The digital transformation era has brought unprecedented pressure on businesses to innovate faster, reduce operational costs, and adapt to constantly changing market demands. Traditional software development, while powerful, often comes with long delivery cycles, high costs, and a heavy reliance on specialized technical talent.

This is where Low-Code and No-Code (LCNC) development platforms step in, empowering both professional developers and non-technical business users—often referred to as “citizen developers”—to create functional, enterprise-grade applications with minimal hand-coding.

Microsoft, with its Power Platform (including Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents), has been a key player in driving LCNC adoption across industries. According to Gartner, by 2026, 80% of software development projects will involve low-code or no-code tools.

2. What is Low-Code & No-Code Development?

Low-Code Development: Platforms that enable developers to use visual design interfaces, drag-and-drop components, and pre-built templates to create applications faster, while still allowing custom code for complex scenarios.

No-Code Development: Tools designed for non-programmers to build applications entirely through visual interfaces, with no need to write code at all.

In practice, low-code and no-code platforms often overlap. The difference lies mainly in the target audience and the level of customization required.

3. Key Benefits of LCNC for Businesses

a. Accelerated Development Cycles

Applications that once took months to develop can now be built in weeks or even days, enabling businesses to respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.

b. Reduced Costs

Fewer development hours mean reduced labor costs, and reusable components decrease the need to “reinvent the wheel” for every project.

c. Empowerment of Business Users

Citizen developers can create applications that directly address their daily pain points without waiting for IT backlogs to clear.

d. Seamless Integration

Most LCNC platforms offer out-of-the-box connectors to popular systems—such as Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Salesforce, and SAP—allowing for easy data exchange

e. Scalability and Security

Enterprise-grade LCNC platforms like Microsoft Power Apps include governance, role-based access control, and compliance with industry standards (GDPR, ISO 27001, etc.).

4. Challenges & Considerations

While LCNC offers many advantages, organizations should be aware of potential challenges:

• Shadow IT: Uncontrolled app creation may lead to inconsistent data management and security risks.
• Complexity Limitations: LCNC platforms are best suited for standard business processes; highly complex systems may still require traditional development.
• Governance Needs: IT departments must establish policies to manage and monitor apps built by non-technical staff.

5. Real-World Applications of LCNC

Case Study 1 – Internal Request Automation

A mid-sized manufacturing company used Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate to replace their paper-based procurement process. The result: request approval time dropped from 3 days to under 8 hours, with full audit trails and automatic notifications.

Case Study 2 – HR Onboarding App

A logistics company built a no-code onboarding app for new hires, integrating it with SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. This reduced manual HR workload by 40% and improved new employee satisfaction.

6. LCNC and Microsoft Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform has emerged as one of the most comprehensive LCNC ecosystems, consisting of:

• Power Apps – Build custom applications for web and mobile without extensive coding.
• Power Automate – Automate repetitive workflows and integrate multiple systems.
• Power BI – Visualize data through interactive dashboards and reports.
• Power Virtual Agents – Create intelligent chatbots to enhance customer engagement.

The integration with Azure services, Microsoft Dataverse, and hundreds of third-party connectors makes the platform suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.

7. The Future of LCNC Development

As AI continues to evolve, we can expect LCNC platforms to incorporate more AI-assisted development features. For example, Microsoft’s integration of Copilot into Power Apps allows users to describe app features in natural language, and the system automatically generates the required components.

By lowering the technical barrier and speeding up innovation, LCNC is poised to become the default approach for many business applications in the next decade.

8. Conclusion

Low-Code and No-Code development is not a passing trend—it is a fundamental shift in how businesses approach software creation. For organizations seeking agility, cost savings, and empowerment of their workforce, LCNC platforms, especially Microsoft Power Platform, offer a strategic path forward.

By implementing proper governance and aligning LCNC projects with business goals, companies can unlock a new era of rapid innovation without compromising security or scalability.

The post Low-Code & No-Code Development: The Future of Business Application Building appeared first on Opus Solution.

From startups to global enterprises, Power BI is helping organizations visualize their performance, understand customer behavior, streamline operations, and unlock new opportunities—faster and smarter than ever.

What is Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a leading Business Intelligence (BI) and data visualization tool that transforms raw data into meaningful insights through interactive dashboards and customizable reports.

Built on the strong foundation of Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem, Power BI connects to hundreds of data sources—from Excel spreadsheets to on-premises databases to cloud platforms like Azure, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and more.

Its key components include:

• Power BI Desktop: A free application to design dashboards and reports.
• Power BI Service: A cloud-based platform for sharing, collaboration, and publishing.
• Power BI Mobile: View insights on smartphones and tablets on the go.
• Power BI Embedded: Integrate dashboards into your own apps or websites.

Why Power BI Is the Go-To BI Platform

Power BI offers a wide range of features that make it accessible, powerful, and scalable for businesses of all sizes:

1. Intuitive & Interactive Dashboards

With its drag-and-drop interface, users can quickly build dashboards without writing a single line of code. These dashboards update in real-time and can combine data from multiple sources.

2. AI & Machine Learning Integration

Power BI brings in Microsoft AI capabilities, allowing users to apply predictive models, detect anomalies, run sentiment analysis, and even get smart narratives that automatically explain trends.

3. Natural Language Processing (Q&A)

Users can ask questions in plain English like “What were the top 5 selling products last quarter?” and receive instant visual answers, lowering the entry barrier for non-technical users.

4. Robust Data Connectivity

Connect seamlessly to databases (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL), cloud services (Azure, AWS), and productivity tools (Excel, Dynamics 365, SharePoint). You can even connect via APIs or flat files like CSV and JSON.

