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The Microsoft Power Platform is Microsoft's set of low-code tools for building business apps, automating processes, reporting on data, creating websites and building AI agents. It is made up of five products, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Pages and Copilot Studio, which share the same data platform (Dataverse), the same connectors and the same admin and security controls, so they work together and sit alongside Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365.
Microsoft's own pages on the Power Platform talk a lot about adapting and streamlining but say fairly little about what you actually get. This post covers what each product does, how they fit together and what you need to think about before rolling it out across an organisation.
What products make up the Microsoft Power Platform?
There are five products in the Power Platform. Each can be used on its own to fix a single process, or together to build a complete solution:
- Power Apps for building business applications
- Power Automate for automating workflows and repetitive tasks
- Power BI for reporting, dashboards and data analysis
- Power Pages for building secure, data-driven websites for external users
- Copilot Studio for building AI agents and chatbots
Underneath them sit a few shared pieces. Dataverse is the data platform that stores and secures business data, connectors (there are well over a thousand) link the tools to Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Azure and third-party systems, and Power Fx is the Excel-like formula language used across the low-code tools. Copilot is also built into each product, so you can describe an app, a flow or a report in plain language and have a first version generated for you to refine.
What is Power Apps?
Power Apps is used to build custom business applications without the cost and time of traditional development. There are two main types:
- Canvas apps, where you design the screens yourself, which suit task-focused apps such as inspections, approvals or field data capture on a phone or tablet
- Model-driven apps, which are built from the data model in Dataverse and suit more process-heavy applications such as case management or asset tracking
Apps can connect to SharePoint lists, Excel, SQL, Dataverse and many other sources, and run in a browser, on mobile, or inside Microsoft Teams. We tend to see Power Apps replace spreadsheets that have become business-critical, paper forms, and old Access databases that only one person understands. Our Power Apps page covers the kind of apps we build.
What is Power Automate?
Power Automate, previously called Microsoft Flow, automates processes across your systems. Cloud flows handle things like approvals, notifications, moving documents between SharePoint libraries or creating records when a form is submitted, and desktop flows add robotic process automation (RPA) for older systems that have no API, by recording and replaying the clicks a person would make.
The value is in specific tasks that disappear, such as an approval that used to sit in someone's inbox for a week, or a weekly report somebody copied and pasted together every Friday morning. See our Power Automate services for more on this.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft's reporting and analytics tool. It pulls data together from Dynamics 365, Excel, SQL, SharePoint and hundreds of other sources and turns it into interactive reports and dashboards, which can be shared in the Power BI service, embedded in Teams or SharePoint, and viewed on mobile. Power BI is also part of Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft's wider data and analytics platform, which matters if you are bringing together data from a lot of systems.
What is Power Pages?
Power Pages is used to build secure websites for people outside your organisation, such as customer portals, supplier portals, application forms and booking sites. It was previously known as Power Apps portals and was relaunched as its own product in 2022. Sites store their data in Dataverse, so the information a customer submits on a portal is available straight away to the internal teams working in Power Apps or Dynamics 365. Our Power Pages page has more detail.
What is Copilot Studio?
Copilot Studio is the low-code tool for building AI agents. It replaced Power Virtual Agents, which was the chatbot product in the original Power Platform line-up. Agents can answer questions from your SharePoint content, websites and documents, and can carry out actions by calling Power Automate flows and connectors, for example logging an IT ticket or booking leave. You can also use it to extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with agents built around your own processes.
The quality of an agent depends heavily on the content you point it at, so if your SharePoint sites are full of out-of-date policies, the agent will answer from out-of-date policies.
How do the Power Platform tools work together?
The products are designed to be used together, with Dataverse and the connectors linking them. A typical example would be a customer submitting a request through a Power Pages portal, Power Automate routing it to the right team for approval, staff managing the case in a Power Apps app, a Copilot Studio agent answering common questions before a request is ever raised, and Power BI reporting on volumes and response times. Each part can be built and released on its own, which means you can start small and add to it.
What do you need to put in place before rolling out the Power Platform?
Low-code means a lot of people can build things, which is the point, but without some structure you end up with hundreds of flows and apps that nobody owns. Before opening it up we would recommend:
- an environment strategy, so that development, testing and production are separated and personal experiments do not end up running business processes
- data loss prevention (DLP) policies that control which connectors can be used together
- a clear view on licensing, as some capabilities are included with Microsoft 365 whilst premium connectors, Dataverse and Power Pages need additional licences
- named owners for every app and flow that a team depends on
- a Centre of Excellence approach to monitor what is being built and support the people building it
Our Power Platform strategy work covers these points, and we can then build alongside your team or support what you already have.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Power Platform included with Microsoft 365?
Partly. Many Microsoft 365 licences let you build and use Power Apps and Power Automate with standard connectors such as SharePoint and Outlook. Premium connectors, Dataverse, Power Pages and Copilot Studio need their own licences, and Power BI Pro is licensed separately unless it is included in your Microsoft 365 plan.
What happened to Power Virtual Agents?
Power Virtual Agents was brought into Copilot Studio in 2023. Existing bots carried over, and Copilot Studio added generative AI, the ability to build agents that work with Microsoft 365 Copilot, and a wider set of knowledge sources and actions.
Do you need developers to use the Power Platform?
No, business users can build useful apps and flows with no coding experience. For larger solutions that a whole department relies on, it is worth involving people who understand data modelling, security and application lifecycle management, and professional developers can extend the platform with code where needed.
If you would like to talk through how the Power Platform could work for your organisation, get in touch with us.
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