If the tables are large then this application is not applicable. Since the performance is dependent on the memory and machine processor, you will feel slowness during development while using the Power BI desktop tool on a local computer with a large amount of data.

Import connectivity type provides you to use the full capabilities of the Power BI desktop tool. DAX functions are fully supported by this. Also, it stores all data in memory. Power BI lets you have the benefit of using the full capacity of datasets as permitted by licenses of Microsoft Power BI.

When you are using Import type, you will have Reporting, Data, and Modelling – 3 option tabs displayed in the Power BI Desktop tool.

DirectQuery

The next in line is the Direct query. As the name suggests, it directly fires queries of data from the source. You cannot store any data in the Power BI report file in the Import connectivity type. DirectQuery connectivity type is available only with relational database sources. The Power BI allows the storage of only the metadata of the source i.e.: table name, field names, relationships, etc in the Power BI file, except for actual data. This gives a major benefit when working with large data tables to achieve 1 GB restrictions of dataset size.

When interacting with Power BI reports, it requests data as per the applied filters into the data sources using the details stored in the file. Also, when data often get updates, you will get nearly real-time data with this connection type. Performance may decrease since the firing of queries is in real-time and no data is available in the file. But there are several techniques provided to minimize the queries to the source.

Since the data storage is not in the Power BI file, it has certain limitations in the capabilities of the Power BI desktop. Many DAX operations did not support this till last year. There are restrictions to some transformations in Power Query like changing column data types, splitting columns, removing duplicates, etc. Also, the returning of data in DirectQuery has limitations to 1 million rows, unless you have a Power BI premium license.

When you are using the DirectQuery type, you will have Reporting and Modelling – 2 option tabs displayed in the Power BI Desktop tool.

LiveConnection

You cannot store data in the Power BI file for the LiveConnection connectivity type. All the data is queried using LiveConnection in the existing analysis Services model to interact with reports. You can only use Azure Analysis Service, SQL Server Analysis Service, and Power BI datasets in Power BI services within this connection type. Since these sources are analytical services, performance for querying is much better than DirectQuery. Generally, we use Power BI for live connections in an enterprise deployment.

As the data is not stored in the Power BI file, the majority of people get confused between DirectQuery and LiveConnection types, but both are so much different and cannot be used on behalf of each other.  Since Analytical Services works on data, you will not have much freedom in data transformation and authoring. Only report-level DAX measures are available to add. These measures are in the Power BI file but cannot make changes in the Analysis Service model data.

You will have all reporting capabilities when you use LiveConnection and thus only the Reports option tab is in display mode in the Power BI desktop tool.

Composite (Mixed-mode)

In the past, Developers couldn’t create connections to multiple sources using Import and DirectQuery in a single Power BI report. But now it’s possible using the Composite connection type. You can include one table from the SQL server using DirectQuery type and another as an Import connection type in the same report. This way you can include a small amount of data in the Power BI file and connect large tables with DirectQuery type.

You have seen the variations in connection types to connect data sources in Power BI. This variation gives you the power to accommodate different types and sizes of data sources at your ease.

Let’s see licensing info for Power BI cost, luckily they have only 2 variations in that:

11. Licensing Information

Power BI service has 2 licenses: Power BI Pro license – to get started with and Power BI Premium license – advanced data analytics, big data support, and dedicated cloud compute.

Read More about Power BI + Google Analytics = Power Analytics

Have a look at the below comparisons before choosing licenses for your use:

Features	Power BI Pro	Power BI Premium
Pricing	10 $ per month per user	4995 $ instance per month
Included with office 365 Enterprise E5	Yes	No
Dedicated cloud compute and storage resources	No	Yes
On-premise reporting through Power BI report server	No	Yes
Compute Processing environment	Shared	Dedicated
Content deployment in multiple regions	No	Yes
Incremental data refresh	Yes	Yes
Data refreshes per day	8	48
Allocate compute resources	No	Yes
Monitor performance for compute resources	No	Yes
Maximum size of individual dataset	1 GB	10 GB
Maximum storage	10 GB Per User	100 GB
Data security encryption	Yes	Yes

You may notice the supported dataset size that Power BI supports in the above table. Perhaps you feel that Power BI is not useful when you have large data to serve. But this will surprise you to know that Microsoft uses some data compression techniques called VertiPaq storage engine to minimize the size of data after importing.

VertiPaq storage engine compresses the data and reduces the size up to 10x smaller. Although there is no specific equation that defines it . It depends on how you have managed the architecture of your raw data. Usually, we see a compression in data from 10 GB of source data and made of 1 GB in size in Power BI reports.

Despite the VertiPaq storage engine compressing the data, it is important that you only load the required data in Power BI to minimize the data source size. Because the gradual data refreshes in the report will increase the data size. Finally, this will directly or indirectly have an effect on the performance of reports and visualization.