5. Enterprise-Level Governance and Security

Power BI offers features such as Row-Level Security (RLS), Azure Active Directory integration, and Microsoft Information Protection, ensuring your data is protected, compliant, and only accessible by the right users.

Power BI in Real-World Use

Across industries, Power BI is being used in innovative ways:

• Retail & E-commerce: Real-time dashboards track sales, inventory levels, and customer segments to adjust pricing and marketing strategies instantly.
• Healthcare: Patient outcomes, resource allocation, and treatment efficiency are analyzed using Power BI dashboards.
• Finance & Banking: BI tools detect fraud, monitor financial KPIs, and analyze investment portfolios.
• Manufacturing: Power BI connects IoT sensors and supply chain systems to monitor operations, predict maintenance needs, and reduce downtime.
• Human Resources: Analyze turnover trends, hiring efficiency, employee engagement, and workforce planning through data visualization.

Benefits for Organizations

• Data Democratization: Enable everyone—not just data teams—to make data-driven decisions.
• Improved Decision-Making: See what’s happening now, not weeks later.
• Cost-Efficient: Power BI offers tiered pricing plans, including a powerful free version for individual users.
• Collaboration-Ready: Integration with Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint makes sharing and acting on insights seamless.
• Scalability: From a single analyst to an enterprise-wide rollout, Power BI scales effortlessly.

The Future of Power BI

Microsoft is continuously innovating within the Power BI ecosystem. The latest updates include:

Copilot in Power BI: AI-assisted data storytelling, DAX formula generation, and report building using natural language.

Integration with Microsoft Fabric: A unified platform for data engineering, data science, real-time analytics, and BI—all in one place.

Improved performance with Direct Lake and Delta Tables

Deeper Azure Synapse and Dataverse support

These updates aim to bring Business Intelligence + AI + Collaboration into one seamless experience.

Shot of a group of programmers working together on a computer code at night

Getting Started with Power BI

If your organization is new to Power BI, here are a few steps to get started:

1. Install Power BI Desktop (free from Microsoft).

2. Connect your data sources (Excel, SQL Server, Azure, etc.).

3. Build your first report using drag-and-drop visuals.

4. Publish to Power BI Service for sharing and collaboration.

5. Create dashboards and invite colleagues to view and interact.

Whether you’re analyzing customer data, tracking performance metrics, or forecasting future trends, Power BI gives you the tools to see deeper and act faster.

Final Thoughts

In a fast-changing world, where every decision counts, having access to clear, timely, and actionable insights is no longer optional—it’s essential.

Microsoft Power BI empowers everyone in your business to become a data hero. From analysts to executives, it enables informed decision-making, encourages collaboration, and drives innovation.

If you’re planning your next move in digital transformation—Power BI is not just a solution. It’s your competitive advantage.

Opus Solution is a business consultant in Vietnam, specializing in Microsoft-based technology solutions. We help businesses drive digital transformation through tools such as SharePoint, Power BI, Power Platform, and Azure. With an experienced team of experts, Opus delivers tailored, scalable solutions that enhance operational efficiency and unlock the full potential of enterprise data. We are committed to supporting our clients in streamlining processes and achieving sustainable growth.

The post Unlocking Business Intelligence: How Microsoft Power BI Is Transforming Data into Decisions appeared first on Opus Solution.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital Transformation refers to the strategic integration of digital technologies into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how it operates and delivers value to customers. It’s not simply about adopting new tools—it’s about transforming the organization’s culture, mindset, and processes to fully leverage technology for innovation and efficiency.

This shift often encompasses:

• Process automation
• Cloud computing adoption
• Data analytics and AI integration
• Customer experience redesign
• Remote and hybrid working enablement

At its core, Digital Transformation is about using technology to become more agile, intelligent, and customer-centric.

Why It Matters Now More Than Ever

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a wake-up call, highlighting the vulnerabilities of traditional operating models. Overnight, digital became the only channel to reach customers, employees, and partners. This urgency pushed organizations to rethink their digital strategies and invest in tools that ensure business continuity and long-term growth.

Key reasons why Digital Transformation is essential today:

1. Changing Consumer Expectations

Customers now expect fast, personalized, and seamless digital experiences across platforms. Companies must meet these expectations or risk losing market share.

2. Data-Driven Decision Making

Organizations are generating vast amounts of data. When harnessed effectively, data analytics provides valuable insights into customer behavior, market trends, and operational performance.

3. Operational Efficiency

Automating manual tasks and streamlining workflows lead to significant cost savings, fewer errors, and faster service delivery.

4. Competitive Advantage

Embracing digital tools enables companies to innovate faster, respond to disruptions, and capture new market opportunities ahead of their peers.

Key Technologies Driving Digital Transformation

Several technologies are central to this global shift:

Cloud Computing: Enables scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency by providing on-demand access to computing resources and services.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): Enhance decision-making, automate processes, and personalize user experiences through intelligent algorithms.

Big Data & Analytics: Offer powerful tools to analyze and visualize large datasets, helping businesses uncover trends and make informed decisions.

Internet of Things (IoT): Connects physical devices to the internet, generating real-time data that can improve maintenance, logistics, and user interactions.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Automates routine tasks, freeing up human resources for more strategic work.

Cybersecurity Technologies: With increased digitization comes heightened risk. Investing in cybersecurity is essential to protect digital assets and maintain trust.

