Add Power Apps to Dynamics 365 Human Resources.
Mar17

Add Power Apps to Dynamics 365 Human Resources.

I love this feature, and chances are that you have already seen it. However, let me share one of my favorite Dynamics 365 Human Resources tips. There are cases where D365HR fits short or the existing features do not accommodate your or your client’s needs. Maybe you don’t want to implement the whole project piece included in the ERP, so you could – for example – follow these steps to add a… Continue...

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MB-260: Configure incremental refresh
Mar08

MB-260: Configure incremental refresh

You can configure the incremental refresh after you’ve transformed the data in Power Query, you can also do this by editing the source after you’ve finished. Maybe you’ve set it up ready, but after reading about incremental refresh, you realise how smart it is and you want to edit your data source refresh. Microsoft Power Query (MPQ) To be able to use incremental refresh with MPQ you… Continue Reading Malin...

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Request to recruit
Mar05

Request to recruit

You want to pay attention to this post. It will become quite important for the future of Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and not a very far future. At the moment there are two recruitment experiences we can enable within Dynamics 365 Human Resources. Today we will work with HR Recruitment, you will notice that after enabling this HR experience in the parameters the Recruitment management module… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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MB-260: Identify data sources that support incremental updates
Mar05

MB-260: Identify data sources that support incremental updates

For a data source to be able to support incremental updates, it needs to be a structured, relational database and it needs: a primary key column that uniquely identifies records a date/time column that indicates when the data was last updated In Customer Insights – Data this is now: Some sources in Power Query like (not a complete list) Azure SQL Database SQL Database SAP… Continue Reading Malin Martnes’s Article on...

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Summarize emails using GPT within Power Automate.
Mar04

Summarize emails using GPT within Power Automate.

AI shouldn’t be necessary cutting edge and super complex technology. In this blog, I’m showing you how easy it can be to apply AI to your day-to-day life using Power Automate. Log into make.powerautomate and find the template section. Once in the template section, type GPT and select the option Summarize email with GPT. You will need to enable a couple of permissions and connect with… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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MB-260: Describe benefits of pre-unification data enrichment
Mar01

MB-260: Describe benefits of pre-unification data enrichment

You can do two types of enrichments on data sources: address enrichments and identity data from LiveRamp. The main benefit of pre-unification data enrichment is improved data quality. Enriching the data before the unification process makes it easier to get matches and ensure your data is of higher quality before you start unifying it. It can also reduce duplicated unified profiles as you’re… Continue Reading Malin...

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MB-260: Describe the differences between individual consumer and business account profiles
Feb27

MB-260: Describe the differences between individual consumer and business account profiles

Some people are customers not connected to a company only as individuals (B2C). While other people are customers through their employer (B2B). When Customer Insights -Data was first released only B2C scenarios were supported. This has since been expanded and now you have individual consumer or business account profiles. The individual consumer profiles capture and analyze data for the… Continue Reading Malin Martnes’s...

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My own Copilot: Nova
Feb25

My own Copilot: Nova

After the Copilot series in Microsoft Reactor, I received some very kind messages about Nova. For those who haven’t seen the series, Nova is a Copilot I created to learn and be updated with the latest trends. Like many of you, I have a busy schedule and that means that I do not have as much time as I would like for research and investigation, while I dedicate time to it, sometimes in a rush… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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MB-260: Transform, cleanse, and load data by using Power Query
Feb23

MB-260: Transform, cleanse, and load data by using Power Query

In this post, we’ll go through the three topics of the Microsoft Power Query: Select tables and columns Resolve data inconsistencies, unexpected or null values, and data quality issues Evaluate and transform column data types In my previous post (insert a link to MPQ post). I connected to GA and got an error message because I got null values back. This shows that you can’t set up… Continue Reading Malin...

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MB 260: Describe real-time ingestion capabilities and limitations
Feb20

MB 260: Describe real-time ingestion capabilities and limitations

In the post MB-260: Describe support for near real-time updates we go through what the real-time updates are, what the prerequisites are, what can be done and how. In this post, we’ll at the limitations of real-time ingestion of data. Near real-time updates give you the ability to see the latest interactions customers have with products or services within seconds. The interactions can be… Continue Reading Malin...

