Power Platform Tips and Tricks (8) - How can I convince a customer?

 How can I convince a customer? 

As a Presales consultant I'm always trying to convince a customer by knowing my customer.
Gathering as much information as you could find from your customer around the topic. 

Customers

How?

1. Create draft notes on a Whiteboard or White paper.

Whiteboard

2. Go to the customers website and collect information regarding the topic.

3. Create a Search Word in  Google Alerts for the customer or the topic to get the latest news that could be of interest during the presentation. 

https://www.google.com/alerts

4. Create a Powerpoint presentation around the topic with the steps on how to achieve the prototype and discuss this with your sales counterpart. Also make a next steps slide.

5. Create a prototype of the topic and discuss this with your sales counterpart.

6. Create a storyline with your presentation story around the topic and also the possible information of the customer and the latest news from hat customer.

7. Finish the Powerpoint presentation with screenshots of the prototype and the storyline.

8. Perform the presentation by showing the Powerpoint presentation and the prototype.

9. After the presentation: evaluate the presentation with your sales counterpart and possibly with the customer. 

Focus on:

• Did we convince the customer?
• Were we spot on?
• What could we do better?

And don't forget to celebrate if the presentation was received well by the customer!

Happy prototyping and presenting, Martin

Power Platform Tips and Tricks (7) - Refining app

 How to start developing an app from a scratch? 

Microsoft has created a nice plan to develop your Power App. 

The basics of making an app are as follows:

1. Plan: Identify the who, what, when, and why.

2. Design: Model the data (decide how the data you need and create will be organized, accessed, and stored) and sketch out the app screens.

3. Make: Create the app.

4. Test: Have users try the app.

5. Deploy and refine: Get your app into the hands of users, get feedback, and decide what to change or add.

Link: Planning a Power Apps Project

5. The refining phase

As a way to help you refine and improve your app, collecting feedback and analyzing the telemetry is an important part of the refining process. Look back at the goals you set in the planning phase to reflect on how much the app has contributed.

Collecting feedback

Providing a place to give feedback ensures your apps will continue to meet user needs. You can leverage Microsoft Forms and Power Automate to automatically collect valuable feedback. Forms has Net Promoter Score built in.

Analyzing telemetry

To ensure healthy app usage, you should leverage the analytics features of the app. Power Apps analytics provides you information such as:

• Number of active users

• Devices and browsers used

• Locations

• App diagnostics

• Service performance

As an app maker, you can access your analytics by accessing the app usage report at https://make.powerapps.com. This report is available if you're the owner or co-owner of the canvas app. Data is available for 30 days for you to view usage information such as app launch counts, unique users by day, and so on.

If you're an administrator, you can access analytics at the overall tenant level. More information: Admin Analytics for Power Apps

Adding manual telemetry using Azure Application Insights

You can gain additional insights and telemetry about the app by setting up a connection to Application Insights, a feature that's part of Azure Monitor. Some of the telemetry you can gain from setting this up includes:

• Number of active users using the app.

• Location of where the app is used.

• Which screens are used the most.

• User flow from one screen to another.

You can also set up custom telemetry by using the trace function.

This is the last blog of the "Planning you app" series.

Happy creating and developing, Martin

Power Platform Tips and Tricks (6) - Deploying your app

 How to start developing an app from a scratch? 

Microsoft has created a nice plan to develop your Power App. 

The basics of making an app are as follows:

1. Plan: Identify the who, what, when, and why.

2. Design: Model the data (decide how the data you need and create will be organized, accessed, and stored) and sketch out the app screens.

3. Make: Create the app.

4. Test: Have users try the app.

5. Deploy and refine: Get your app into the hands of users, get feedback, and decide what to change or add.

Link: Planning a Power Apps Project

5. The deploying phase

Congratulations! You made your first app, and it's tested and ready to go!

However, making the first version of your app isn't the end of the Power Apps journey. You need to get your app into the hands of your users by making it available for production use.

After you launch the app, you'll want to make sure it's working well and meeting your objectives. In the majority of cases, you can expect to get requests for new features or fixes, or you'll need to accommodate a business process that has changed.

In this section, you'll learn how to:

• Deploy your app and help users discover it.

• Get feedback and usage information to help refine your app.

Publishing and sharing the app

As soon as your app is ready to use, you need to publish and share it.

Follow the instructions for your app type.

Model-driven apps

• Publishing a model-driven app

• Sharing a model-driven app

Canvas apps

• Publishing a canvas app

• Sharing a canvas app

After you publish and share the app, it's important to make sure it's discoverable so that people will start using it. There are several ways to make apps discoverable, as described in the following sections.

Featured apps

The Featured Apps list is a good way to showcase your app if it was meant to be used by the entire company—for example, for employee search or company news.

For information about how to use PowerShell scripts with Power Apps to set up Featured Apps, see PowerShell support for Power Apps

QR codes

QR codes are the fastest way to get users to install apps on their mobile devices. An iOS device natively recognizes QR codes when the camera is used. Android users can hold the Home button while using the camera to recognize QR codes.

Bing has a QR code generator where you can paste in a URL and it will instantly generate a QR code image for you. Right-click the QR code image, copy it, and then paste it into your communications as you advertize your app.

