How a robust Power Apps solution orchestrates thousands of project implementations

Managing moving parts is hard, and it’s costly to fumble big projects

Struggles with monitoring project health can be perilous. A disastrous project or series of projects could cost your company rapport, time, money, or even clients. This is especially true when you’re in charge of a large organization with dozens or even hundreds of simultaneous, ongoing projects. How to keep them all balanced and running at optimal health?

At any given time, solution architects in the Microsoft FastTrack team are working concurrently on implementing thousands of projects. The FastTrack team helps their customers deploy Microsoft cloud solutions. They constantly onboard new customers, set project parameters, and check in with their clients at regular intervals to offer support and assess project implementation health.

In the past, each solution architect had their own system for keeping track of individual project implementations. At some point it became apparent that there needed to be a better, centralized data system that all the architects could work from.

What the solution architects needed was a nimble application that could perform the following tasks efficiently:

• Track the implementation status of ongoing projects
• Aggregate data
• Collect notes
• Generate action items
• Build reports

The ideal application would bring the team together into one place, a shared information environment, that would benefit everyone involved: solution architects, management, and customers.

Architects design a custom Power Apps solution to unify workflow

Microsoft solution architects and Business Application Group Operations team designed a solution using Microsoft’s own Power Platform technology. The architects built an internal shared data environment designed to hydrate, integrate, and extract information. This centralized database tracks project notes, defines success measures, and helps management to assess ongoing implementations.

Now, at a glance, solution architects and senior management teams can accurately monitor real-time implementation health. If a project is showing a series of red flags, for example, it will prompt the team to:

• Determine if the product needs to be configured to the customers’ needs
• Offer the customer or partner training or guidance on how to use the product
• Customize features to meet customer needs

The collected information filters upward to management, showing an overview of implementation health across thousands of projects at a glance.

Screenshot of demo environment showing project list view.

Screenshot of demo environment showing project detail view.

Screenshot of demo environment showing success measure list view.

Screenshot of demo environment showing success measure detail view.

A shared information environment is smart and benefits the whole team

With Power Platform, stagnant reports are a thing of the past. The solution is designed to create a real-time, ongoing portrait of all of the FastTrack team’s projects. The collected data is dynamic and living. The shared Power Platform working environment can extract useful information, generate queries, and create action items.

This solution is one component of why the FastTrack program is so effective and popular with Microsoft’s largest customers. Consider the following benefits of the program.

• Planning – schedule meetings, select topics to include from a knowledgebase, and customize selected topics and scenarios to fit the customer’s scenarios.
• Execution – capture notes during meetings along with other documents and other materials used or generated during meetings.
• Compilation – edit notes, document issues and risks that can be managed as part of the ongoing engagement.
• Reporting – generate a report for customers and partners, summarizing findings.

These capabilities save time and money for the solution architects and the FastTrack team, and they were all designed and configured using the Power Platform. Say goodbye to stagnant reports and hello to a robust real-time app of your own design.

Create your own customized Power Apps solution to work smarter

The magic of Power Platform is that it’s entirely configurable and customizable. What works internally for the Microsoft FastTrack team can also work for your organization, no matter its size or objectives. Check in on your customers, offer support, track objectives, and gather data. Meet your goals with custom apps.

Explore Microsoft Dataverse to create and run thousands of applications, automation, and intelligent agents with a smart, secure, low-code data platform. No matter the size of your organization, you can create data management systems that fit the scale and needs of your company or team.

Learn more about how to use the Power Platform to track customer interactions.

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