This is a continuation of a series of articles on Microsoft Azure from an operational point of view that surveys the different services from the service portfolio of the Azure public cloud. The most recent article  discussed the Dataverse and solution layers. This document talks about automation using Power Automate, and Microsoft Dataverse.  

Microsoft Dataverse is a data storage and management system for the various Power Applications so that they are easy to use with Power Query. The data is organized in tables some of which are built-in and standard across applications, but others can be added on a case-by-case basis for applications. These tables enable applications to focus on their business needs while providing a world-class, secure, and cloud-based storage option for the data that are 1. Easy to manage, 2. Easy to secure, 3. Accessible via Dynamics 365, has rich metadata, logic, and validation, and comes with productivity tools. Dynamics 365 applications are well-known for enabling businesses to quickly meet their business goals and customer scenarios and Dataverse makes it easy to use the same data across different applications. It supports incremental and bulk loads of data both on a scheduled and on-demand basis.  

Solutions are used to transport applications and components from one environment to another or to add customizations to an existing application. It can comprise applications, site maps, tables, processes, resources, choices, and flows. It implements Application Lifecycle management and powers Power Automate. There are two types of solutions (managed and unmanaged) and the lifecycle of a solution involves creating, updating, upgrading, and patching.   

Managed and unmanaged solutions can co-exist at different levels within a Microsoft Dataverse environment. They form two distinct layer levels. What the user sees as runtime behavior, comes from the active customizations of an unmanaged layer which in turn might be supported by a stack of one or more user-defined managed solutions and system solutions in the managed layer.  Managed solutions can also be merged. The solution layers feature enables one to see all the solution layers for a component.  

The Power Automate enables low-code automation capabilities. It empowers even experienced developers to collaborate and create business solutions. Power Automate came with rapid growth and release of features which further enhance its capabilities. More recently, it provided integration for applications using Microsoft Dataverse for Teams which is a subset of the Microsoft Dataverse. While Dataverse provided out-of-box common tables, extended attributes, semantics and an open ecosystem, Dataverse for Teams offers a suite of embedded Power Platform tools within the Teams. These tools include Power Automate. Collaboration tools like Teams have become the centerpiece for automation productivity automation that includes process automations and chatbots. The Teams Admin Center provides a governance rule for access controls. The ‘Solution Explorer’ view in the Teams UI lists all the flows created using Dataverse for Teams. A team may own the apps, bots and flows but they can be shared organization wide. Power Automate’s UI is a designer for automation that provides incredible choices for steps to be executed linearly.  Some of these automations involves sending messages to distribution groups or teams and format the content of the automation.