12. Data Reduction Techniques

There are 8 different ideas as per the suggestion of leading company  Microsoft to reduce the data size

• Remove unnecessary columns
  Microsoft recommends that you include only those columns in the model that are mandatory for reports. Your requirements may change over time, but you should be aware that data modeling and including new columns in models is easy.
• Remove unnecessary rows
  Microsoft recommends that you include only a few rows in the model that are mandatory in reports. By careful observations, you can set filters and allow only required rows in reports, which reduces the report size and also increases report performance. For example, you only need current year sales data for your report then instead of including all year sales data, you can filter and include only this year’s sales data rows in reports.
• Group by and summarize
  These charts and visualizations need summarized data, and SharePoint developers normally pull all data first in Microsoft Power BI and then shape them accordingly. Instead, you can pre-summarize data in Power BI that will reduce its size, and after importing to Power BI again, with a reduction in the dataset. You can shrink the dataset size which is one of the effective ways to eliminate multiple rows and columns.
• Optimize Column data types
  VertiPaq storage engine has different methods for each column for compression. There is compression seen in numeric columns with high margins and perhaps decreases the size of the dataset. So, it’s advisable to check and set proper data types for columns in the table after importing the data. For example, if you have one column “Lead Number” with alpha-numeric values, like “L00001, L00002, L00003…”. Power BI will detect this as a text column due to alpha-numeric values. Since the prefix of the numbers is already fixed in this column, you can remove the prefix and the column converts into number type. For the large tables, this minor change will give a huge effect on data compression and thus data reduction.
• Preference for custom columns
  Power BI provides facilities to create custom columns in tables. The VertiPaq storage engine stores custom columns just like Power Query sourced columns. These columns are less effective during data reduction and take more time during data refreshes each time. Also, it’s advisable to add custom columns via Power Query editor instead of using direct Dax queries on models because Dax query custom columns are built once all Power query tables are refreshed and it increases the refresh time. However, if you create these calculated columns in the SQL server or any other systems before importing into Power BI will reduce the calculation efforts inside the engine and increase the performance.
• Disable Power Query Load
  By default, Power Query is enabled in Power BI that fires a report to integrate data between different systems. But this has to be performed within the same report. To avoid the loading of the query, you can disable it in the query editor as shown in the below image



• Disable auto date/time
  Power BI Desktop has one option called “Auto Date/Time” which creates new data columns for storing data. These fragments of instances are displayed in the year, month, and day format for better filter options available. But when we use this for large tables in reports, these new columns increase the size of the dataset. You can disable this option for date-time columns on which you don’t need such filters.
• Switch to Mixed mode
  If you want to determine the storage of each table, the Power BI desktop application can help. It enables you to easily bifurcate and create space in the storage. It suggests using composite connectivity – mixed mode to get the data. Either you can import data in the Power BI dataset, or you can use direct queries in the source system. This will help you arrange data as per your need. The direct query option is very useful when there are large size tables and data needs constant updates. This mixed mode will be helpful for summarized data. It will help you tap on the direct query option and other data can reside on the dataset.

13. Final words

Our modern business world is continuously plunging in data. And as we know that every move we take, builds a new record of data. A Power BI is a Business Intelligence magic tool that benefits users in understanding how data works and makes business processes more productive. It also gives clarity on how eliminating unnecessary storage space using Power BI can make tasks efficient. We hope this is an insightful blog, that shows a true and practical sense of what is Power BI and how to use Power BI to manage your data strategically.

More Related Blog Post
BI Tools – Microsoft Power BI vs. Google Data Studio

The post What is Power BI? appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

The introduction of technology has a whooping impact on businesses. Just like we see businesses hopping from one technology to another, the reason behind it is the advancement it offers in terms of technology. Consumers using Office 365 have now moved to SharePoint SPFx. Now if you are not familiar with and wonder what SPFx is then, it is SharePoint Framework defined as a “page and web component paradigm that provides complete support for client-side SharePoint development, simple interaction with SharePoint data, and supports open source tooling.”It is a template for creating SharePoint platform modifications. The Framework is built around the idea of creating client-side applicationsapps that interact with the current SharePoint UX.

In this blog, we will be exploring more about what SharePoint SPFx is, how it can be used and its best practices. So let’s start with

2. What is SharePoint SPFx?

SharePoint SPFx is a simple way of utilizing data through open source tools.The modifications can be easily applied and customizations are simpler. It enables you to use whatever JavaScript framework you choose to develop SPFx solutions, and constructing SharePoint solutions isn’t restricted to Windows and Visual Studio.

Because SharePoint Framework makes use of a widely known web development stack, spfx solutions may be created on any platform, including OS X and Linux, using any code editor of your choosing. In this Microsoft powered SharePoint development model, it does not employ a proprietary model but rather tools and techniques that are widely utilised by developers across all platforms and stacks. In addition, the Product Group is dedicated to building their solutions on top of the framework using only publicly available APIs, which will support developers.

SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is the latest development model for SharePoint developers enabling them to use the features for the creation of custom functionality with responsive design compatibility in both SharePoint server and SharePoint Online sites.There are plethora of benefits that businesses may get if they use SharePoint Framework. 

One of the most significant advantages is that developers may work in their chosen development environment. This approach is applicable to any JavaScript platform.