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MB-260: Determine whether to use the managed data lake or an organization’s data lake
Feb16

MB-260: Determine whether to use the managed data lake or an organization’s data lake

When you first set up Customer Insights – Data you have to select if you want to use the managed data lake or the your own organization’s data lake. Create storage for CI-D To determine whether to use the managed data lake or an organization’s data lake, we first need to know the difference between the two and what your company needs. For most companies, the managed data late will… Continue Reading Malin...

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MB-260: Ingest and transform data using Power Query connectors
Feb13

MB-260: Ingest and transform data using Power Query connectors

Let’s review how to use Microsoft Power Query(MPQ) as your data source. And how you can ingest and transform that data. This post will be an overview of the MPQ as we’ll go further in depth with the section “Transform, cleanse, and load data by using Power Query”. First, you go to data and add your data source, you then select Microsoft Power Query. Add Microsoft Power Query After… Continue Reading Malin...

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MB-260: Attach to a Microsoft Dataverse data lake
Feb09

MB-260: Attach to a Microsoft Dataverse data lake

To connect to a Dataverse data source you go to “Data” -> “Data sources” and select Microsoft Dataverse. Here you need to give the source a name and connect to your Dataverse server address (til is the URL of your Microsoft CRM system). Add Dataverse as a data source You then select the tables you want to sync to CI-D. I’ve added accounts and contacts and clicked save. Add table in… Continue...

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MB-260: Determine which data sources to use
Feb06

MB-260: Determine which data sources to use

To determine which data source to use, you first need to consider where your data is stored. Depending on where your data is stored, you have different ways of connecting to the data. There are out-of-the-box direct connections with the following: Azure Data Lake Azure Synapse Analytics Microsoft Dataverse Azure Data Lake – Delta tables With other sources, you can use… Continue Reading Malin Martnes’s Article on...

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Start here: Copilot
Feb04

Start here: Copilot

Since the launch of Copilot, we’ve been increasingly listening to logic and nonsense. This post tries to bring light to what on earth Copilot is. As you are aware there are plenty of resources, and we might feel a bit bombarded by the amount of information. Don’t be a total newbie! This blog breaks down the fundamentals so you can cruise through success. What is Copilot? In the context of… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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MB 260: Describe support for enrichment
Feb02

MB 260: Describe support for enrichment

As we learned from the first post, enrichment is when you connect to other data sources to get more information about your customer data. It’s adding data to your existing customer data. Let’s dig deeper into what enrichments are and how you can use them. To configure enrichments you start by using connections, which we’ll go through in a later post. When the connection is created, your… Continue Reading Malin...

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MB-260: Describe support for near real-time updates
Jan30

MB-260: Describe support for near real-time updates

Doesn’t every company dream about having the latest interactions from customers at hand seconds after they happen? A full sync of all data from your systems to CI-D can take hours, but there’s a way for you to get these interactions updated near real-time. There are APIs for updating customer profiles in near real-time (seconds). When the full sync of your data is finished, the near… Continue Reading Malin...

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Personnel actions for Manager self-service.
Jan29

Personnel actions for Manager self-service.

If you ever worked in a Dynamics 365 Human Resources implementation you know about this topic… There is no middle ground, you either like them or not like them. But the good thing is that you can go from hate to love quite quickly when it makes sense to use them for a business purpose. I’m playing mysterious. What am I talking about? Personnel bloody actions. Let’s start from the basics,… Continue Reading Ana...

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Copilot for Low Code
Jan26

Copilot for Low Code

Do you use Power Platform and want to level up the game? Join me in this session to review the basics of Copilot and AI components within Power Apps and Power Automate. Learn in one hour how to do cool stuff with the help of Generative AI 🙂 Continue Reading Ana Inés Urrutia’s Article on their blog Copilot for Low Code Do you use Power Platform and want to level up the game? Join me in this session to review the basics of Copilot...

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Microsoft Copilot Studio 101
Jan26

Microsoft Copilot Studio 101

Do you want to learn a bit more about Microsoft Copilot Studio? Maybe even create your own? In this session we will dive into Microsoft Copilot Studio, I’ll walk you through how to create your own Copilot tailored to your specific needs without a single line of code. Let’s get into it. Continue Reading Ana Inés Urrutia’s Article on their blog Microsoft Copilot Studio 101 Do you want to learn a bit more about...