Deep linking

Deep linking from one app to another is a great way of letting users know about apps that are related to their work. Users can launch an app and then move to relevant apps, without having to exit the first app, return to the player, and search for another app. Deep linking is faster and makes the experience more immersive.

To deep link, you can use the Launch and Param functions in Power Apps. More information: Deep Linking in PowerApps

Microsoft Teams

You can embed your app as one of the tabs inside of Teams. This is a great way of increasing user satisfaction if this app is to be used in scenarios that require going back and forth between Teams and the existing process.

More information: Embed an app in Teams

Tie-ins to existing web apps and portals

Embedding links to the apps from existing websites and portals is also a good way to give your app exposure.

Using the Param() function to pass on information from the websites and portals can minimize the need for users to fill in data from whichever website or page they've come from. This function can be used to fill in some data or take actions from it automatically.

SharePoint embedding

Apps can also be embedded directly into modern SharePoint pages. Not only does this aid discovery of the app, but the content and the app can be easily changed independent of each other.

More information: Use the Power Apps web part

Microsoft Search in Bing integration

With Microsoft Search in Bing, you can create a bookmark for your enterprise and embed apps directly in your search results.

An administrator configures the Bing search engine so that when signed-in employees in certain groups or locales—or using certain devices—search for specific terms, they'll get the app in a pane at the top of their search results.

Next step: Collect feedback and telemetry

Next blog will be step 6. Refining your App

Happy creating and developing, Martin

Power Platform Tips and Tricks (5) - Test your app

How to start developing an app from a scratch? 

Microsoft has created a nice plan to develop your Power App. 

The basics of making an app are as follows:

1. Plan: Identify the who, what, when, and why.

2. Design: Model the data (decide how the data you need and create will be organized, accessed, and stored) and sketch out the app screens.

3. Make: Create the app.

4. Test: Have users try the app.

5. Deploy and refine: Get your app into the hands of users, get feedback, and decide what to change or add.

Link: Planning a Power Apps Project

4. The testing phase

Now that your app is built, the next step is to start testing it. In this section you'll learn the basics of how testing should be carried out.

Types of tests

Unit tests

A unit test is used to check whether a specific function or feature of your app is working correctly.

End-to-end tests

End-to-end tests are used to check whether the overall solution runs correctly. This is important because even if all unit tests function correctly, the integration between two units can potentially fail. These tests are done by following a test scenario that's close to the use case of the actual business process.

User acceptance tests

A user acceptance test (UAT) is done by the user of the app instead of the maker. This test is to ensure that what has been built by the makers matches the requirements initially requested by the user.

Here are some tips for getting good results from UATs:

• Test with the real users.

• Try to choose users with diversity in terms of IT skill levels. This way, you can get a variety of feedback.

• Don't give the user instructions; see whether they can understand the app intuitively.

• Observe how they navigate the app without assistance, and see where you can improve the design.

• When the user is stuck on a screen, ask them to explain what their expectation was.

• Try out different devices to make sure the test cases behave the same.

• Ideally, test the app in the user's actual environment or location if the app uses offline capabilities.

• Ask your users to try to "break" your app, such as by entering unusual characters in text fields.

• Users will typically test the "happy path" (the path a user takes when everything is going perfectly); ask them to also test scenarios such as canceling an expense report instead of submitting it, or denying an expense report instead of approving it.

Your users might not be familiar with testing software. Let them know what kind of feedback you're looking for. It's often helpful to provide a template for "bugs" to make sure testers explain exactly what they were doing, what happened, what they expected to happen instead, and any relevant information about their testing environment (such as device type and browser).

It's natural and OK for the user to request changes to the specifications or ask for additional features. These requests should be recorded in the feature list described in Prioritizing features and requests.

Creating test cases and scenarios

To write comprehensive test scenarios and test cases, you should refer back to the Planning phase and Designing phase sections to make sure you test all the important scenarios.

The first step is to write the unit tests. Make sure you break the tests down to each feature or function. The test cases for unit tests should be listed like the table below:

CREATING TEST CASES AND SCENARIOS

Test case No.	Description of test	Inputs to test with	Expected result	Result
1-1	Submit order details from a form	Order No. 16516	Order is successfully submitted
1-2	Check that a PDF is generated and attached to the record	N/A	PDF file is attached to the record
1-3	Check email notification is sent to user	test@contoso.com	Email is received by the specified recipient

Tools to help you test canvas apps

Power Apps Test Studio (experimental)

For testing inside canvas apps, you can use a built-in tool named Power Apps Test Studio to write, organize, and automate tests for canvas apps. More information: Test Studio (experimental)

Azure Monitor (experimental)

When you're testing for performance issues, you can use Monitor to check network activity, similar to a network trace in the browser. For details about the Monitor tool, see the blog post Introducing Monitor to debug apps and improve performance.

Tools to help you test model-driven apps

EasyRepro

EasyRepro is the tool provided for Dynamics 365 and Power Apps model-driven apps. It not only includes a testing tool but also has over 200 sample test cases to help you speed up the testing process. For more information, see the blog post EasyRepro automated testing framework, and access it at the EasyRepro GitHub repository.

Solution checker

The solution checker is a tool that checks whether the solution you've created is healthy. You can quickly review issues and see recommended fixes. More information: Use solution checker to validate your model-driven apps in Power Apps

Next blog will be step 5. Deploying and refining your App

Happy creating and developing, Martin