Common Challenges in Digital Transformation

Despite its advantages, Digital Transformation is not without its obstacles. Some common challenges include:

Resistance to Change: Employees may be hesitant to adopt new technologies or processes. Change management and clear communication are vital.

Legacy Systems: Outdated infrastructure can be expensive to maintain and incompatible with modern solutions.

Skill Gaps: Organizations often lack the in-house expertise needed to implement and manage advanced digital tools.

Data Privacy and Compliance: Regulations like GDPR and local data protection laws require careful planning and adherence.

Addressing these challenges requires a strategic roadmap, executive sponsorship, and a culture of continuous learning and adaptation.

Steps to a Successful Digital Transformation Journey

To ensure a smooth and effective transformation, organizations should:

1. Define Clear Objectives: Understand the “why” behind the transformation and set measurable goals aligned with business strategy.

2. Assess Digital Maturity: Identify current capabilities and gaps to prioritize areas for improvement.

3. Engage Stakeholders: Include leadership, IT, and business units in the planning process to ensure alignment and support.

4. Invest in Talent: Upskill existing employees and bring in external experts when necessary.

5. Start Small, Scale Fast: Pilot new technologies or processes before rolling them out company-wide.

6. Measure and Adapt: Continuously monitor performance, gather feedback, and adjust the strategy as needed.

Real-World Example: Microsoft’s Role in Accelerating Transformation

Tech giants like Microsoft play a crucial role in helping businesses modernize. With a comprehensive suite of tools—such as Microsoft Azure, Power BI, and SharePoint Online—organizations can build scalable cloud infrastructure, visualize data in real time, and collaborate seamlessly across locations.

For instance, Power BI enables businesses to create interactive dashboards that turn raw data into actionable insights, enhancing decision-making across departments. Meanwhile, Azure supports scalable application deployment, while ensuring data security and compliance.

Conclusion: Transformation is a Continuous Journey

Digital Transformation is not a one-time project—it’s a continuous evolution. The organizations that embrace change, empower people with the right tools, and keep customer needs at the center of their strategy will emerge as leaders in the digital era.

As technology continues to evolve, staying adaptable, innovative, and open to new possibilities will be key to long-term success.

In the context of the Industrial Revolution, applying technology to operating mechanisms in each organization is extremely necessary, and is also an inevitable trend to minimize workload while still ensuring efficiency and enhance its competitive position in the market. Furthermore, applying management software into a business will also help build an organization with a clear system, promoting consistency, transparency and accuracy. Tasken eOffice, researched and built by Opus Solution – a business consultant in Vietnam – is an internal work management system as well as the management of automated, online, user-friendly approval processes, allowing businesses to operate more effectively on the path of digital transformation.

The post Navigating the Future: Embracing Digital Transformation in a Rapidly Evolving World appeared first on Opus Solution.

Today we are announcing new and enhanced security capabilities for Microsoft Power BI to ensure the highest levels of data security while bringing data insights to everyone across the organization. As detailed in a new Microsoft Power BI security whitepaper, our point of view is that data security should no longer be about BI and its data permissions. Rather, it should be part of an integrated data security strategy that promotes the free flow of analytics in support of the creation of a sustainable data culture, while at the same time ensuring secure usage everywhere.

Power BI delivers security using a multi-layer, integrated model that leverages the same security stack in Microsoft Azure solutions that government agencies and institutions around the world now depend on. Additionally, Power BI also integrates with existing data protection tools in Microsoft Office365 Vietnam. The combination of this strategy allows Power BI to:

• Ensure your data is secure in the Microsoft Cloud
• Help you secure your data when it is being used
• Help you govern your data

In addition to my summary of new and enhanced security capabilities in the rest of this post, I encourage you to explore the linked resources below to learn more. Now let’s get started.

Your data is secure in the Microsoft Cloud

As enterprises seek to protect their data environment from unauthorized and unwanted access, many businesses are turning to network isolation. Network isolation allows only specific clients or computers to connect to a particular endpoint based on a list of allowed IP addresses. Network security features in Power BI include:

• Service tags: You can use service tags to achieve network isolation and restrict your network to the general Internet while accessing Power BI service using public APIs. Additionally, you can use Power BI Service Tag range IPs in firewall rules of to protect your resources and data sources accessed from the Power BI service.
• Private links: Azure networking provides the Microsoft Azure Private Link feature that enables Power BI to provide secure access through Azure networking private endpoints. With Private Link and private endpoints, data traffic is sent privately using Microsoft’s backbone network infrastructure, and thus the data does not traverse the Internet.
• VNet (coming by the end of February 2021): While the Private Link integration feature provides secure inbound connections to Power BI, this VNet connectivity feature enables secure outbound connectivity from Power BI to data sources within a VNet. VNet gateways (Microsoft-managed) will eliminate the overhead of installing and monitoring on-premises data gateways for connecting to data sources associated with a VNet. They would, however, still follow the familiar process of managing security and data sources as with an on-premises data gateway.

The combination of network security features with previously announced support for BYOK ensures Power BI can meet the requirements of the most security conscious customers.

Tetra Pak, a Swedish-Swiss multinational food packaging and processing company, demands very high levels of protection for data—especially true for cloud-based solutions. Sergei Lechinsky, Director, Business Information Management, explains how Power BI security capabilities have impacted his team. “We are very pleased with what Microsoft has delivered in the areas of information protection and access control,” said Lechinsky. “The combination of Power BI Premium with BYOK, multi-factor authentication and now information protection sensitivity labels (IPSL) for Power BI artefacts opens Power BI platform for the analysis of confidential data in Tetra Pak. Additionally, cooperation between Microsoft and Tetra Pak is another very positive aspect. Microsoft worked with us to incorporate our feedback regarding IPSL and built some of them into the product.”

