Episode 3 of Envision will be on 4/20. In this episode a discussion on the impacts resulting from the pandemic, including the geopolitical environment. We’ll also explore privacy and security, sustainability, the global skills gap, and how to improve access to technology.series on the future of work To register Envision – Home (microsoft.com). Envision is presented by Microsoft, Accenture, Avanade & Trevor Noah
Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week
Happy Monday ! I hope you had a great weekend. This week is opening day, Play Ball! Please find below an overview of last weeks product news, tech posts and announcements.
Episode 3 of Envision will be on 4/20. In this episode a discussion on the impacts resulting from the pandemic, including the geopolitical environment. We’ll also explore privacy and security, sustainability, the global skills gap, and how to improve access to technology.series on the future of work To register Envision – Home (microsoft.com). Envision is presented by Microsoft, Accenture, Avanade & Trevor Noah
Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week
Optimizing Business Processes with Office 365, Teams and the Power Platform
Microsoft 365 provides an extensive set of tools providing a method to optimize your organizations business processes. In this post I’ll provide an example. When building a process, I want to focus on these attributes;
Simplicity
Creator – Easy to create and maintain.
Consumer – intuitive and encapsulated (not having to use many systems to get their job done)
Collaborative
Foster the ability to collaborate on work items throughout the process.
Insightful
Continually provide visibility and insights into the process for all stakeholders
For this example, I’m using a safety walk. A safety walk is when a safety inspector walks the floor of a facility and records their findings. If the inspector finds an issue requiring action, they begin the process. An action can be dispatching a service technician to fix something that is broken or creating a purchase requisition to obtain a product or service needed to remediate the issue. In many organizations this would involve access to several systems making the process a bit cumbersome and storing data in silos making reporting difficult. To simply the process we’ll use just one interface Microsoft Teams and remove the data silos for information so it can used as a feedback loop helping to continually improve the process.
Here is a high level overview of the architecture.
The “Safety Tracker” app was built using Power Apps. I created one from scratch with no code in a few hours. When an issue is created several workflows are started using Power Automate.
A text is sent to the facilities manager. Whenever an issue occurs, we want to ensure all relevant parties are notified and we are providing visibility and transparency.
A post is created in Teams. This gives visibly to our co-workers and provides an opportunity for collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Depending on the type of issue we have the ability to begin a process in another system. In our example we need to add new safety helmets to stock so we are creating a purchase requisition. If a repair were needed a work order would have been created and the appropriate technician dispatched. In my example I’m showing Dynamics as the receiving system however this can be SAP, Oracle, ServiceNow etc. there are connectors for 200+ systems. The relevant data from these system is also shown within Teams so the system consumer doesn’t have to jump to another system to complete the process.
We then update views and list to simplify and consolidate data for reporting. Power BI reports and dashboards were created and added as a tab within the Team.
Additional Tabs are added to Teams to include end to end functionality for the process. In my example they include OneNote and File Share capabilities for sharing and reviewing documentation.
To see a demo of the system please check out this video.
I hope you found this post useful and it has inspired you to try this approach on your use case.
Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. Please find below an overview of last weeks product news, post and announcements.
Do you use the Your Phone app in Windows 10? It’s a great way to interact with your phone from your PC. Read and send messages, check notifications even run some Android apps. It’s a great time saver. Using Windows 10? Here’s how to run Android apps on your PC
Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week
Azure Infrastructure
Reduce costs with new memory-optimized Azure Virtual Machines certified for SAP HANA
Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. Please find below an overview of last weeks product news, post and announcements.
Looking to drive adoption and create a better user experience? Pin a commonly used app to Teams. In the example pictured above I’ve pinned our intranet “MSW” to the rail (left side control bar). Now I don’t need to leave teams to access company news and information.
Product News, Tech Posts & Announcements from last week
Azure Infrastructure
Taking your automation to the next level with PowerShell 7
View previous weeks news, tech posts and announcementshereon Linkedin or follow me on Twitter @MrLouisG
Your Microsoft team and I value your partnership and we are committed to helping you achieve more. Please reach out to us if you need assistance. Have a great week!