• The first advantage is to leverage current web technology and utilities to construct and alter components of contemporary SharePoint pages.
• They can also use it to create apps that adhere to the most recent mobile standards.
• Iframes are completely absent.
• SPFx runs in the current user’s browser. SPFx allows for quicker browser rendering and standard page rendering DOM
• All of the controls are responsive and are displayed in the standard DOM.
• SPFx is framework-independent.
• You are free to use whatever framework you choose.
• Anything goes, including React, Angular, and Knockout frameworks.
• SPFx provides full support to open source development tools such as npm, TypeScript, and Yeoman generator, and webpack.
• It is compatible with both old and contemporary SharePoint pages. It can also be used to extend Microsoft teams.
• SPFx development is safe and secure.

3. What is the SharePoint Framework Used For?

Initially before the advent of SharePoint, the components were built in Visual Studio using C# and Client-Side Object Model (CSOM) or Server-Side Object Model (SSOM) assemblies.This was a complicated process.This strategy resulted in over-engineered systems with complicated deployment methods. This was frequently placed on a server. While on the other hand when the solutions were created using the Sharepoint framework development paradigm, it offered a simpler deployment procedure. The solution is client-side development, therefore there is no need for a dedicated server.

But with the announcement of Sharepoint by Microsoft in response to evolving web technologies and customer requests for more extensibility possibilities.SharePoint Framework solutions’ deployment, maintenance, and development are simplified and do not need server-side activities, allowing the developer complete control over the deployment process.Furthermore, developers have the freedom to select their preferred programming tool.

Microsoft is already expanding its capabilities by adding updates and SPFx has some new and advanced features for simpler development. Thereby, it is important to follow the best practices to keep the development intact without breaking any functionalities. With our expertise and substantial experience in SPFx development, we have curated the below mentioned best practices and guidelines that can be used during the development project of the SPFx client side web parts.

4. Best Practices for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Development

1. Check for the latest SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Package

Start with SPFx evolution, Microsoft frequently comes with the latest updates of its packages that contain the fixes from previous releases as well as new capabilities. It is important to check the functionalities and bugs with the new release. It is advised to download the latest version of the package by reading the functionalities from Microsoft which will eliminate the hurdles and simplify the process of tracking down the issue if there is any version problem.

2. Update the Outdated Packages

The updated and latest packages are downloaded by Yeoman while creating a new SPFx webpart. But it is possible that those packages might get outdated over a period and hence it is important to update them. You can identify the package through the below command,

npm outdated command is used to get the list of outdated npm packages. This will list the current version of the package installed along with the latest version available for the packages that need to be upgraded. You can update SPFx package through the below command,

npm install mypackagename@newversion –save

3. Save Dependencies

Once the package to be installed is identified for the spfx web parts, the best practice is to save the package. This is helpful while migrating the spfx web parts from one environment to another as it will install the latest package without jumping to the major version. Sometimes, it is possible that the latest package has some bugs and that can cause issues to the existing package.

4. Lock Dependencies

Generally, the SPFx code is distributed without the node modules folder as that can be downloaded using the npm install command. But it is an unsaid fact that the code should be compatible in all the versions of npm package installation.

Locking the packages will make the code work without breaking the functionality in any version of the npm package. npm shrinkwrap is used to lock the versions of the installed packages and will generate the file named npm-shrinkwrap.json containing the versions of the installed packages and dependencies used. This file will be used to create the dependency tree while npm install.

5. Usage of CDN Files

Earlier, we were using the JS and CSS files by uploading them in any folder. But in SPFx, as per the best practice CDN path is recommended to increase the loading of the pages faster. For online tenants, using the CDN path, they will render the pages quickly to the end-users as the files are cached. The nature of CDN is that it will store the CSS, JS, Images, favicons, etc. closer to the user’s environment. You can enable the CDN in Microsoft 365 OR deploy web part on Azure CDN

6. Usage of Office UI Fabric and Fabric React

Currently, the developers are more adaptive to using bootstrap for UI rather than Office UI Fabric even though Office UI Fabric is the official framework by Microsoft for Office 365. Following are some of the perks that businesses can achieve using office UI fabric.

• The UI will be in sync with Office 365.
• Additional features are imbibed as an update in the software by Microsoft to meet the needs of the businesses and their users

7. Deployment of App Package at Site Collection Level

SPFx App package has many unexplored features that need to be deployed at a tenant level. It is advisable to deploy the App Package at the SharePoint Site Collection level if the SPFx development is used in a single sharepoint site collection. If the same tenant is used for UAT and Production then this option will not be available. i.e. same tenant but different site collection for UAT and Production site.

8. Optimization SPFx (SharePoint Framework) Production Builds

Below are a few points that should be followed for a better and optimized performance while coding.

• Try to load the third-party library using CDN paths rather than downloading them and using them.
• Import the components which are used in code instead of importing all the libraries.
• It is best practice to always use release builds for production environments.
• Try to minimize the HTTP calls
• Install the Webpack Bundle Analyzer to identify the generated bundle size and verify the bundle contents.

