Pass Microsoft Power Platform PL-100 Exam in First Attempt Easily

Introduction

1. Introduction to the Power Platform

In this video, we're going to have a quick recap if you've previously done the PL-900 certification or a brief introduction to some of the important terms in the Power Platform. So the power platform is made up of Power Apps, Power Automatic Mate, Power Virtual Agents, and Power Bi. Now, it also includes access to something called the Dataverse, previously known as a common data service or CDs. And you may still see lots of references to this on the Internet, as it was only changed in November 2020. A lot of the terminology was changed as well. So it used to be that there were things called entities. These are now called tables. So we've got the expense table, which used to have fields; these are now columns and records; they used to be called rows. Now you can create two sets of apps from these. So the first is the Canvas app, and you can use both the data verse and others. So the Canvas app can use lots of different connectors. And if I go back to a particular screen, you can see that I can go from one screen to another. I can add new items, I can even have related things such as expenses, and I can edit them as well. So this is a Canvas app. And one of the good things about a Canvas app is that you can insert all of these different types of controls and have them exactly where you want. So you can have a layout for a phone or a layout for a tablet device. For instance, you can say what size of tablet device it is as well. Now, both Power Apps and Power Automate can use AI Builder, the artificial intelligence builder, so we'll have a look at that in a separate section. So, in addition to using Canvasapps, these are pixel perfect. You can also use model-driven apps. Now, these can only use a database as their data model. And you can design forms, views, charts, and dashboards using the database tables. So you can see hierarchies, forms, dashboards, and charts. So this is an example of a model that has been driven up. So we can have a look at certain things, edit them as we wish, and we can also have a look at dashboards. We can even pull things in from Power BI if you so wish. Now, Power Automate allows us to do a sequence, so automated work So here I've got a Power Automate which and these are called flaws, by the way, flor WI start by manually triggering a flaw. So not for to press a button Iinitialize available, I look for tweets on Twitter. And for each tweet I post, is the language equal to English? If so, I do certain things. In this case, I'm using the AI builder; if not, I can do something else and then, at the end, send myself an email notification. So I can do that whenever I press a button or when something changes. For instance, maybe some information has been added to a row in the database, or maybe I'll do it on a scheduled occurrence. So, in other words, every half-hour or so. So, that's Power Automate. It's all about flaws. It's all about automation. Next, we got PowerBI I, and this comes in two different varieties. First and foremost, we obtained PowerBI desktop. So that allows me to load data and get transformed data. Once I get the data, it can be transformed in the sense of adding additional columns or transforming existing ones. So we've got lots of functionality here. However, this is not a PowerBI course, and so we'll just be looking at the capabilities of it rather than going into huge amounts of detail. We can build a model so we can have lots of different tables joined together and have a look at the data as well. What we can also do is use the Power BI service, which is Power Bi on the Internet, so I can upload my visualisations and take little elements of them—they're called tiles—and put them on a dashboard. And indeed, it is this that we have seen in the model-driven app. So in this video, we've had a brief recap of the Power Platform. We've got the data verse, which is a database with rows and columns in tables. We've got Canvas apps that allow us to have pixel-perfect control of our controls. We have model-driven apps with forms, views, charts, dashboards, and a site map so you can choose what you want on the left. And then we've got Power BI, which allows us to visualise data, and PowerAutomate, which allows us to automate flaws. So in the next video, we'll have some resources for you to download. And then we'll start by getting a licence for Power Application apps. And then we'll create an environment where all of our apps and workflows can be saved. And then we will create Canvas apps.

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Installing Power Apps and Environments