In addition to security capabilities that protect Tetra Pak and thousands of organizations across industries, Power BI is optimized to meet the unique needs of government customers that must meet state and federal compliance and security standards.

Today, we are announcing that Power BI for Azure Government Secret is under review by our Third-Party Assessment Organization (3PAO) and will be submitted for Provisional Authorization to Operate (P-ATO) to support Department of Defense Impact Level 6 (IL6) workloads.

Power BI US Government Secret is designed for the unique requirements of critical national security workloads that cannot be served out of a single geographic location. To provide the geo-diversity required, Power BI US Government Secret delivers across three dedicated regions for US Federal Civilian, Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and US government partners working within Secret enclaves. These dedicated Azure regions are located over 500 miles apart to enable applications to stay running in the face of a disaster without a break in continuity of operations.

Secure your data wherever it is accessed and analyzed

As part of empowering organizations to work securely with their business data, we have worked hard to ensure that Power BI is part of an end-to-end security platform that is easy to use, integrated with productivity solutions, and enables remote work. Power BI integrates Microsoft’s leading security products, providing unparalleled data protection capabilities to help people securely uncover insights, collaborate, and share appropriately, no matter where data goes—even outside the organizational network or on unmanaged devices.

Power BI sensitivity labels in Power BI service

Last year we announced the general availability of Power BI data protection capabilities, being the only BI product leveraging Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels (MIP) and providing users a simple way to classify critical content in Power BI without compromising productivity or the ability to collaborate. Sensitivity labels can be applied on datasets, reports, dashboards, and dataflows, and those labels are persisted along with relevant protection when data is exported from Power BI to Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF files.

Moreover, we extended data label inheritance to Excel when connecting a Power BI dataset to a PivotTable.  Once again, the dataset’s sensitivity label will be inherited and applied to your Excel file along with its associated protection and will stay up to date upon refresh.

Imagine a user exporting sensitive BI data to Excel and sharing further within the company or externally, or alternatively a former worker accessing an old local Excel file: once the Excel includes respective sensitivity label and protection, only authorized users are able to access that content.  

Organizations can now rest assure that their sensitive data remains protected throughout its journey, according to company policies, no matter where the data lands or when it is being accessed. 

Preview of support for sensitivity labels in Power BI Desktop

Announced for preview in December, sensitivity labels are now supported in Power BI Desktop. One of the most requested features from our community, this is the natural extension of our existing support for sensitivity labels, which is now supported both in the consumption as well as creation of Power BI assets.

Integration with Microsoft Azure Purview to show sensitivity labels in scanned Power BI assets

Governance of data is critical, as is the ability to discover the right, high-quality data assets you can trust and reuse to make critical business decisions. Power BI has partnered with Azure Purview to make it simple to discover, understand, and govern your data assets. Leveraging this partnership, your Power BI assets metadata and connections can now be scanned into the Azure Purview data catalog. Once scanned, key features are enabled for users including effective data governance, deriving end-to-end data lineage and impact analysis, and ensuring data protection leveraging visibility of MIP sensitivity labels on the various assets.

Securing the full data journey from Azure to Office

To ensure your data remains classified and secured across its data journey, we are adding support for label inheritance. By August 2021, Power BI datasets connecting to classified data in source systems—such as SQL, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, or Excel—will inherit those labels such that data remains classified and secure when brought into Power BI, inherited downstream onto connected artifacts (such as reports or dashboards), and onwards when exported to Office. The result is secure, end-to-end inheritance and protection of your business data, from source to point of consumption.

Helping you govern your data

Finally, the third pillar of our security point of view focuses on the management of content sharing, monitoring, and auditing. In June 2020, we announced the ability for admins to extend Data Loss Prevention policies as well as monitor in real time Power BI session and user activities within the Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS) portal.

MCAS can now analyze suspicious Power BI activities like the impossible travel scenario or unusual sharing behaviors and raise a security alert. Combined with the ability for admins to configure content sharing with external guest users through integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) B2B and tracking of user and system events in Office 365 audit log, organizations have both depth of capabilities and breadth of organizational reach to govern a Power BI deployment Vietnam with unparalleled confidence. To go more in depth on our recommendation for governance, please review the Governance and Deployment whitepaper.

What’s next

The Power BI team is committed to ensuring your data during the course of analysis is treated to a higher level of security. However, this is only the beginning. Join us at Microsoft Ignite—March 2-4, 2021—to virtually attend deep dive sessions that detail our roadmap for security in Power BI and explore the new Power BI security whitepaper to learn more.

Opus Solution is a business consultant in Vietnam, specializing in consulting and providing solutions of Microsoft. Do not hesitate to give us a call if you need more advice on these technology solutions.

Microsoft

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Another key part of that strategy is Microsoft Dataverse for Teams—the essential subset of Dataverse capabilities included as a powerful, built-in data platform for millions of Teams users at no additional cost.

As a partner of Microsoft in the Vietnamese market, Opus is also hornored to hear that Microsoft announce that Dataverse for Teams is now generally available, along with a suite of embedded Microsoft Power Platform tools that make it easy for customers to build low-code apps, automate processes, and deploy chatbots without leaving Teams.

Since these embedded capabilities entered preview in September, Microsoft has seen more than double the number of organizations that are using Power Platform in Teams to transform business processes in the digital workspace. Much of this expansion is driven by the approachability of Dataverse for Teams as a low-code back end: customers have already trusted more than 20 terabytes of data in Dataverse for Teams in less than two months of preview alone.