5. Conclusion

SharePoint Framework is a highly adapted framework by SharePoint developers for doing customization in SharePoint Online Modern UI and SharePoint on-premises 2016 Feature Pack 2 onwards. We hope you exploit all the business opportunities by following the guidelines and best practices of SharePoint Framework Development while building its solutions to avoid any discrepancies, extend your capabilities and enhance performance optimization.

More Blogs on SharePoint Framework
SharePoint Development Methods
Sharepoint Framework Extensions – Field Customizer

The post SharePoint Framework (SPFX) Best Practices appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

Microsoft is the fastest growing technology company that offers almost all types of business services. From in-built applications to subscription-based applications, they offer an all-inclusive service to businesses. To name a few, Microsoft has Office 365, on-premises data sources SharePoint, Excel, Office 365, Power BI, Microsoft Dataverse, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and so on. The list would get endless and their services won’t. One of them is Microsoft Power platform. We already know what Power platform is, we will know it in depth from our previous blogs on canvas apps and model driven apps. But, we will have a quick brief to understand what power apps are, power apps portals their advantages and features. 

Lets dive quickly into the basics first for more information.

2. What are Power Apps?

The definition of PowerApps says that it is fundamentally a Platform as a Service application platform. This Microsoft Power Platform  enables you to develop Mobile Apps for Android, iOS, Windows (Modern Apps), and nearly any other browser, operating system or device.It is basically available to make mobility possible in every way.

You can use PowerApps as a mobile apps.Traditionally, mobile app development has entailed building apps for each operating system on which they must operate (one for iOS, one for Android, one for Windows).Non-usage of Power apps is that it effectively triples development workload, doubles supporting expenditures, and increases the number of development resources required to build business apps in your company.

It handles the differences across operating systems and just allows you to run your programmes. Power App can be called as a container that enables easier to operate mobile apps across mobs.Now we know,what is your next question, how does power apps work? Lets see it from the scratch.

3. How Does Power Apps Work?

PowerApps was created with the intention of being used for BUSINESS Mobile Apps — that is, for internal usage/for employees.

You’re not going to make a PowerApp to share with the entire globe.

These are not intended for consumer consumption, owing to the licencing model and technological constraints with sharing with third-party users.

PowerApps is an excellent drag-and-drop user interface that allows users to build a mobile app by adding different controls i.e. text field, choice field, media pictures, video, camera controls for your phone), forms, dashboards and screens. You may also link to additional data sources or save data directly within the app.Once you’ve developed an app, all you have to do is publish it and it’ll be available for download.

4. What are PowerApps Portal and What are its Benefits ?

Power Apps Portals is a Microsoft Power Platform component that allows organisations to develop low-code, flexible, customised websites that allow internal and external users to engage with specific Dynamics 365 data and its capabilities. It allows external users secure access to Dynamics 365 data.

Multitude of benefits of Power Apps Portals that makes business bend over the usage of these technologies.

• The development lifecycle becomes faster as the power apps portals can be built within some days.
• The look and feel of the application becomes interactive,smart and engaging
• Power Apps Portals provides protection from internal and external resources for data, or commercial authentication such as linkedin Microsoft or any other enterprise providers.
• Empower your customer service for customers to either contact you via self-service portals.
• Data interactions through a power apps portal remain safe and may be managed using dependable authentication mechanisms.
• Access your power apps portals from any device — access them from smartphones, tablets, or desktop computers, allowing you to access them from anywhere.
• Simple to maintain – internal administrators may easily change information and add new resources.

5. When to Use PowerApps Portals for Your Business?

Power Apps Portals are mostly used for two purposes:

The first reason to use power apps portals is when you wish to create a public–facing website that anonymous and/or authorised individuals may visit.

The second purpose to use power apps portals is to provide an integrated experience with other Microsoft technologies, such as embedding a Power BI dashboard and/or report into your website. When a user submits a form on your website, a workflow is triggered.To track solution usage using Application Insights.

Well, this is not our first blog on Power Apps, its been a series of blogs!!! This is the last blog of this series. If you haven’t visited our previous blogs, then please go through them.

1. Power Apps → Canvas Apps
2. Power Apps → Model-Driven Apps

6. Power Apps Portals

Let’s create a power apps Portal in which a user can log-in using his/her LinkedIn account. But before proceeding, an environment creation is required for creating Portal

Note: SharePoint developers can also create a Power apps Portal in the current environment you have logged in if no other portal of the same type exists.

1. Create an Environment

• Log in to Admin Center of PowerApps using the URL https://admin.powerapps.com.
• Under Environments, create a new environment by clicking “+New environment” and adding the required details.
  
• Once the environment is created, it will ask for creating a database.
  
• After creating the database, switch to a new environment.

7. Create Power Apps Portals

• Navigate to the Power Apps platform using URL https://make.powerapps.com.
• Click on “Apps” on the left navigation menu.
  
• Select Portal under the “+ New app” option.
• Enter the Portal details and click on Create.
  
• While the app is provisioning, notifications will pop up on the right side.
• After the app is provisioned, it will appear under the Apps section.
• Edit the app as per your requirement.

Opening the Portal in Edit mode has the provision to change the default pages as per the requirement. This blog is not covering the ways you can edit the Portal.