1. Licensing for Power Apps

Hello and welcome to this section about power apps and environments. And the first step is to examine the licencing requirements for Power apps. Is it free or do you have to pay? and the answer is maybe a bit of both. So let's have a look at the PowerApps website. So you can see PowerApps.microsoft.com. I just got here from a Google search, and we got this web page, which is a really introductory page about Power apps. And probably the most useful thing is at the bottom, where you can see some of the connectors and some of the data sources that you can connect your data to. Much more intriguing to me is going to pricing and seeing that there are two different pricing bands. So the first is to run unlimited apps per user, and that costs $40 per user per month. Fairly simple. And then we've got a per-app plan for one app per user, costing $10 per user per app per month. However, this is a bit misleading because it looks like you can only run one app per user, but that's not true. Instead, you can run two apps and a portal on a per-app plan. So despite the name, if you want to just run two apps, then you only need one per app plan. If you wanted to run free apps, excluding any portals, then yes, you would need two lots of per-app plans. So you can see that most of the rest of the things that you get from Power Apps are the same. So you can use pre-built and custom connectors, on-premises connectors, and gateways. What does that mean? Well, suppose I've got an SQL Server on my network, while I would have to use an on-premises connector to be able to connect from the cloud where Power Apps are to my network. Yes, there is some variation with the Microsoft Data versatile capacities, but that isn't particularly important right now. And you've also got something called power. automate use rights. So what does that mean? Well, when you're creating flaws that run from a Power app, then you can use Power Automate. However, if you want to use Power Automate on their own without any connection to Powerapps, they must be licenced separately. So we've got two different plans here: the per app plan and the per user plan. However, that's not all there is. There is also the Power Apps Community Plan. So this allows you to get a free environment for individual use. So you can see three for individual use. Find out everything about PowerApps, Power Automate, and Date, the new name for CDs, the common data service. You can build apps and floors without writing any code. You have access to more than 100 built-in connectors, which sounds great. So why should you pay for power apps in the first place? Well, there is a drawback. It is designed for individual use and is restricted for use by a single user. no ability to share apps. So if I click on this "Learn More" link, you will see that yes, you can create unlimited apps, you cannot share apps, and you have access to some premium connectors. However, you see number two at the top. Using premium connectors will require that you have standalone plans. So you'll only have access to some premium connectors. You can't use what are called data floors. They are the equivalent of the power Bi. Get and transform. Power query. You can't add coworkers. So it's basically everything you'd expect, a trimmed-down version that you can't share, you can't have coworkers, you can't share it, and there are a few other restrictions, including some capacity limits. So it's there for you to be able to explore and use for your own individual use in developing your skills. So in this course, what I'll be doing is installing both the community plan and the per-user plan. So I'll be using largely the "per user" plan because I want to be able to show you how to share and other things that I won't be able to do in the "community" plan. However, you may wish to get the free version of Power Apps and then just look at videos while I do sharing and that sort of thing, rather than actually be able to do it. Just one more thing about Power Apps licensing You may also see that you can get Power Apps for Microsoft 365. Well, this is just so you can use PowerUps and Power Automate in connection with Microsoft 365, so users can create applications and floors based on Microsoft 365 data. So in other words, you can't use it outside of the Microsoft 365 context. There are also Power Apps and Power Automate for Dynamics 365, but these are only for customising and extending Dynamics 365 applications. So in this course we will be looking at the Community Plan, which gives you a free development environment for individual users to learn, and the Standalone Plan per app or per user.

2. Signing up for Power Apps per user plan

In this video, I'm going to sign up for PowerApps, and I'm going to use the per-user plan. So I'm going to click on "Buy Now." You could also try it for free as well, but I'm going to use Buy now. So it's going to who asked me for my work email address? So I've got one here. So it says it looks like I'm already using this email with another Microsoft service. So if that's the case, I can sign in. If not, then you need to perhaps create your own Microsoft account. But it will show you how to do that. So there is my password, and now it continues with the next stage. So can you confirm the location? So I'm going to confirm United Kingdom 30 pound20, which is $40 per user per month. Create your business identity. It would have asked me, except I already have done. Now it's going for payment and billing. So I'm going to click "Add a payment method." And now you can see that I need to enter my payment method to accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. And then I will click save. And having done that, you can now see the summary. So per user, it costs about $40. an address sold to a payment method, and a taxID if you want to include one. And here are my estimated taxes and the value-added tax in Britain. And then finally, do you want to receive information, tips, and offers from Microsoft so you can check or uncheck that? After that, I'll click on "Placeholder." Now you can see we're adding products to the account. This will take a minute. And now we're assigning your licences and updating your invoice settings. And now you can see that I can start using this. So I can click on "Get Started." And here I'm at the home page of MakePowerApps.com. And that's a URL, or Web address. I recommend that you memorise powerapps.com. You can see at the moment that there is a particular preview, but if you go to MakePowerApps.com, that will get you to the right page. So you can see, make your job easier, and build custom apps in less than a day. Considerably less, I would say. You can automate routine tasks and predict new opportunities with artificial intelligence. However, it should be noted that the AIbuilder is $500 per unit per month. Charge and build on your database apps connected to data from SharePoint, Excel, SQL Dynamics, SAP, and Salesforce. Some of these are premium connectors. We'll go into that, into this course, and more. So click and let's go. And here it is: this is the environment for the powerups, and this is where we will be when we want to go to the powerapps portal homepage. So this is how you sign up for the Power Apps username.

