Power Platform | When to step outside Microsoft Teams (M365) offer?

When running Design-Thinking workshops with customers, one of the benefits is that ideas and actions are discussed truly without thinking of any boundary of licensing or software technology being used. But of course when turning ideas into reality, there´s the day upcoming you need to technically decide on a platform and of course one part of the business value decision is also around licensing costs.

Today I´d like to introduce you to a fictive follow-up discussion of a Design-Thinking workshop. Assuming the question around the technology platform has already been answered with: Let´s go Power Platform. An open topic is around Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents and Power BI) capabilities used inside Microsoft Teams or individual – which many of you might heard of as premium – licensing.

Frankly speaking, the difficulty with that topic is around the term „inside“. Many of you might have searched the Microsoft Teams App marketplace for „Power Apps, Power Automate, Approval, Power BI“ and found themselves apps they could install – or those apps have been provisioned to your Teams via your Microsoft Teams Admin-Team.

But there´re additional ways to „host“ for example an app inside Teams. You could think of the difference being the shell the app runs in. Or in other words: There´s a Player shell for Teams and a Player shell outside Teams, but last one could be integrated as feeling part of a Teams team. Make sense? Sounds difficult?

A possible way of stepping deeper into this is thinking of two types of houses. These should be our shells. Above visual shows the Teams shell to the left and the Power Apps to the right. Two different layouts with capabilities. They show parities as well as differences. The left can be somewhat upgraded to the right, but they can also co-exist and be combined via a bridge. And that is the beauty of the Power Platform. A mix and match based on your needs. Still confused?

Think of Microsoft Teams as a hub, not only for collaboration, but also in regards to data visualization, LOB apps, automation processes and approvals or intelligent chatbots.

So what could be a way of assessing the step outside coming back to the title of this post? And sorry to say but in the end it could become a mixture, promised.

We first need to get rid of pure Office/Microsoft365 extending – as an example a SharePoint form customization – where Power Apps can be used for as well. We simplify further by focussing on a single product out of Power Platform – in my case Power Apps. If you´re interested in a different product like Power Virtual Agents for example, you can find more information here.

When doing a comparison it obviously helps to do apples vs. apples and not apples vs. pears. What many of you might not recognize when using the Power Apps app inside Teams (Studio) for the first time creating an app and selecting a Teams team, there´s a Dataverse for Teams provisioned to this and the team becomes an environment. Below visual shows you the view of an administrator who has access to the Power Platform Admin Center. And by the way, if you´re the Teams team owner, you do have access to this view as well.

Before I continue – you might not use Dataverse for Teams and simply build an application based on different data sources (those you´re allowed to use within your Microsoft 365 / Teams licensing) – but as outlined we wanted to compare our shells / houses. So let´s assume the app we got an idea for should be assessed regarding a relational database behind the scenes. In relationship to the Dataverse for Teams visual above, there´s another visual I´d like to introduce you to.

This visual introduces you to the additional capabilities you don´t find inside a Dataverse for Teams environment. One way of assessment now could be to perform a technical comparison between those in regards to requirements of your app.

This would also be a fair assessment in terms of what´s outside the boundaries of Microsoft Teams or your Microsoft 365 licensing, though again, keep in mind that a mixture in the end of the day is what can be found at many enterprise companies.

Remember the house/shell shown to the right doesn´t mean you cannot integrate it inside Microsoft Teams as being your hub for employees to access both collaboration platform as well as LOB apps or performing approvals and kick-off Power Automate flows.

A simplified checklist for you to run through:

• App requires a relational database?
• App might need additional data sources or APIs to connect with?
• Need the app to run outside the boundaries of Microsoft Teams client (desktop, web, mobile)?
• App needs technical advanced capabilities that are not part of Dataverse for Teams?
• App requires AI infusion or Mixed Reality capabilities?
• App needs to be shared with Guests (externals)?

Hope this helps in your journey. Questions? Let me know via comments or Twitter.

Until then,…