These organizations are empowering their users to save time and solve their toughest challenges, all without leaving Microsoft Teams. T-Mobile, the second largest wireless provider in the US with over 98 million customers, is one such company that is transforming its business with Power Platform and Teams. Brian Hodel, a Senior Developer explains how T-Mobile empowers their employees to create their own solutions and solve business challenges:

Microsoft Dataverse for Teams together with Microsoft Power Platform is a game changer. This powerful combination empowers everyone to work together and solve business challenges that meet the needs of a swiftly changing work environment. Where there used to be no way to easily centralize processes, now everyone has a single source of truth with centralized data and is better positioned to solve business challenges by building apps and bots at scale and innovate more rapidly.”—Brian Hodel, Senior Developer, T-Mobile

So, what is Microsoft Dataverse?

Dataverse lets you securely store and manage data that’s used by business applications. Data within Dataverse is stored within a set of tables. A table is a set of rows (formerly referred to as records) and columns (formerly referred to as fields/attributes). Each column in the table is designed to store a certain type of data, for example, name, age, salary, and so on. Dataverse includes a base set of standard tables that cover typical scenarios, but you can also create custom tables specific to your organization and populate them with data by using Power Query. App makers can then use Power Apps to build rich applications that use this data.

Standard and custom tables within Dataverse provide a secure and cloud-based storage option for your data. Tables let you create a business-focused definition of your organization’s data for use within apps. If you’re not sure whether tables are your best option, consider these benefits:

• Easy to manage – Both the metadata and data are stored in the cloud. You don’t need to worry about the details of how they’re stored.
• Easy to secure – Data is securely stored so that users can see it only if you grant them access. Role-based security allows you to control access to tables for different users within your organization.
• Access your Dynamics 365 Data – Data from your Dynamics 365 applications is also stored within Dataverse, allowing you to quickly build apps that use your Dynamics 365 data and extend your apps with Power Apps.
• Rich metadata – Data types and relationships are used directly within Power Apps.
• Logic and validation – Define calculated columns, business rules, workflows, and business process flows to ensure data quality and drive business processes.
• Productivity tools – Tables are available within the add-ins for Microsoft Excel to increase productivity and ensure data accessibility.

Dataverse has a rich security model to protect the data integrity and privacy of users while promoting efficient data access and collaboration. You can combine business units, role-based security, row-based security, and column-based security to define the overall access to information that users have in a Dataverse environment.

Save time with Power Apps in Teams

With the embedded Power Apps Studio in Teams, it’s now easier than ever to create, edit, and share low-code apps that connect to data from Dataverse or more than 400 other data sources. With native responsive layouts and fluent controls to provide elevated image and video experiences, Teams users can easily create sophisticated custom applications within the Teams app. Telstra, the largest communications company in Australia, is using Teams and Power Platform to empower their field technicians and drive innovation across their operations:

We are really excited about Microsoft Dataverse for Teams, which will provide our end users with a seamless integrated experience along with access to scalable datasets, enterprise security features and the ability for all teams users to now become citizen developers and solve business problems from within Teams.”—Nathan Backers, Lead of PowerFactory, Global Business Services

Infuse teamwork with insight using the Power BI app in Teams

Now, licensed Microsoft Power BI users can enjoy the full capabilities of Power BI in Teams with the Power BI Teams App. Microsoft has created a new experience that centralizes data, reporting, and insights from across the organization in a consumable, shareable way.  Users can analyze and connect to usage in Dataverse for Teams, enabling seamless access to insights all where users are working and collaborating.  Suffolk Professional Services, known for iconic projects like the tallest residential tower in Boston and a guitar-shaped hotel in Florida, uses Microsoft Teams and Power BI development Vietnam together to make better decisions fast and collaborate from the jobsite to the head office:

We have some very bright engineers in our IT Collaboration team who looked at Microsoft Teams and saw a lot of potential there. We’re using Power Platform and Microsoft apps to create an entire suite of task management tools for construction crews.”—Ajoy Bhattacharya, Senior Director of Innovation and New Technology, Suffolk Professional Services

Help for everyone with Microsoft Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents for Teams, together with the embedded authoring studio, is now generally available. Teams users can leverage seeded capabilities in-app so everyone can easily build, share, and use chatbots to scale support across organizations. Many organizations, including the City of Ottawa, are using Power Virtual Agents and Teams to address a wide range of employee queries:

In response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, our governmental organization had to quickly transition from an office-oriented role to a work from home role. By utilizing Teams and Power Virtual Agents, we were quickly able to deploy what we dubbed “OBot”, a Power Virtual Agents based internal bot for employees deployed via Teams that provides quick answers and how-tos for all work from home related issues, easing the support burden for not only the IT service desk, but also to support HR and other departments.”—Gary Belcourt, Solution Project Manager, City of Ottawa

HR and FAQ bots that connect Power Virtual Agents to company data via Microsoft Dataverse for Teams will save an organization time and money.

Optimize repetitive processes with Microsoft Power Automate

It’s also never been easier for customers to get started with Power Automate in Teams with a new homepage view in the new in Teams app.  With a new Create experience in Teams oriented around templates, it’s easy to build new flows. With the new API-M connector for Power Automate, you can integrate to existing systems, services, and data connected to Azure API Management Service. Whether you want to automatically schedule one-on-one calls or set up approval flows, Power Automate and Teams can help you save time and focus on higher value add work.