3. Signing up for Power Apps Developer Plan

In this video, I'm going to signup for the PowerApps Developer Plan. Now it used to be called the "PowerApps Community Plan," but it was renamed in May 2021 as some of the capabilities were expanded. Now, one of the key features that was expanded was the ability to share apps for the first time with teammates for development and testing purposes. Now you can see that this is a development and testing environment. So it's free for development testing, and you will get Power Apps, Power Automate, and the data first. So let's sign up. I'll click on "Get started free." So now I've got to enter my work email address. So I'm going to enter a work address and click "Sign up." And it knows that I've already got another Microsoft service; otherwise, I'd have to sign up for Microsoft services. So I'll click "sign in." So here I need to sign in with my username and password or my credentials. So I'm nearly there. So would I like information, tips, and offers about solutions and businesses and organizations? Would I like information from select partners? So I'm going to say yes to one and no to the other. So click Start and say one last thing, and then I'll be there in the portal. So it just says, "What's my country?" and "Do I want the latest Power App tips and information?" Click Accept, and there I am in the portal. and here I am in the portal. So we've got this initial welcome screen to make your job easier, automate with artificial intelligence, and boot onto your data with connectors. So let's go. And there we are. So I'm in the Power Ups in less than two minutes. So the Power Apps Developer Plan is very useful if you want to do development and testing. You get access to Power Apps, Power Automate, and your date of birth, and all you need is an email, which is a work email. So not something like Google Mail or Outlook.com or Hotmail, but something else. And that's how you install the Developer Plan.

4. Why do I need a Work email address? And how can I get one, if I don't have it?

Now to sign into the Power Bi service, which you will do at some point during this course, it is necessary for you to have an email address. Now, unfortunately, not all email addresses will do. If I just type in "power bi login," for instance, and go to sign in, and there are plenty of ways to sign in, this is just one way, and I can type in a work address. So let's just type in [email protected], for instance, and you will see that it says you entered a personal email address. Please enter your work email address. Now if you do have a work email address, then I suggest you use this, and you can skip on to the next video. If, however, you have a Gmail, Hotmail, or Outlook.com account, as do many of us who have non-work email addresses, then you'll need to either use a work email address or get a work email address. Now, before I give you an idea of how to get a work email address, or what Microsoft believes is a work email address, there is a question: why? Well, suppose that my email address was Philip Maybe I'll just use my website, foulcats.co.uk. The idea of PowerBI, especially at the pro level, is to share. And so I would be able to export anything that I make to any email address and invite them to sign up for a Power BI account of their own. But alternatively, I could have a user. Philip at Falcats John at Falcats Margaret at FALCATS, and the idea is that I could produce a report or dashboard and share it with others in my organization. So what is my organization? It is all of the people who are users and share this domain. In this case, at falcats co. UK. So that's why it doesn't want you to use, for instance, Gmail. So if I was using Gmail, well, I could then potentially share with everyone with a @gmail.com account. But that's not the [email protected] doesn't show a particular organization that you are in; instead, it shows the organisation that owns the email address. So if you do have a valid work email address, then I suggest you use it. You can use it for testing purposes. So if I have an email address, and this is a very big company, and other people in this domain, also known as a tenant, have used this, well, that's probably fine. So let's say you don't have a work email address, and this is something that people have written to me about. What can you do? Well, there are two alternatives. Now the easiest alternative, which doesn't cost any money, is to sign up for a free Microsoft Office 365 three or five account. Now you can get a free 60-day trial. So if I click on any of these, this is Office 365, part 3. You can see that it normally costs about $20 per user. There is also an Office 365 E5, which costs a bit more at around $35 per user. However, there is a distinction between making informed decisions and using data analytics. So if I have a look at the differences between E-3 and E-5, they both give you Microsoft Office; they all give you email and addresses. This is the email bit that we need. It's a work email address. But if I go fairly, you can see here that we have advanced analytics. and one of these two. The E-five gives you power. Bi pro. Now Power Bi Pro is the professional version of Power Bi. A major difference is when you want to share reports. So you can either sign up for an Office 365 E Three or an E Five. And the great news is that if you try it for free, then you can do it for 30 days or 60 days, and then after that you don't have to pay anything more. However, you still have the email address. Even though you don't have all of these particular benefits, you will still have an email address set up according to Microsoft, and it is that email address that we can use to sign into Power BI. So if you don't have a work email address, why not sign up for Office 365 E Three or Office 365 E Five with the free trial? Now, if you are using Microsoft Azure and you have access to it in terms of being able to create new directories, then an alternative is to create a new organisation name. However, I think not too many people will be using this. At the end of the day, you will get an email address called Something onmicrosoft.com. So it could be John at Something.onmicrosoft.com, and this would then be your email address that you can use as a work email address. Now if you'd like more information about this subject, then I have attached as a resource to this lecture a video by people called Gynacube, which goes through these three different options Use a work email address, sign up for a free trial of Office, or use it as your Active Directory. So if you want to see more details, please have a look at the resources and have a look at this video. So now, hopefully, you have your email address. We'll move on to the next video.