• Clicking the Portal name will open the Portal. Below image is an example of the Portal.
  
• The interesting part of Power Apps Portals is that we can allow the external users to access the app and even view or add the data to Common Data Service. CDS explained, in short, is the storage space for Power Apps.
• Here the blog will proceed on how the users can log in to Portals using their LinkedIn account.

8. Power Apps external Authentication with LinkedIn

The first step is to create the Apps inside LinkedIn, which will enable a button allowing the user to sign in using a LinkedIn account into Portals.

• Navigate to http://developers.linkedin.com.
• Click on the “Create App” button and insert the App details.
  
• Make sure the “Sign In with LinkedIn” option is checked.
  
• Click on Create App, and the app will be created.
• Click on the Auth tab and change the OAuth 2.0 settings.
  
• Add the Redirect URL under OAuth 2.0 settings.
• The URL of the Portals app was created and appended /sign-in-LinkedIn after it.
• Click on Update.

Now the next step is to connect this app to Power Apps Portal. SharePoint developers can follow the below steps to connect it.

• Navigate to the Portal App created in the Power Apps platform.
• Click on the Settings option available on selecting the app.
  
• Navigate to Site Settings.
  

The page will open the Active Site Settings. We are required to configure the LinkedIn settings by editing its Consumer Key and Consumer Secret.

• Add the Value field of the ConsumerKey to the value of Client ID of the app created in LinkedIn.
  
  
• Similarly, add the Value field in ConsumerSecret to the value of the Client Secret field of the app created in LinkedIn.
• This will add the LinkedIn button to the Sign-In page of the Portal. The Sign-In page will open by clicking the “Sign in” option available in Portal’s header.
  
• Clicking on the LinkedIn button will allow you to login with a LinkedIn account, and the profile will be displayed.

9. Conclusion

Through this blog, one gets an idea about creating a Power Apps Portal and  how it can be used to engage with customers and partners. One can also give access to their apps through this power apps Portals. If there is a requirement to allow data access to any user in an appropriate form  in the company, SharePoint developer can achieve it through our Power Apps blog series.

Here’s the Link to all the Post in this series:
Power Apps – Canvas Apps (Part 1)
Power Apps – Model Driven Apps (Part 2)

The post Power Apps – Portals (Part 3) appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

Microsoft is a tech avalanche company in the market with an aim to fulfill all business requirements. PowerApps is one of the prominent tools that has created a history in the world of business by offering everything within a single platform. Power Platform offers a quick development environment for creating bespoke apps for your organisation and also gives an opportunity to your project colleagues to become citizen developers. Businesses may easily create bespoke business apps with Power Apps that link to data stored in the underlying data platform or in different online and on-premises data sources like Excel, word, SharePoint, SQL server and similar. 

We have been writing a trilogy on Microsoft PowerApps and till now, in the previous blog, we have discussed Power Platform, PowerApps and Canvas Apps. Often users are not clear with the difference between the two. So in this part of the series, our SharePoint Development Team will walk you through the second type of Power Apps – Model-driven apps.We will be discussing the most important yet debatable for users. The model driven apps and their differences with canvas driven apps.So, let’s get started.

2. What are Model-Driven Apps?

Model driven apps- It goes by name which means it is driven by data models. So obviously this app takes a data-first approach.The model-driven app is created using Power Apps, a framework for creating native Dynamics 365 apps. It applies a low-code or no-code approach in app development. This enables all the users from beginners to the one with experience in coding or with little or no coding expertise. Everyone can create model-driven software. Also, with the help of this application we can generate data models which will help us in sophisticated business applications.

Model-driven apps are recently added to Power Apps platform focusing on building apps with responsive UI, which runs in any browser and mobile devices with no code or low code approach required. The apps are useful as they provide access to a platform where we can design simple or complex apps. Model-driven power app accesses Common Data Service,(CDS). Common Data Service uses entities to store data similar to Dynamics 365.

When you create a model-driven app, you can link it to multiple entities. Before developing a model-driven app, you need to establish your data model. If you want to govern how data is managed, you must build business process Flows. You can add everything such as entities, dashboards, business process flows, Forms, views, and charts in a model-driven app. You may have built numerous views, charts, and flows for an object — in your model-driven app, you may select as needed.

3. Working of Model Driven Apps

The operations of Model driven apps are good at handling regular tasks, actions and other user data interactions.This enables no code approach so you don’t have to write a single code line or formula to develop an application. You can access these apps from any platform, web browser devices or even in outlook.

The primary functioning of Model-driven power applications are data-centric. This means using data they can perform consistent navigation, data interaction, and tools that allow users to deal with data regardless of the data object. The data structure determines which views and detail screens are displayed. There are users who can modify the user experience for that specific app by using those views and form designers while remaining within the constraints of views and forms.It decreases the time of development of a new application by guaranteeing a consistent user experience across data and other model-driven apps. This customer enhancement feature is also offered by Canvas apps, so how are they exactly different from each other?

We know that Canvas apps are the apps used to design and build highly customized apps without any deep expertise in coding .Canvas applications enable users to develop apps by simply dragging and dropping items into a canvas with complete control..You may also customize your applications to provide a user experience and interface that you like. With its rich functionality,You may experiment with the appearance and feel of your app by using the pre-built templates available in Canvas applications.