Govern and secure low code in Teams

Microsoft Dataverse for Teams honors the existing data governance paradigms of Power Platform and enables access control in the Teams Admin Center like any other Teams feature. The Power Platform admin center provides more detail, including monitoring dedicated capacity utilization and DLP policies.

Microsoft Dataverse for Teams greatly simplifies environment lifecycle management and user security role management by aligning to Teams constructs. Customers can also use Governance workflows found in Power Platform COE toolkit solution and customize as needed.

Get started with pre-built templates

We are seeing incredible traction with the out-of-the-box app templates such as the “Ideas” App. This solution ensures that all team members have a platform to propose and share ideas. Templates can be used as-is or easily customized with low code Power Platform tools and deployed in one click. Customers start to immediately see value by quickly implementing a framework for innovation and ideation.

Opus Solution is a business consultant in Vietnam, specializing in consulting and providing solutions of Microsoft such as Office365 Vietnam, Azure, Power BI, Sharepoint,… Do not hesitate to give us a call if you need more advice on these technology solutions.

Microsoft

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What is business intelligence and analytics?

Business intelligence (BI) refers to the processes and technologies used by organizations to collect, analyze, and present data, giving them actionable insights to make informed, data-driven decisions. On the other hand, businesses use analytics to know the answer to their ‘why’ questions about historical data. Business intelligence helps you understand what’s happening, whereas analytics enables you to make predictions.

Why choose BI and analytics?

The volume of data that you generate may grow exponentially with the growth of your business, making it difficult for you to manage and analyze it. For this reason, you might miss out on the opportunity to gain actionable insights that help you to transform your business for the better. Fortunately, Power BI provides easy access to all your data in one place, improving collaboration, efficiency, and productivity among various departments.

Significance of Power BI

Power BI is an easy-to-use analytics tool that helps businesses to generate thorough reports and gain valuable insights from their data, whether it’s on-premise or on the cloud. In other words, it allows you to look at past and present data and use it to make predictions.

When combined with machine learning, Power BI finds patterns in your data, enabling you to make data-driven decisions. Whether you are running a small-sized business or big enterprise, Power BI facilitates easy implementation without requiring large upfront expenses.

Benefits of Power BI for Finance

Easily store and access your data: Power BI compresses documents to make it easier for you to store, analyze, and visualize massive amounts of data. Moreover, this allows organizations, especially those dealing with a lot of financial information, to perform a comprehensive analysis without cutting down on the datasets. Additionally, you can add new datasets as you discover them, which is useful to handle real-time trading and investment data.
Quickly identify trends in your data: Power BI development Vietnam allows you to view large amounts of data by a wide variety of attributes and dimensions. You can also create dimensions related to other business factors, including sales and revenue, helping you to make accurate comparisons and view trends.

Intuitive with a wide array of functionalities: Power BI’s easy-to-use interface allows businesses to create data visualizations that are visually appealing and easy to interpret, making it simple to communicate valuable insights with everyone in your company. Further, you can also utilize the features available in the Microsoft Office suite of applications, including copy and paste, drag and drop functionality, and easy crop and resize, which helps you to create graphs and charts smoothly.

Access and view data on the go: You can easily create and publish your dashboards and reports after carrying out a thorough analysis of your data. Moreover, unlike other platforms that support putting up the findings online and share the location to your colleague, Power BI enables you to publish and store it in Microsoft cloud service effortlessly. With that, you can streamline the process of publication and distribution, and offer additional features to users, such as personalized dashboards, alerts, natural language query, and more.

If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft technologies, do not hesitate to give Opus Solution a call. We are a business consultant in Vietnam, specializing in consulting and providing solutions of Microsoft besides Power BI.

Recently, we have just built and launched eoffice solution, Tasken eOffice, which integrates the most advanced features, not only to help you save costs and time, but also improve the productivity of your business.

Using Power BI in Finance

Business intelligence and analytics are crucial for businesses to make data-driven decisions, giving them an edge over their competition and enhancing their customers’ satisfaction. Power BI offers game-changing features, including intuitive and easy-to-use interface and automated machine learning, to help them find trends and gain actionable insights from their historical data. It allows you to use your data and transform your business.

Customer Think

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With Microsoft’s channel partners numbering in the hundreds of thousands worldwide, getting recognized in the company’s annual Partner of the Year Awards is never a small feat.

Microsoft handed out the awards in 49 categories last month, chosen from among 3,300 nominations.

Since the awards were announced, CRN has been speaking with several of the Microsoft Partner of the Year winners in key growth markets.

The solution providers stood out for their differentiated approaches in Power BI data analytics, Teams calling and meetings, and Azure-based IoT, according to Microsoft.

What follows are the top takeaways from the three solution providers: Slalom Consulting, Continuant and Mariner.

Slalom Consulting

2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year-Power BI

For Slalom Consulting, No. 30 on CRN’s 2020 Solution Provider 500, tackling Power BI data and analytics projects is all about empowering customers to understand the direction of their business, two Slalom executives told CRN.

“When you define where you’re going in your business, you need a good data visualization to do that,” said Dan Alling, Microsoft alliance manager at Slalom. “Power BI development Vietnam is an exceptional tool for providing that data to our customers.”

Seattle-based Slalom was recognized with the Partner of the Year award in Power BI development thanks to its work for an international retailer, which involved giving store managers real-time data about the products on the shelf and the flow of customers.

The work enabled the store managers to “operationally adjust in real time with dashboards—in terms of when stock-outs were going to happen, or what promotions were working, or just the overall customer experience that they ultimately were having,” Alling said. “They were able to meet customer demand through a dashboard of data that was accurate—versus just managing by gut.”