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Microsoft Copilot 101
Jan26

Microsoft Copilot 101

During the first month of the year, I was lucky to deliver a couple of sessions for Microsoft Reactor (Home | Microsoft Reactor) about Copilot, going from Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Copilot for Low code. In this episode, you will discover how Microsoft Copilot can become your indispensable productivity partner. Continue Reading Ana Inés Urrutia’s Article on their blog Microsoft Copilot 101 During the first month...

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MB-260: Describe the first run experience (FRE) in D365 Customer Insights – Data
Jan26

MB-260: Describe the first run experience (FRE) in D365 Customer Insights – Data

First run experience or FRE is when you have a single CSV file with your data that you want to add to the system. This is a quick way of starting your CI-D journey or testing with your own data, without connecting CI-D to any system. If you have a new system you will most likely have the FRE popup. If you don’t get this popup you can go to the home page and click “Add data” on the “Gets… Continue Reading...

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Release wave 1 2024 Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data
Jan25

Release wave 1 2024 Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data

For the first time, I’m doing a post on the release wave for both Customer Insights – Journeys and Customer Insights – Data! Read the post about CI-J Let’s look at the features Microsoft is working on for the next 9 months. Remember that these plans can change and things can be pushed, postponed or even removed by Microsoft. This post was accurate when it was published (25 January… Continue Reading Malin...

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Release wave 1 2024 Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys
Jan25

Release wave 1 2024 Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys

Not too long ago I wrote a post on what’s to come from December to March ’24, now the plans until September are out! For the first time, I’m now doing a post on the release wave for both CI-J and CI-D! Read the post about CI-D Let’s look at the features Microsoft is working on for the next 9 months. Remember that these plans can change and things can be pushed, postponed or even… Continue Reading Malin...

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MB-260: Describe Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data components, including tables, relationships, enrichments, activities, measures, and segments
Jan23

MB-260: Describe Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data components, including tables, relationships, enrichments, activities, measures, and segments

Components There are many components you need to know about in Customer Insights – Data (CI-D), these are what make your customer picture clear. Who is your customer, where do they work (if B2B), what have they bought, which emails have they read, which of your websites have they visited, and how much have they spent on you. Some of the most important components… Continue Reading Malin Martnes’s Article on their blog...

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MB-260: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights (Data) Specialist
Jan19

MB-260: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights (Data) Specialist

Speciality badge for the MB-260 certification As I’m waiting for the MB-220 Customer Insights Journey certification to change, I wanted to do a series on the MB-260 Customer Insights Data certification. I’ll update this post with links to each section. You should always start reading the study guide for the exam, you can find it here: Continue Reading Malin Martnes’s Article on their blog MB-260: Microsoft Dynamics...

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D365 HR: Compare benefits plans
Jan05

D365 HR: Compare benefits plans

Deploying a new Dynamics environment means that our first stop is Feature Management. I was doing this earlier today and realized that some new features have been released and it was time to test them immediately. One of the features that has taken protagonism in the last couple of releases is Benefits Management, and today I can tell you that the efforts have paid off. I’m quite happy with… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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D365 HR + Excel = OOB Reports
Dec25

D365 HR + Excel = OOB Reports

One of the things HR teams always ask is: can I export it to Excel? The truth is that almost everything in Dynamics 365 Human Resources can be exported to Excel and sometimes even imported. But that is a conversation for another day. Speaking about extracting data from Dynamics, this blog will be about the out-of-the-box reports we can retrieve from existing information in our ERP/HRIS…. Continue Reading Ana Inés Urrutia’s...

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Consent center in Real-time marketing
Dec13

Consent center in Real-time marketing

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from people about how the new consent center in real-time marketing works in Customer Insights – Journeys. In this post, I’ll try to explain how it’s set up and how you can use it as it is with the December ’23 release. If you’ve done the work and looking for how to move from outbound to real-time marketing – click here. To (need) consent or not…...

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What’s coming in Customer Insights-Journeys in December-March?
Dec11

What’s coming in Customer Insights-Journeys in December-March?

