Machine Learning with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Vinnie Bansal
1.1 Understanding the three tools of the Power Platform.
Power Apps
PowerApps is a platform for nontechnical users to develop user‐friendly and functional apps without writing a single line of code or low‐code application.
It is also known as the Citizen Application Development Platform. The natural connection between Power BI and PowerApps makes it effortless to take actions directly from Power BI reports and dashboards. It increases productivity and makes your work less tedious by avoiding the need to switch between separate apps or copy and paste data from one window to another.
Power Automate
Power Automate is an intelligent process that allows you to automate complex business processes without any technical knowledge of doing so. It has a simple, user‐friendly interface through which users can create automated workflows that can be triggered by utilizing insights from Power BI, apps built with PowerApps, or third‐party applications.
Power BI
Power BI is a self‐service business analytics software solution that pulls data from various business systems with built‐in support by the Power Platform such as Dynamics 365, Excel spreadsheets, the cloud, data centers, and other resources. This data is then analyzed for valuable insights.
Power Virtual Agents
A power virtual agent is a low‐ or no‐code graphical interface that empowers you to create chatbots even if you don't have any prior coding experience. It can be used for engaging customers from different business processes such as human resources, sales, or any social platform like Facebook or Skype.
Cross‐Cutting Features
The key components of the Power Platform that we just talked about are dependent on the following core services:
Dataverse
Connectors
AI Builder
Dynamics 365 Customer Voice (previously known as Forms Pro)
These core services enable the components of the Power Platform to do their work.
Dataverse
Organizations use different business applications for different purposes, and a lot of data is collected from users stored in separate silos. But to automate business processes or build new applications, we need to bring the data from all the applications in one place. This is where Dataverse comes in (previously known as Dataverse).
Dataverse environment is like a secure database system that allows you to store and manage data across business applications. It has a built‐in set of standard entities that are used to store data. It also enables you to build custom entities as per your business requirements that can be accessed using a power query.
Connectors
Dataverse does not exactly have all the data within; the concept of connectors was implemented. As the name suggests, connectors connect different applications or services. For example, imagine the data stored in all of your business applications are in different languages. Then, what do you need here? It would be best if you had a common guide that can translate the language for the system you want to connect to, so the connectors do the work.
It enables Power apps to effectively communicate with data from other systems and services without knowing the APIs or the interfaces involved. Microsoft provides over 300 built‐in connectors, and you can also build custom connectors as per your business needs.
AI Builder
An AI Builder is the new capability of Power Platform that enables you to intuitively add AI capabilities within your business applications to automate processes and predict outcomes. Like the Power Platform, AI Builder doesn't need coding experience to create custom AI solutions. It helps you to create the AI model, which can be used to keep track of all your products by using object detection. It also helps you to predict future outcomes from the data already available in your business apps so that you can make intelligent decisions to drive the growth of your business.
Dynamics 365 Customer Voice
Successful businesses understand that the customer's feedback is a crucial point for the growth of the business. Every business website has a feedback form where you can ask your queries or write your product experience. But Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is providing something more. It provides your organization with some additional capabilities, such as the ability to create a survey and share it with your customers for valuable feedback. Once the responses are received, Power BI analyzes feedback about your products and services to evaluate the information and take actions to transform products and employee experiences.
Unlike the past, people are now connected through social media and communication solutions. Therefore, businesses are beginning to realize the potential of data‐driven decisions, large‐scale coordination, and the efficiency of online tools. Thus, Power Platform tools play an important role in improving productivity and automating business processes. To unlock the true potential of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform tools, this book will show you how you can do wonders in your business by using machine learning with these two technologies. It is an important topic because it will help you to make proactive decisions for your business by using predictive data analytics. It also allows businesses to utilize future predictions to perform operations more efficiently. Now let's look at how adding a layer of intelligence to Dynamics 365 and Power platform using machine learning would benefit the businesses.
Whether it's sending follow‐up emails, similar record creation, or scheduling and managing appointments, isn't it frustrating to do the same task at your workplace every day?
Just imagine that your employee takes 5 minutes for a repetitive task of sending follow‐up emails to all the possible prospects every day. This means he spends 125 minutes, or 2 hours in a month, considering a month has, on average, 25 working days. In a year, that employee will spend 1,500 minutes or 25 hours. If your organization has 100 such employees, imagine how many productive hours your business will lose. Think about how much your business would have achieved if these employees had worked on tasks that demanded their skills. What if you could reduce these numbers by using machine learning in Dynamics 365?
Dynamics 365 has a feature of email engagement in a sales insight suite that sends you an alert when recipients open your email, click a link in your email, open an attachment sent in email, or give a reply. The activities it doesn't do on its own that require manual work are:
It doesn't send a follow‐up email on its own.
It doesn't automatically set a time to send a follow‐up email.
Sure, Dynamics 365 does give you the facility to create an appropriate email template based on your organization's previous email interaction history. But choosing the right follow‐up template and setting time for a follow‐up email is still manual work. These two problems can be solved by using machine learning in Dynamics 365.
Machine learning has an algorithm called a predictive time algorithm that will help you to set optimal open times for every recipient. For this, a machine should have the recipient's past data, including time engaged with opens and clicks on the links sent in previous emails. This way, a machine will learn what's the best time to send a follow‐up email and will set an alert in Dynamics 365.
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