The deployment replaced a “very clunky process with non-real-time reports that weren’t updated, that weren’t at their fingertips,” he said. “Now they had a mobile-friendly view to be able to see exactly in real time what the experience was, and to be able to adjust accordingly.”

Andrew Houston, managing director of the Microsoft relationship at Slalom, said that to make the project happen, a lot of work had to be done initially in Azure solutions.

“The project was the culmination of a lot of preceding work around getting the data structures, the data environment established properly—to be able to bring in data about the customer and about the store and about the products from many different places, and get them into an Azure database,” Houston said. “And then from there, we were able to build the reporting on top of a trusted and relied data source.”

The project concluded at the end of February, just before the COVID-19 crisis reached the U.S.—hitting many retailers hard.

However, the project is “a long-term opportunity for [the customer] to build the right infrastructure and the right reporting environment,” Alling said. “The concept was developed pre-COVID. The reality will be completely felt in a post-COVID environment, where you’re going to have to be more strategic and more capable.”

For Slalom overall, the crisis has created growing demand for solutions and services. The company’s Microsoft business is up about 40 percent so far in 2020 compared with last year.

“There are a lot of customers that are realizing they have to accelerate a lot of the conversations and transformation they’ve been thinking about—and do it sooner. Because they need to build more virtual storefronts, find ways to engage with the customers who aren’t going to be physically present, find ways to engage with their teams who aren’t all in one place,” Houston said. “So a lot of the things we’ve been talking about, and that Microsoft’s been talking about, around digital transformation—those conversations and that work has started to accelerate. Because there’s a real need to figure out how to get it done faster.”

Ultimately during this crisis, “while some of our customers’ industries have been hit particularly hard, even the ones that have not been impacted directly, they’re impacted on their ability to transform their business in a new environment,” Alling said. “And so that lends well to Microsoft and Slalom, and really enabling our customers to do more with technology.”

Continuant

2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year-Calling and Meetings for Microsoft Teams

Continuant is leveraging its decades-long experience in managing telephony and unified communications services for customers in its approach to enabling Teams usage, two Continuant executives told CRN.

The solution provider has been a Microsoft partner since 2005, and throughout its partnership has been looking to take customers running on telephony solutions into UC and collaboration, said Jon Shelby, vice president of business development at Continuant.

As a result, Tacoma, Wash.-based Continuant has amassed both a large customer base and a “high level of expertise around calling and meetings,” Shelby said. “That’s led very well into the Teams migrations that we do. We have a lot of expertise around legacy environments and what customers expect out of them—and it makes for a smooth transition, and a high level of adoption, as we take those customers to Teams.”

Part of that expertise comes into play when transitioning customers from legacy phone systems to Teams because they’re not always directly comparable on features, said David Ellis, vice president of collaboration at Continuant.

“So you need a company that understands both sides of that. You need somebody who understands the legacy phone system, and understands the Teams platform, and how to translate requirements and functionality between those two platforms,” Ellis said. “I think that’s really where our market differentiator lies—we are very good at translating the old to the new, and making sure that all the business requirements and functionality is captured.”

In some cases, there have been “years and years of feature-building within a legacy environment to get those to work the way they did, and they’re different in Teams,” Shelby said. “So we have to look at adoption and change management, and how that feature is going to translate to Teams.”

For one major customer, Continuant oversaw the migration of more than 20,000 users—spread across 33 countries—to Teams from a prior voice solution in mid-2019. The customer is expected to see cost savings of $18 million in the first five years by using Teams.

Continuant’s key differentiator is its “understanding of the business requirements that tended to drive feature sets within legacy environments,” Shelby said. “We understand the business requirements and how they’re going to be applied to Teams. So when you look at the operations side of our business, the architecture, the design engineering, the deployment engineering folks—many of them came from backgrounds in Avaya, Cisco, etc. So they really have a tight connection and understand what that transition needs to look like.”

One of the big focus areas for Continuant with Teams has been around governance since Teams is a “truly unified platform—where you have calling, meetings, file-sharing, co-authoring, calendaring—everything in one pane of glass,” Ellis said.

“There’s a lot of open architecture where you can really make it work for you. And so you have to govern that and figure out how your organization is going to consume that responsibly,” he said. “And so our ECM [enterprise content management] practice really helps our clients envision what the future could look like—but then also puts healthy guardrails around that so that they can function effectively.”

The high demand for Teams has kept Continuant busier than ever this year, the solution provider’s executives told CRN. “We’re just slammed all day, every day at this point,” Shelby said.

While some customers are just now deciding to get onto Teams and seeking out help with that, others “kind of threw Teams out there in a rushed fashion” and are looking to fine-tune the deployments and usage, Shelby said.

“They’re coming back to us now saying, ‘We’ve got to clean this thing up. We need to get some adoption change management. We’ve got to make sure we’re using this the right way and get it fully deployed across our community,’” he said.

Mariner

2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year-Internet of Things

Mariner is working to vastly improve the yields in manufacturing through the use of enhanced visual inspection, deep learning and analytics, which leverage Microsoft Azure technologies, CEO Philip Morris told CRN.

“There are companies out there doing smart factory but almost no one is doing the visual inspection,” Morris said. “We now have the ability to collect telemetry from the production lines, collect quality data from the visual inspection system, and correlate the two. And then we help customers understand the conditions in which they produce the best-quality product.”