At the time of the release of this post, we’re waiting on the December ’23 release for Customer Insights – Journeys, it’s hopefully right around the corner. Because there are so many features there I think will have a huge (positive, just to be clear) impact on users, I thought I would write something about some of them. I don’t think I can remember a period in the release plans where I’ve…...

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Your own AI Prompt library
Dec08

Your own AI Prompt library

I was having a look at Power Apps Studio today and something caught my eye. It is under the AI Hub, and it’s called ‘Unlock the power of generative AI with GPT’. If we go through Microsoft documentation we can find out that Text generation model’s capability is a powerful tool in AI Builder. It enables you to quickly and easily build AI-powered applications that use text generated from your… Continue...

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Send an email when a contact submits a form in Customer Insights – Journeys
Dec07

Send an email when a contact submits a form in Customer Insights – Journeys

A customer of mine is moving from outbound to real-time marketing and is creating new forms in RTM. In outbound they have had a Power Automate Flow created to send them a notification every time a new form submission comes in the system, so we wanted to copy that over to RTM, it shouldn’t be much of an issue, just copy and change the table that triggers it, right, riiiiight….? Well, it was an… Continue Reading Malin...

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AI Builder for Image Description
Dec03

AI Builder for Image Description

I’m a fanatic about AI Builder or AI Models, or however it is called these days. Sometimes I lack the imagination or creativity to create ALT descriptions for my images. I thought trying the Describe your image AI Model was a good idea. So keep reading if you want to see the results. Log into make.powerapps and select AI Hub. From the three options on the top, select AI Models. After this page… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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BYOC: Microsoft Copilot Studio
Nov16

BYOC: Microsoft Copilot Studio

There is someone who is SUPER hyped with all the Copilot stuff going on, and that person is ME. I won’t tell you what is going on with it, you can read it here: Announcing Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft 365 Blog, but I will tell you how to use it. Two things you need to know: Microsoft Copilot Studio was formerly Power Virtual Agents – yes, you need to edit ALL your decks – so in… Continue Reading Ana...

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D365 HR Guru ⭐ PVA + GPT
Oct29

D365 HR Guru ⭐ PVA + GPT

Today, I’m refreshing some of my knowledge around Power Virtual Agents and GPT and I couldn’t think of anything better than a Dynamics 365 Human Resources to help users with configuration questions. I used AI features, not only including the web where the content gets retrieved but also information I have stored locally, hence documents that contain important information. If you want to… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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Customer Insights -Journeys Copilot frenzy
Oct19

Customer Insights -Journeys Copilot frenzy

Copilot is Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, which spans across most of what Microsoft deliver today and in the future. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys have had features from Copilot for some time, but a lot has happened fall of 2023. We all know Microsoft has gone Copilot crazy, but did you know that in the release planner there are 22 Copilot news from May 1st to February 2024!… Continue Reading Malin...

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Cool Excel reports @ D365 HR
Sep29

Cool Excel reports @ D365 HR

This two out-of-the-box reports are available for you to start using right away from Dynamics 365 Human Resources: Seniority list report and Workers hired in period report. Power BI embedded reports provide similar data, but won’t let you extract the results to Excel – I know you HR people, you love Excel. Let’s start the process. Log into Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and go to Personnel… Continue Reading Ana...

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Pay for Performance
Sep29

Pay for Performance

Today we are going to explore a feature that combines two interesting areas from Human Resources processes: compensation and performance. In this article we will discover the magic within Dynamics 365 Human Resources and Pay for Performance functionality. The main reason why Pay for Performance exist is for those cases where organizations want to combine employee performance to salary… Continue Reading Ana Inés Urrutia’s...

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Microsoft Viva: Useful Resources
Sep02

Microsoft Viva: Useful Resources

It’s been a long time since I posted about Microsoft Viva. Sometimes it’s challenging to stay updated with all the new releases Microsoft announces. Luckily I had some time to investigate and get back on track. Microsoft Viva is one of the platforms that has been revolutionizing the way we work on so many levels, it elevated the game for every organization. Multiple success stories can be… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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Power BI for Human Resources
Sep02

Power BI for Human Resources

I love Dynamics, but sometimes it’s great to look at what is available beside it. It’s also nice to understand what Microsoft is offering. While doing some research, I came across something super cool: Power BI for Human Resources. I’m not normally a fan of BI as it is completely outside of my comfort zone. If you want a little bit more about it keep reading. What we are going to discover… Continue Reading...

