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End-to-end content management has become significantly easier for one Microsoft team thanks to the Microsoft Power Platform and our entrepreneurial citizen developers.<\/p>\nEnd-to-end content management has become significantly easier for one Microsoft team thanks to the Microsoft Power Platform and our entrepreneurial citizen developers.<\/p>\n
Our aging content management system needed to be replaced, so we\u2014the Inside Track team in Microsoft Digital (MSD), the company\u2019s IT organization\u2014turned to the company\u2019s citizen developer platform for help.<\/p>\n
What did we do?<\/p>\n
We moved our content management system for managing this website away from an older version of SharePoint to a more powerful and flexible Microsoft Power App built on a Microsoft Azure SQL back end. The new system relies on Microsoft Power Automate for workflows and Microsoft Power BI for reporting.<\/p>\n
Our decision to overhaul the legacy system was prompted by performance issues and the need for scalability and compliance.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the previous content management system got used more, it just couldn\u2019t scale\u2014it got slow, very slow,\u201d says Tracey Peyton, a director of technical development who supports the Inside Track team. \u201cIt was really a no-brainer to go to SQL for the back end and use Power Apps for the UI with Power Automate as the workflow because the scalability and interoperability is there.\u201d<\/p>\n Running legacy systems can come with a host of challenges, including performance and compliance issues. As business needs evolved, the capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform unlocked a new way to efficiently manage the content publishing system.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter issues with the previous platform reached a peak, it became abundantly clear that it wasn\u2019t performing how the content experience managers needed it to,\u201d Peyton says. \u201cThe Inside Track team decided to make the leap, and the results did not disappoint.\u201d<\/p>\n The Inside Track team creates content that shows IT leaders and practitioners how Microsoft uses its own technology and services to support its employees and internal business groups.<\/p>\n Peyton, who is on the team, has been doing web development since 1993 as a pro developer. He says that the move to Microsoft Power Platform (which includes Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, and Microsoft Power BI) and Microsoft Azure SQL had numerous benefits that couldn\u2019t be ignored.<\/p>\n On top of Microsoft Power Platform\u2019s increased capability to scale, it\u2019s a system that both professional and citizen developers can collaborate within because of its flexibility and capabilities.<\/p>\n Citizen development uses in-house talent and expertise, accelerates solution delivery, and fosters innovation. It allows organizations to respond swiftly to changing demands and customize solutions to fit each team’s needs.<\/p>\n By automating repetitive tasks and streamlining workflows, low-code and no-code environments like Microsoft Power Platform can significantly enhance productivity for developers and customers alike. Employees can focus on higher-value tasks while routine, time-consuming activities are streamlined.<\/p>\n Peyton led the vanguard for the migration to Microsoft Power Platform. He credits Microsoft Power Platform for its short ramp-up time and extensive ability to connect with other platforms. As of the writing of this blog post, premium subscriptions can connect to over 350 connectors\u2060\u2014and the list continues to grow.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost out of the box, anyone can start building a customized app\u2014with the wide variety of connectors available and the ability to leverage data and functionality from other systems, it\u2019s straightforward,\u201d Peyton says. \u201cIt gives you ease of access for citizen developers.\u201d<\/p>\n Compliance is also an aspect that can easily outrun the abilities of a legacy system.<\/p>\n \u201cPolicies change much quicker than tech requirements\u2014our move to Microsoft Power Platform allowed us to respond to policy needs much more quickly,\u201d says Lukas Velush, a senior business program manager on the Inside Track team.<\/p>\n The migration from the old system to the new included:<\/p>\n The development of the new system took six months.<\/p>\n Peyton and the team embarked on the migration first in an exploratory sense. There was much back and forth about how Microsoft Power Platform could meet the business needs without any functional loss\u2014and with the exploration, a lot of prototyping was involved.<\/p>\n Months later, when it came time to complete the migration, the system only had to go offline for a few hours.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it was time to flip the switch, it was scary, and we were a little nervous at first,\u201d Peyton says, explaining that they need not have worried\u2014everything worked seamlessly. \u201cI was really pleased with the increased performance\u2014things were loading much quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n Microsoft Power Platform enables professional developers like Peyton to accelerate their solutions. Using Adobe Analytics and Microsoft Azure SQL with Microsoft Power Platform meant that Peyton could hook up a SQL database with workflow, reporting, and a powerful front end without writing code. Professional developers have shifted to avoid building more code than necessary to reduce performance errors.<\/p>\n \u201cWhereas before we had to do some wild data transformations on the previous system (the older SharePoint), we were able to step back and say that we can do this with SQL,\u201d Peyton says. \u201cBecause of the interoperability of the Power Platform, we can move to managing data in native environments where you can get much more efficient processing.\u201d<\/p>\n But, he says, there were pain points.