5. Different types of environments, and creation options

So here we are in the PowerApps portal at makepowerapps.com, and we have an environment. So what is an environment? Well, environments allow you to store, manage, and share within the Power Platform data, apps, and flaws. Now you can see I'm currently in the developer plan, and my environment is the company name. But I have a second plan. So power to the platform developer. That's my user environment. Now I can switch between environments just by clicking on one and selecting something else. Now let's try and create a new environment. Now have a look at what it says at the top. This is an individual environment and not meant for production use. And just a reminder, we're in the developer version. And now I'm going to click on the settings, the gear at the top, and go to the Admin Center. And that takes me to the Power Platform. Admin centre admin platform Microsoftcom. And again, that's probably another URL you should memorize. So make powerapps.com. Admin PowerPlatform. Microsoft.com, and here you can see I'm in the Environment section. So here is my environment, and you can see the type is Developer. So I'm going to uncheck this, and I'm going to click on New. So this allows me to create a new environment. So I'm going to say that in my new environment, I clicked Save, and we have a problem. The user does not have a licence that allows for environment creation. So what is this? Well, because I'm in the developer plan, I am allowed just one individual environment, and that is the one that was set up for me when I signed up for the developer plan. So if you want to create any more environments, you can't do this in the development plan. Now let's go instead to my user plan. You can see it's got PP on the right side as opposed to PD for Power Platform Developer. So I don't have a second environment. So let's go and set one up. And again, I go to the Settings admin center, which gets me into the Power Platform admin centre and New So first of all, I need to name my environment. Just a reminder, you can't do this if you're on the community plan, so you can't create any new environments. So I'm going to call this a per-user environment. And then we have a type. So there are three different types shown here, but there are actually many more. First of all, there's the default environment. So that is there. You can see it says "brackets default." It is the environment that is automatically created. It cannot be deleted; it cannot be backed up; it cannot be restored. No users will be automatically added to any security environment admin role; they'll all be added to the environment maker role. We'll go into what this means later on when we have a look at security. But basically, admins can't restrict access to the default environment. You might just want to rename it general; it's not an environment you really should use unless there are very specific circumstances. The first thing you should do is create a new environment. So apart from the default environment, we have a production environment. So this is for permanent work, and you need 1 GB of available database capacity. You've certainly got that, at least for the first couple of environments. a sandbox environment. This is for development and testing and offers features like copy and reset. As a result, this is a good place for developers to experiment. Now, this is intended for short-term testing needs. They expire after 30 days and are limited to just one user. So you've got a sandbox, which is for people who wish to develop. You've got production, which is the real thing—a permanent work trial that will expire in 30 days. You've got your default, which I suggest you don't use unless you've got particular needs. And then if you are in the community plan, then you've got access to developer environments, which are special environments. They can only be used by you, a single user. So, what I'm going to do now is go back into the Power Platform Admin Center. I'm going to say this is going to be a sandbox for development. I need to select my region. Why do I need to do that? Well, for instance, suppose I'm in the United Kingdom or another part of Europe. Well, I have something called the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). And I want all of my data to be in the European Union. The United States could have their own laws, especially in California, where their data needs to be. So generally, you have the environment where you are going to access it. Yes, you can also get quicker data access, but you may also need to have this particular location. You can create a database for this environment, but we'll do that in the next video. So just remember, this is one way of creating a database, but I'm going to say no for the moment. And now I'm going to click save. And now it is creating my environment. So we've got several different types of environments. a default, so that's the default for each tenant. So there's one for the entirety of your organization; attempt another name for the organization. If you have the community plan, you have a developer one. You've also got a trial one, which expires after 30 days and is limited to one user. You've got a sandbox, which is for non-production environments. And you have a production that is intended to be permanent. You've also got one for Microsoft's database, four teams, which is created if you use an app in Microsoft Teams, as we will be doing in later sections of this course. So this is how to create an environment. We go to the Wheel admin centre environments new.