4. Difference Model Driven Apps vs Canvas Apps

5. How to Create Model-driven Apps?

If you are a SharePoint developer and wish to learn model-driven apps, let’s go through this app creation and its execution through the Customer Details Management demo.

Create model-driven apps

To create a model-driven apps, Power Apps Plan 2 is required. First login to Power Apps by navigating to link https://make.powerapps.com.

• Select the option ‘Model-driven app from blank’ amongst the three options available.
  
• Click on Create.
• Enter the App Name, its Unique Name, and Description, which is optional. Click on Done.
  

• 

  After the app is created, it will redirect to the App Designer screen.
  

• Now, the app is created, and we can develop an app using the below three stages.

  1. Designing Business Data
  2. Defining business logic
  3. Composing the app

Designing Business Data

The data of model-driven is stored in Entities. Entities are like tables where columns are created with different data types as per the app’s requirement. SharePoint developers can follow the below steps for creating Entities:

• 

  Select option Entities under Data in the left navigation pane.
  

• Default Entities list will be displayed.

• 

  To create a new Entity, click on the “New Entity” option on top of the page.
  

• Enter the Entity name, add the primary field of the Entity and click on the Create button.
  

• 

  The Entity will be created. Click on the Entity name to view its details. Consider here, Entity named “CustomerDetails” is created.
  

• 

  The page will display the default fields of the Entity. Click on the “Add field” option to create custom fields required by the app.
  

• 

  Enter the field name, select its data type, and click on the “Done” option at the bottom.
  

• Currently, we have created a few custom fields with different data types as below:
  1. Customer Name → Text
  2. Customer Number → Phone
  3. Order Items → Whole Number
  4. Place Order → Option Set
     Inside the Place Order field, we have set the options as Yes and No.
• Refresh the App Designer to reflect the changes made in the Entity. Add the newly created Entity to the App by clicking the “Entities” option in the App Designer pane.
  

• 

  Select the custom created Entity from the list of Entities, and it will be added under the Entities section.
  

• Similarly, multiple Entities, as required by the app, can be created and added to the App using the App Designer pane.

Defining business logic

After the required Entities are created and added to the app, the next step is to make the business logic using those Entities. To create business logic, follow the below steps:

• In the App Designer pane, click on the Business Process option and select the Create New option.
  

• 

  Provide the name to the process, select the Entity on which the process is to be attached and then click OK.
  

• A designer will open where a default stage is added.
  

• 

  Rename the stage by clicking on it and hit the “Apply” button.
  

• 

  A Data Step is included in the stage. Edit it by clicking on “Details” and then click on the Data Step.
  

• 

  A pane will open on the right-hand side, where the properties of the Data Step can be changed. Change the name of the Data Step, select the entity field, and click on Apply.
  

Note: SharePoint developers can check the Required attribute as per the requirement.

• Multiple Data Sets can be added to the Stage. Click on the Stage box and add another Data Step from the top.
  
• Click on the “+” symbol to add a new Data Step.
• Currently, the stage is defined to add Customer Name and Customer Number.
  
• New stage can be added by selecting the New Stage option under the “+ Add” symbol.
  
• Click on the “+” symbol, and a new stage will be added. In this example, the stage is asking the user to add the Number of Items to order.
  
• Now to add a condition, select the “Add Condition” option under the “+ Add” symbol. Set the condition details and click on Apply.
  
  Here as per the current example, the condition is set to check if “Order Items” entered by the user is greater than 0. If it is greater than 0, allow the user to enter the “PlaceOrder” field value. Provided below is the full screenshot of the flow.
  
• From the designer’s top, click on Validate to check if there are any errors, and if there is no error, click on Save.
  
• Now after the business process flow is created, the next step is to Activate the flow. Click on the “Activate” option, and the flow will be attached to the App.
• Inside the App designer, select only one flow that is created.
  

Composing the App

After the entities are added, and business logic for the flow is decided, the last step is to compose the app, i.e., define the views, charts, and form structure.

• Click Forms to design the form structure for the App. There is a provision where a new form will be created.
• Click View to select the views for the Entity when the app is running. We can select multiple views, and a new View can also be created.
• Similarly, for Charts and Dashboard, new Charts and Dashboard can be created.
• One important thing to configure is the Site Map. Site Map defines the navigation in our App. Click on the Site Map option, and a pane will open to define Groups, Area and Subarea.
  
• Select the “Group” option under the “+ Add” symbol to add a Group.
  
• Group will be added to the pane. We can also drag and drop the Group, Area, and Subarea from the right panel.
  
• Add Subarea under Group and add the Entity to it.
  
• These Groups, Area, and Subarea will be displayed on the left pane when the App is running.

6. Run Model-Driven App

Once everything is defined and created for the app, the app is now ready to run.

Click on Publish and then on the Play option available in the top right corner of the App Designer.

• Now it’s time to add data to the Entity and check business flow.
• Click on the “+ New” icon to add data to Entity.
  
