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Collecting Data Made Easy with Microsoft Power Pages

Amira Beldjilali Profile Picture Amira Beldjilali

Collecting Data Made Easy with Microsoft Power Pages 

 

Efficient data collection is essential for achieving business success, serving as a key driver in understanding and enhancing your customers' overall experience.  

Leveraging structured data emerges as a powerful approach, offering ease in organization and analysis. Sometimes customers for example consider implementing surveys to gather information about customer interests, satisfaction levels, and feedbacks. This structured data becomes a valuable asset, empowering you to meticulously enhance and elevate the value propositions you provide to your customers. 

Several tools are available to simplify the data collection process, each presenting distinct features and capabilities. An excellent choice that worth exploring is Microsoft Power Pages, which we will delve into in this article. We aim to explain how this tool can facilitate the easier comprehension and collection of business data, ultimately enhancing insights and elevating the customer experience. 

Let’s consider that following scenario as an example: 

You are a business owner who sells online courses covering various topics. To better understand your customers' preferences, satisfaction levels with your current offerings, and gather insights on potential improvements, you have opted to implement a survey. This survey will be sent to your customers each time they place an order and will include questions such as: 

  • What topics are you most interested in learning more about? 

  • How do you rate the quality of the courses you have purchased from us? 

  • How likely are you to recommend our courses to others? 

  • What features or benefits would you like to see in our future courses? 

The survey gathers structured data from customers, including ratings and preferences for example. This data helps analyse customer needs, enabling course improvement. Additionally, it might fuels the creation of dynamic Power Pages showcasing your courses and attracting more customers.  

In the next part, find out how Power Pages help speed up gathering customer feedback with surveys. 

The following major steps will be described in this article: 

 

Important notes 

The solution described in this article assumes that the survey questions or data collection questions remain unchanged, or at least necessitate changes in metadata when updated. We strongly recommend implementing a more sophisticated data model if you desire greater flexibility in displaying questions. This allows business users, for instance, to modify questions without the need for redeploying the solution and involving a system administrator.  

The presented option In this article supports languages supported by Dataverse and Power Pages 

Prerequisites 

Analyse & Design 

User Story 

As a course-selling business owner, I want an automated post-purchase survey to gather feedback on topics, course quality, and features. 

As the head of sales, I want to gain access to survey results in a structured format to analyse this data and guide improvements on the courses we provide. 

Data model & structure 

Table 

Column Name 

Schema Name 

Data Type 

Survey 

ID 

contoso_Name 

Autonumber 

 

Date 

createdOn 

Datetime 

 

What topics are you most interested in learning ? 

contoso_TopicsOfInterestChoices 

Choice 

 

How do you rate the quality of the courses you have purchased from us? 

contoso_CoursesQualityRate 

Whole Number 

 

How likely are you to recommend our courses to others? 

contoso_CoursesRecommendationRate 

Whole Number 

 

What benefits would you like to see in the future? 

contoso_CoursesFutureBenefits 

Rich text 

 

Note: For simplicity, the chosen data model includes a single table for data collection. Advanced customization can be done to tailor the design to meet your specific requirements. 

Authentication method 

This article focuses on creating an anonymous survey, therefore, authentication methods will not be discussed. If authentication is required in your case, please refer to the documentation provided to set it up Set up site authentication. 

Build & Integrate 

Create the table & columns and customize the forms 

  1. Go to https://make.powerapps.com/ Select Solutions and then click on New solution 

 

 

  1. Go to Solutions and Create a New solution for the customizations Courses Core 

Note: this step will help later in transferring the customizations from an environment to another 

 

  1. Create the table Survey with columns defined in the Design phase 

Note: For more details on how to create fields with different columns types, refer to How to create and edit columns for Microsoft Dataverse 

 

  1. Once all columns created, structure a Form that will be used in Power Pages, with setting the Components if needed. 

Note: For more details on how to create forms, refer to Create and customize a model-driven app form 

 

 

Create a Power Pages website 

This step is necessary only if you wish to utilize a new Power Pages website. If you already have an existing Power Pages website, you can use a dedicated page for the survey. 

  1. Connect to https://make.powerpages.microsoft.com/, select your Dataverse environment then create your website based on a Template or Starting from Blank 

 

 

  1. Fill the required information to create the website then click on Done 

 

  1. Wait few minutes for the website to get created  

 

  1. Go to Solutions and Create a New solution for the Website Courses Website 

Note: this step will help later in transferring the website from an environment to another 

 

 

  1. Add your website to the solution, Click on Add existing, then select Site 

 

  1. Select the website then click on Add 

 

 

Configure the Survey Page 

  1. Go to n https://make.powerpages.microsoft.com/  , select the website created previously and click on Edit 

 

  1. Click on Page to create a new page Survey 

Note: Copilot for Power Pages can be used to create the form, learn more FAQ for Copilot for design studio 

 

  1. Select a template, a page name then click on Add 

 

  1. Click on Form 

 

  1. Choose the Table created previously and the form, then set different settings and click on OK 

 

  1. Enable code components for fields using Components 

Note: Components are used for example to display the Stars rating 

 

 

  1. Click on New permission to set the permissions on this Survey Page 

Note: In this example, permissions are set to anonymously provide an answer 

 

 

  1. Add the New Table permission, with Create Global Access and assign it to Anonymous Users 

 

 

  1. Click on Preview, then Desktop to preview the survey on Desktop or Mobile 

 

  1. Preview the survey 

 

 

 

Update the Look & Feel 

  1. Adjust the Look & Feel of the Survey page in the Styling section 

 

  1. Adjust colors and then click on Save 

 

  1. In Pages tab, you can add additional sections like Images for example 

 

 

Test & Validate 

  1. Click on Preview, then Desktop to preview the survey on Desktop or Mobile 

 

  1. The URL can be used to test the website survey also 

  2.  

  1. Fill the Survey and submit responses- Multiple choices experience 

 

  1. Fill the Survey and submit responses – Other types experience 

 

  1. Once the survey is submitted, the following page appear 

Note: The experience after submitting the survey data can be changed using the Power Pages website configuration 

 

  1. Submitted results are stored in dataverse, Business Owners can build reports to analyse results 

 

 

Deploy & Operate 

  1. Once tests are done and confirmed, you can deploy your website to different environments, refer to Application lifecycle management (ALM) with Microsoft Power Platform and Overview of Power Pages ALM  

 

In summary, efficient data collection, facilitated by tools like Microsoft Power Pages, is crucial for businesses to understand and enhance customer experiences. By using Power Pages, organizations can expedite data collection and unlock valuable insights that drive continuous improvement. 

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