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Am I breaking up with HR?
Aug31

Am I breaking up with HR?

Since March 2018 I’ve been blogging and working with Dynamics 365 Human Resources, or Talent as it was called back then. It’s been quite a journey for me these years and I’ve learned so much and gotten to know many people, many of whom I now call friends. Much of it is thanks to D365 HR, I would not be where I am today without the system. I started with passing the new exam and realised… Continue Reading Malin...

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Customise a journey in RTM
Jul05

Customise a journey in RTM

In Dynamics 365 Marketing things happen so fast that it can be hard to keep track of every new feature. Since April ’23 you have had the ability to customise columns shown in a real-time journey, so all the tagging and connecting to campaigns you’ve always wanted to do, is now possible. Let’s go through how you can customise the journey and what limitations there are. Editing the journey… Continue Reading Malin...

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Dynamics 365 Customer Service Workspace
Jul04

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Workspace

When delivering training on MB-230 Microsoft Dynamics Customer Service or talking about Dynamics 365 Customer Service, I often come across people who haven’t heard about the Customer Service Workspace (CSW). Many doesn’t know that it’s included in the customer service license and doesn’t require the omnichannel license. Every time I show this to someone working in customer service, they love… Continue...

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New security roles admin
Jun29

New security roles admin

The screenshot above may be familiar to you. For the 10 years I’ve worked with Dynamics 365 CRM (yes, I still call it CRM) and Dataverse, the way we create and edit security roles has been the same. This has now changed! There’s finally a new way of doing security roles! One that doesn’t look like it’s a blast from the past. To find it you go to your environment -> settings -> security… Continue...

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AI in Power Automate: Describe it to design it
Jun01

AI in Power Automate: Describe it to design it

I’m so excited about this article! We will dive together into the cool new feature from Power Automate: you describe the business process, and Power Automate builds it for you. But how does it work? According to Microsoft documentation (Create a cloud flow from a description (preview) – Power Automate | Microsoft Learn): This AI-powered feature uses a language model to create a cloud flow from… Continue Reading Ana...

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Service-centric Cloud ERP and Human Resources implementations
May27

Service-centric Cloud ERP and Human Resources implementations

As a person working within ERP projects, my main goal is to deliver not only Human Resources solutions but also to understand the full scenario and overall business challenges. It’s much more than just personnel management or leaves and absence, I like to think that our duty as consultants is to advise on a strategic level. And that is the reason for this post, in the following lines I will… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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Create a new workspace in D365 HR
Apr10

Create a new workspace in D365 HR

In some business scenarios, Dynamics 365 Human Resources might gather features in a way your customer doesn’t. This could look like a stopper, but believe me, there is an excellent way to group functionalities in a custom new workspace. Today I’ll show you how to create a new workspace, add features and customize it. The only thing that you will need for this is the Dynamics 365 Human… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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Power Virtual Agents + GPT for D365 HR knowledge
Mar31

Power Virtual Agents + GPT for D365 HR knowledge

My first try with Power Virtual Agents + GPT is here! It took me a bit as I had some issues with the tenant but now is sorted. I must say is a simple post, but super powerful. The cool thing is that you can apply this example to pretty much any business need. To try it, log into https://web.powerva.microsoft.com/. Once the page has loaded, select + Create a bot. You will have two options to… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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Power Apps Cards for starters
Mar31

Power Apps Cards for starters

Are you new to Power Apps Cards? No worries, all of us are. The functionality is still new and updates are made constantly. In this guide, I summarize a couple of cool resources that are worth reading before jumping into it: What the hell are Power Apps Cards? Cards for Power Apps overview (preview) – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn What should I know before getting started? Requirements for… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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Post Power Apps Cards in Teams using Power Automate
Mar31

Post Power Apps Cards in Teams using Power Automate

In this blog, we will combine three powerful platforms: Power Apps Cards, Power Automate, and Microsoft Teams. If you feel a bit lost, don´t worry I’ve got you covered: Power App Cards + Dataverse (anainesurrutia.com). In my previous article, you will find an overview of Power Apps Cards and how to create one with Dataverse. Today I wanted to try new things and we are going to use Power App… Continue Reading Ana Inés...

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