• Add Details under Basic Details by clicking on the Basic Details icon. Here, enter the Customer Number and Customer Number, and then hit on Save.
  
• After saving it, again clicking on the Basic Details tab will ask to move to Next Stage. Click on the Next Stage option.
  
• Enter Order Items and again click on Next Stage. Here as earlier defined in the business process flows, if order items entered are more significant than 0, then it will move to the next stage else not.
• If Order Items entered is greater than 0, it will ask for Place Order in the next stage and then click Finish.
  
• The completed message will be displayed once the flow is completed.
  
• Clicking on the Subarea added on the left page, here it is “CustomerDetails” will display the newly added Customer Details.
  

7. Conclusion

Through this blog, SharePoint developers can start to build powerful Model-driven apps. Based on the requirement, create ones’ ideas into simple/complex responsive accessible design running apps. Model Driven App composes the different kinds of components like forms, views, dashboards, charts, and various business processes with great UI. Don’t wait to try this powerful app, and stay tuned for our next topic – PowerApps Portals!!!

More Blogs on Power Apps:
Power Apps + Microsoft Bots = Power Bots
Power Apps – Canvas Apps (Part 1)

The post Power Apps – Model Driven Apps (Part 2) appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.

Here, in this blog, we will learn about Power Platform and details of applications that can be created using this Microsoft platform.

What is the Power Platform?

In this digital age, the world is extremely reliant on data – companies are creating data and are increasing continually, but without the insight on data, it will be useless for them. They need a tool to analyze or process such data to gain insight into data. From the past, you can see that these data analysis, app development, and set up automation processes are handled by Software development teams. This would require additional people who first analyze your current situation, understand your needs to see as an end-user and outline a requirement for development teams. This custom apps development is costly, time-consuming, and would cause internal delays.

The Power Platform is very exciting as it is an association of the four Microsoft products: Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power Virtual Agents. The Power Platform aims to provide you with the power to build custom apps as per your business needs. Secure and cloud-based storage is provided by the most underlying data source – Common Data Service for your data. You can build your custom applications to connect with your data stored in Common Data Service or any Online/On-premise data sources. SharePoint developers can use data from Office 365, Dynamics 365, as well as any third-party apps and other Microsoft SharePoint development services.

Power Platform provides you the ability to develop your apps without writing any code and saves your time and money being spent on custom application development. The Power Platform is new, and Microsoft will provide regular updates to make them mature. Microsoft will bring their services closer together, and Power Platform will be a key player to connect all services like Dynamic 365, Azure, and Microsoft 365.

Power Platform contains the following applications –

• Power BI – to show and analyze your data.
• Power Virtual Agents – smartly interact with data.
• Power Apps – act and modify data.
• Power Automate – automate data.

Let’s explore the Power Apps in more detail with the series of this blog.

Power Apps

Power Apps is defined as a suite of apps, services, connectors, and data platforms. It provides an extensive application development environment to build apps as per your business needs. Various Online and on-premises data sources are provided to connect with your business data to create your custom business apps.

Apps built using Power Apps have a responsive design and, therefore, seamlessly run on the browser as well as in mobile – tablet devices. Your manual business processes are transformed into automated processes through these apps.

Power Apps targets both business and SharePoint developers. It provides a platform where non-techie can create apps without writing any code, and SharePoint developers can write code to interact with data and metadata programmatically, to build complex business logic, and to create custom connectors.

Building apps using Power Apps helps from SharePoint developers to business analysts to develop apps with more intuitive tools that don’t need code and work faster with a data platform that connects various data sources. You can build highly tailored and sophisticated applications without using any conventional app development approaches that give more flexibility and freedom.

Apps can be developed using the PowerApps Studio client application or directly from the browser. However, the browser version is highly popular and faster to use in the development of apps. There are several templates already available to start building apps.

There are two types of apps: Canvas apps and Model-driven apps.

Canvas apps

To fabricate the user interface and experience in your desired way, the Canvas app entertains that liberty to you. You can set the look and feel of apps the way you want it. You can link over 200 connectors and 100 templates in your app. Canvas apps can be created for the web, mobile, and tablet applications.

You can drag and drop elements that you require to create your canvas app. You can pull data from multiple data sources and combine it into one app.

You can start to build your app in one of the following ways:

• From a SharePoint list
• From a Power BI dashboard
• From a Power Apps Studio: login to https://make.powerapps.com

Model-driven apps

Model-driven apps are relatively new to Power Apps. You can create an app without code and with simple or complex business logic. Model-driven apps run either as a standalone app or as a back-end app for canvas apps. In this app, you can create your data model as per your requirement and with a unified client interface to look similar on mobile, tablet, and web. If you are familiar with Dynamics 365, then you already have used a model-driven app without knowing it. Dynamics 365 is designed to store data in CDS. You can create entities for your app in CDS while developing it.

You can start to create your app from Power Apps Studio:

Canvas app vs. Model-driven app

Upon reading about both apps, you find both apps quite similar, but that’s not the whole truth. Though both have the same components to their design, the main difference is over user control. You have full privileges on every single aspect of your app while creating it.