<\/p>\n With Microsoft Power Platform, they did initially give up some functionality. One of those, Peyton says, was related to data sheet views.<\/p>\n \u201cWe lasted only a week before the people who used data sheet views said nope,\u201d Peyton says.<\/p>\n The data sheet view offered the ability to make changes to multiple fields across several records directly to the underlying data without using the main form. It was only really for experienced power users. But, within hours, the team was able to build a separate Power App that provided the necessary access to the desired fields without compromising the data.<\/p>\n While building the UI, it was easy to keep accessibility standards in mind with the new platform capabilities.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving an agile or low-code environment can make it easy to push out new changes, which means your product can be in tune and responsive to updated compliance and policy updates,\u201d Peyton says.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s such a breadth of interoperability,\u201d Peyton says. \u201cThe system allows you to focus on what you need and offload what you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Velush says, Microsoft Power Platform \u201callows the people who know the business to solve business problems and not have to worry too much about technical problems.\u201d<\/p>\n From being faster, easily customizable, scalable, fully compliant, and having capabilities that charm both citizen and pro developers, Microsoft Power Platform has become the answer to a legacy system that Inside Track had outgrown.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the agility and flexibility to take this system wherever we want from here,\u201d Velush says.<\/p>\n Creating customized views in the Power Platform, whether it’s in Power Apps, Power Automate, or Power BI, offers several significant benefits to the Inside Track team and leadership teams. These customized views enhance visibility, decision-making, and overall efficiency with the use of tailored insights, efficient data access, personalization to fit each user’s needs and role-based access to support the pillars of Microsoft\u2019s Zero Trust security efforts.<\/p>\n In the early phases of development, the new system was only shared with the team via direct access, this meant members of the team had to request permission and wait for approval from the tool owner. After the system was established, it shifted to Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) to allow collaboration across Microsoft Digital.<\/p>\n The team sought out solutions with Power Platform to address evolving business needs. By adjusting the views of the new Power App and related dashboards, the team is able to quickly respond with custom views and tools that can handle the scale of our content portfolio.<\/p>\n We needed to efficiently manage content promotions across various social media platforms and ensure older stories were assessed by the subject matter experts to ensure we\u2019re providing modern solutions to customers and employees.<\/p>\n The custom views based off the new system created a unified place for end-to-end promotion management. This allowed collaborators in Microsoft Digital to jump into the application with little to no experience. Collaborators could quickly see all the information needed to promote stories and track when and where a story was featured.<\/p>\n Auditing the content portfolio on Inside Track\u2019s internal and external sites was a manual process for the team and took up valuable time. There are rapid changes around Microsoft and establishing a program that reviewed and worked to update stories was almost a full-time job by itself.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were able to rapidly build a solution that helped with a specific business problem,\u201d says Jenny Neill, a project manager on the developer team for Inside Track. \u201cWe needed to get our arms around a large set of content that hasn\u2019t been looked at in a long time. We needed a different lens, and it was possible to develop the requirements in a new Power App and bolt it onto the existing data structure.\u201d<\/p>\n The Power Platform provided a needed solution at the right time.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter hearing the challenges from one of the content experience managers, it was clear we needed to create a system to efficiently support the program,\u201d Velush says. \u201cTracey and the developer team responded with a prototype that was already functional within the week.\u201d<\/p>\n Peyton and the developer team created custom views in Power BI and a new Power App to support Inside Track in six weeks. \u201cIt was a radical improvement, our CXM was able to scale up the program and it was easy to check-in on the program with the familiar interface,\u201d Velush says.<\/p>\n The success of Microsoft Power Platform, Peyton says, can ultimately be traced to the system being able to flawlessly integrate\u2014and Microsoft\u2019s willingness to cater to the \u201cnext level\u201d of integration.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the last few years, Microsoft has made a great effort to refocus, ensuring they provide tools to developers so that they can interoperate with any environment; it doesn\u2019t matter what you want to integrate with, regardless of platform,\u201d Peyton says. \u201cThey\u2019re giving developers the tools that they need to do what they need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Build professional solutions with Power Apps.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/uploads\/prod\/2023\/03\/10035_SME_image_1-300x300.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/uploads\/prod\/2023\/03\/10035_SME_image_2-300x224.jpg\")
The best of both worlds<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Flipping the switch<\/h3>\n
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Problem-solving without the burden of technical problems<\/h3>\n
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Integrating new programs<\/h3>\n
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