6. Create a Common Data Service database, and sample data

In this video, we're going to install a database for our environment. And you can do this regardless of whether you're on the per app, per user, or community plan. So what is the date for us? Well, it is the database. It was previously known as the "common data service CDs." And you will probably see quite a lot of information on the Internet still referring to CDs. It's an open data model standard. But in November 2020, it was renamed to Microsoft Database. So what are the advantages of using the database? Well, it's easy to manage everything stored in the cloud. It's easy to secure. You can use role-based security to control access to tables. You can also use field-level security measures to control access to columns. If you've got Dynamics 365 data, well, that's also stored in the database. So you can quickly build apps that use Dynamics 365 data. but we won't be doing so in this course. You've got data types and relational stores that can be used directly in Power apps. There's logic and validation. We'll be looking at calculated columns, business rules, workflows, and business process flaws in part of this course. And that will allow for business processes and data quality to be improved. And you've also got productivity tools. So for instance, you've got add-ins within Microsoft Excel. Now, just one note: We're going to create a database for the environment, which we could have done here. Power Apps and Power Automate Floors can only use the database in that particular environment, so they can't use a different database. So now that I haven't said to create a database as part of the creation process, how can I do it now? Well, there are two ways. I could go into the Power Apps portal, make sure I'm in the right environment, so I'll change this to the "per user environment," and I'll go to Data Tables. And here we can see that no database was found. The other way is by clicking on Environment in the Power Platform admin center. Some environments allow you to click on one and then, down here, you will see that there is no database. and I've got the invitation to add a database. So let's click on Create a Database, and you can see that we've got very few options. We can choose the currency and language your data should use. So you can see the important thing. Once you choose the currency, you cannot change it later. Same for the language. Now, if you select a particular language, it will use the locale for something called database collection. So what this means is that it will sort it in line with whatever language you're using. So, for instance, in English, we've got L-M-N-O-P as alphabetical. In Spanish, it would be L, maybe double L-M-N-Y, which ends with the little squiggle over O P. So that's what collection means. So you can change the language, which also changes the collision. So we've only got two actual units here. So I'm going to say US dollars and English. I've also got the option to include sample data and apps. I'm going to say yes to this. I'll show you how to install the sample data. If you don't, click "Create My Database," and you'll see that you agree that Microsoft can use the table and column names that you create to help it improve its common data model, or CDM. So let's click Create My Database. And here you can see it being built; it will take some time. So while it's doing that, let's have a look at the other option. Here I am in my community plan. So I'll click on my Developer Environment, and I'll click on Add Database. And here I've got almost exactly the same option in a different order. So English and US. Dollars are put into the USD. You can enable Dynamics 365 apps. I'm going to say no. And you can also add in security groups if you wish. Otherwise, everyone has access. We'll have a look at security groups later. So I'll click Add, and now this environment is getting its database. So I've waited about a minute, and you can see that in my user plan that I've now got a page open at Solutions. We'll take a look at solutions in the next section. And if I go into tables, we can see that we have got lots and lots of tables set up by default; most of these are standard tables. Again, we'll have a look at that later on. So for each of these tables, you can click on one of the tables, and you can see things like columns, relationships, business rules, views, forms, dashboards, charts, keys, and data. And as you can see, there is some sample data added. So that's great. We also have our PowerPlatform admin centre database available. So if I refresh this and make sure I'm in the right environment, go down to Data and Tables. Here we have our tables, and I can go into Data, and oh, we've got no data. So you may remember when we went into the Power Platform Admin Center To create the data, there was no option for sample data. Okay, what are we going to do? Well, let's go back to our power platform. Admin center. We click on the environment, then we can go to settings, and then we have sample data in data management. And then after a couple of minutes, we get this new window that says "Sample data is not installed on this system" and "I can install the sample data if I had it installed," and I did exactly the same thing. So I went to the Power Platform admin center, went to the particular environment, went to settings, data management, and sample data. Then this would now say "remove sample data." So I'm going to click on Install sample data, and after a few seconds, we've got installation sample data being processed in the background. You can continue to use Microsoft Dynamics 365. I'm not using Microsoft Dynamics 365. I don't have it. However, you can see that there is a fair bit of overlap between Power Apps and Microsoft Dynamics 365. And then after a couple of minutes and refreshing the data, we now have our sample data. So we've created a database. Database, great. Let's create another one in the same environment. So I'll go to environments, I'll click on my particular environment, and I can't install a second date for the first database. So each environment can have zero databases or one database. You can't have two databases. So in this video, we found at least three methods of installing our database. a database, we can have it as part of the creation of the environment. And if I do this in the PowerApps portal, which is what you're looking at, we can also install sample apps and data. We can do it in the Power Platform Admincenter by going to environments and then the particular environment. Or we could go to the Power Apps portal and go to Data Tables, and then if necessary, we could go into the Power Platforms Admin Center and go into Settings and Data Management and sample data, where we can install tools or remove our sample data. So, if you haven't already done this on your computer, can you do it?

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