In a Model-driven app, your entered data will control your app. The output of the app will be decided by the input you add. The layout and overall design will be more affected than the Canvas app. If you need flexibility, choose the Canvas app, or you are more concerned about structure, choose the Model-driven app.

Canvas Apps

Let’s see a small demo with Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate. SharePoint developers have prepared a Canvas app to collect Student Data from users and store it in the SharePoint list. There is an automated approval process that sends details to the administrator once the user submits the information. After the approval of the administrator, details will be stored in a SharePoint list. One Power BI report is prepared where all the details will be reflected to analyze the data.

Create a Canvas App

• Login to the SharePoint site and create one SharePoint list as below:
• There is a “PowerApps” option in the command bar. Select the “Create an app” option.
• The left pane will be opened to ask for the name of the app. Pass the name and click on the “Create” button to create a new app in Power Apps. The app will be opened in App Studio.

• The app will have several screens already created, based on the list like Browse Screen, Details screen, and Edit Screen. Add/Edit form will have validations on fields that are supported by SharePoint OOTB validations on columns.
• Click on “EditScreen1” from the tree view to open a form in the editor. You can find fields for all columns from the SharePoint list.
• Click on the triangle icon from the top bar on the far most right to preview the app.
• You will find below screens and functionality already created by Studio in the app:
  • Show all items from the list on the browse screen.
  • Search items based on the “Title” column from the SharePoint list.
• Show Item detail screen.
• Add/Edit form on the screen.

Create a Flow in Power Automate

Now let’s create a flow for the approval process and attach it with the app.

• Go to “EditScreen1” and click on “Action” → click on “Power Automate,” → click on “Create a new flow.”
• The Power Automate screen will be open in the new tab where there are many templates provided by Microsoft available, or you can create your custom flow as per your requirement.
• Choose the “Send Approval and follow up via email” template and create a flow.
• A flow will look like as below:
• Click on “Edit” to open a flow in edit mode. You can see a flow with a default approval process is already created, where it will send an email to the approver. Once the approver approves/rejects your request, it will acknowledge it to the requestor. 

This is the default flow created from the template. Let’s make a few changes to it.

• Click on “Start an approval” to expand that action. Add Name, English, Mathematics, and Science details by selecting from Dynamic Content pane as shown in the below image:
• In the “Condition” action’s “Yes” part, add the “Create item” action to create a new item in the “Student Data” SharePoint list. Pass appropriate site name, list name, and student details, as shown in the below image:
• Save the changes inflow.

Let’s connect this flow to Power Apps, i.e., when the user submits the form in-app, details will be sent to the approver for the approval process, and once it’s approved by the approver, it will be stored in the SharePoint list.

• Open the app in Power Apps studio → open Power Automate, and you will see the flow created earlier.

• Click on the “Submit” button and add a formula to connect flow with the submit button event.
  There are few parameters: email address of approver, email address of the user (who filled the form), fields: name; English; Mathematics; Science required to pass these values inflow.
• Write the below formula on the “Submit” button event:

  If(EditForm1.Mode=FormMode.Edit,
  
  SubmitForm(EditForm1)
  +
  Navigate(BrowseScreen1,ScreenTransition.Fade),
  'PowerApps:Sendapprovalandfollowupviaemail'.Run("<approver user email id>", User().Email,DataCardValue5.Text,DataCardValue6.Text,DataCardValue7.Text,DataCardValue8.Text)
  +
  Navigate(BrowseScreen1,ScreenTransition.Fade))

Note: This formula will check if the form is in edit mode, it will save changes in the list, and for new items, it will send it for the approval process and then will save it in the list after the approval process.

• SharePoint developers can test their app by running in preview mode.
• Save the app and publish it.
• Approver users will get below mail during the approval process. Student details will be saved once the user approves the request, and the requestor will acknowledge the email.

Without coding and in very few steps, you can create a Power App and approval system connected with it. Formulas used in Power Apps are very similar to excel and Power BI report formulas that are quite easy to use.
Note: Please follow the best practices in naming conventions for the elements used in Power Apps. To show you the default functionalities – capabilities of Power Apps and Power Platform, we haven’t followed that in our demo.

Create a Power BI Report

Our expert SharePoint developers have also prepared a Power BI report connected with a SharePoint list to generate various charts. It’s very easy to analyze data where you can access real-time data in a Power BI report.

Go through this blog to generate a Power BI report using a SharePoint list and integrating the Power BI report in your SharePoint Online.

Conclusion

Via this blog, one is aware of the power of this MS product. Based on end-users requirements, one can opt for the Power Apps type. If there is a requirement for some good GUI experience for an app, to carry out some automated processes, and to summarize the captured data which is available through many of the outs of the box connectors, a Canvas app is an excellent choice to go. Also, one can achieve this requirement by following this blog. In our next blog, we are coming with the Model-driven apps. So, stay tuned!!!

More Blogs on Power BI, Power Automate:
AI Builder for Power Automate
Power Apps + Microsoft Bots = Power Bots
Power Virtual Agents

The post Power Apps – Canvas Apps (Part 1) appeared first on TatvaSoft Blog.