Charlotte, N.C.-based Mariner initially deployed its solution with a global glass manufacturer, which had a vision system that wasn’t highly accurate—leading to “false rejects,” where the company ended up scrapping pieces of glass that were actually of sellable quality.

Mariner’s solution—Spyglass Visual Inspection—involves training a deep learning model on an edge server, collecting images off the vision system and then performing inference on the images. The system then connects back to the production line to instantaneously provide information on whether the piece passes or fails.

For the glass manufacturer customer, Mariner was able to reduce the false reject rate from 25 percent to 0.2 percent, Morris said. The company went on to get similar results with a second customer, a manufacturer of automotive interiors.

“What we like to tell our customers is that our visual inspection system will be as accurate as your best inspector on their best day,” Morris said.

Mariner’s system currently leverages Azure IoT Edge, although the solution provider is planning to standardize on Microsoft’s Azure Stack Edge once it becomes generally available.

The solution also goes beyond eliminating false rejects, Morris noted.

“If a defect should start occurring in a frequency that exceeds the normal threshold, we can alert the customer—so that in real time they can reduce defects,” Morris said. “So it’s not just about identifying defects more accurately, but also now being proactive to try to reduce the creation of the defects in the first place.”

Following its initial customer wins, Mariner now has 50 deals in the pipeline across sub-industries including carpeting, textiles, glass and automotive, he said.

While many manufacturers are currently operating factories with reduced personnel amid the pandemic, “they still have the problems they had before COVID,” Morris said. “The more progressive manufacturers are seeing this as an opportunity to get out ahead of the competition for when things open up full blast.”

Our company – Opus Solution is a business consultant in Vietnam, specializing in consulting and providing solutions of Microsoft. Do not hesitate to contact us if you need more advice on these technology solutions.

CRN

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The Redmond, Wash., tech giant, revealed the update, which includes over 20 new features, on May 6 during its virtually held Business Applications Summit. Eight of the new features are now generally available, while five will be available later this month and 10 later in 2020, Microsoft said.

The Power BI update, according to a Microsoft blog post, attempts to enable the development of a data-driven culture by adding more augmented intelligence capabilities to the vendor’s analytics platform, helping organizations scale their business intelligence operations within one platform through data lineage and other capabilities, and weaving BI into the fabric of the organization by embedding analytics features into tools like Teams and Excel.

Given the scale of the Power BI update and its existing popularity, analysts said the new features add significant vitality to the platform.

“All of these announcements are important steps that Microsoft is taking to further cement themselves as leaders in this space,” said Mike Leone, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “They are not resting on their laurels. They’re further empowering all users to effectively bring data to their jobs on their terms.”

Doug Henschen, principal analyst at Constellation Research, also said the Power BI update adds notable new capabilities to an already widely used platform.

“Microsoft has delivered a truly impressive collection of updates, and the scale of the Power BI community continues to grow,” he said.

Henschen cautioned, however, that many of the new features are designed to work only with other Microsoft tools.

“The announcements in total struck me as a bit insular and aimed at a Microsoft-only world,” he said. “For example, I very much like the theme of embedding Power BI insights where decisions are made — which is a direction all BI and analytics vendors need to go — but all of the embedding options presented were Microsoft products and services, from Power Apps/Power Automate, to Office, Excel and Teams. I’d like to hear at least a nod to how Power BI works in and is open to a heterogeneous world.”

Key new features that add AI capabilities include smart narratives, a natural language generation (NLG) tool that will allow report authors to add interactive narratives that are automatically generated by Power BI and give end users explanations about their constantly updated data, and a new mobile report authoring capability that will give report authors new tools to create mobile versions of their existing reports.

Features aimed at helping organizations scale their business include new enterprise semantic modeling capabilities such as shared and certified data sets that help users build reports based on trusted data and data lineage analysis to enable users to understand where their data came from and how it’s been modeled through its lifecycle.

And lastly, among the features designed to weave BI into the fabric of an organization is PowerPoint for Data, which provides prebuilt templates for building and laying out report pages; the ability to connect to Power BI data sets without leaving Excel; and the addition of Power BI tab and preview links to Teams.

Perhaps the two features that stood out most to the analysts were the new NLG and data modeling capabilities.

“I recognize it’s a sneak peak, but smart narratives sounds fantastic,” Leone said. “I’m viewing this as a doubling down of sorts to AI explainability. By taking a data champion, having them narrate their findings and rationale, and then handing them over to the masses is an incredibly powerful way to spur creativity and ideas on ways to interact with the data.”

Henschen similarly cited the improved NLG prowess included in the Power BI update as a key new feature. Regarding the new data modeling features, he noted that Microsoft is addressing a problem that arose with the advent of self-service analytics. With multiple users within an organization modeling and analyzing the same data at their own workstation, there were multiple interpretations of the data.

The Power BI update — which came as competitor Tableau also updated its platform last week — aims to better standardize the modeling process.

“With [last] week’s announcements, they’re raising the bar to promote consistency and reuse,” Henschen said. “Power BI’s new Composite model capability will enable users to start with data that is already modeled without crimping their freedom to explore and add new data. They’re extending that model in a way that will promote productivity and reuse without breaking anything.”

Leone, meanwhile, said that the data modeling capabilities address trust. By making the models more consistent, they promote a level of trust in the underlying data that didn’t previously exist.

“If you lack trust in the underlying data, the outcomes don’t matter,” he said. “To further drive usage of BI tools, vendors must ensure trust, and … the announcements are about ensuring the highest level of trust and visibility into the who, what, where, when, why, and how of data.”

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