Author: Andrew Ly (Page 1 of 10)

Microsoft Business Applications MVP, based out of Adelaide Australia.

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare 2022/23 Updates

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare Updates in 2022 and 2023

February 24, 2023 / Andrew Ly

Recent changes to the industry with a focus on value-based care and telehealth services have been the focus of MC4HC platform enhancements. We see several fundamental changes to the data model that enable providers to integrate frontline services more easily with the platform and user experience enhancements focused on care planning and service delivery.

In this article, I go into some critical changes that have either gone into General Availability (GA) in late 2022 or will go into GA sometime in 2023.

Power Apps Figma UI Kit – A Year in Review and Future of Express Design

December 29, 2022 / Andrew Ly

Introduction

Figma is a software company that offers an innovative, collaborative design and prototyping tool. It allows designers and teams to create, prototype, and share designs for websites, mobile apps and other digital products.

In May 2022, Microsoft announced plans to integrate with Figma, the collaborative design tool, when they introduced Microsoft’s Express Design. This enabled auto-generating apps from Figma files and other image files.

Convert Figma files, PDFs, paper forms, and hand drawn sketches into apps with express design in Power Apps.

According to Ryan Cunningham (VP, Power Apps) more than half of the people using AI to generate apps from images or designs are new to the platform, and more than a third of all makers are getting AI-powered suggestions in Power Apps today.

How does Integration work?

Figma UI Kit for Microsoft Power Apps Walkthrough

July 20, 2022 / Andrew Ly

Microsoft released support for Figma design files in 2022 and allows you to create Power App screens (both tablet and mobile) with pre-defined Power App controls (e.g. Scrollable sections, labels, controls, colours, etc).

Today I’ll do a quick run-through demonstrating how you can quickly create Power App screens using the toolkit and how to import into your Power Apps environment .

jsPDF PCF Implementation Walkthrough

July 8, 2022 / Andrew Ly

jsPDF is a handy library to generate PDF documents from text. There are a number of simple to advanced features of this library, that include formatting (fonts, margins, paper sizes, etc) through to compression as well as password encryption options.

Initially I thought that jsPDF could be a great option to extend portals by allowing customers to quickly generate a bill (on the fly) whilst reducing storage costs by not keeping historical invoices, but then I discovered that the jsPDF framework is capable of a lot more. I recommend that you read through the jsPDF documentation when you have a moment (https://artskydj.github.io/jsPDF/docs/jsPDF.html), as mentioned earlier there are many many options available in jsPDF.

In this video, I’ll walk you through how to create a simple PCF implementation of jsPDF, which we’ll bind to a text field and trigger the generation of the PDF document from a button.

Source code:

https://github.com/365lyf/PCFControls/tree/master/jsPDF

Power Platform Release Wave 1 2022 – What’s new in Power Apps

April 1, 2022 / Andrew Ly

With the upcoming Microsoft Power Platform 2022 Release Wave 1, I wanted to provide a guide to the community on the upcoming feature enhancements that will help make a difference in your deployments. The intention is to provide rolling commentary across the next couple of weeks with a focus on each of the major products within the Power Platform, continuing with today with Power Automate.

If you missed the previous article on Power BI and Power Automate, you read my summary here.

Microsoft Power Apps 2022 Wave 1 release brings about significant enhancements across all areas of Power Apps Model, Canvas and Portals. The core themes of this release, in my opinion, are Platform Enhancements (either previously previewed features, or exciting new features such as Branded Apps), and Collaboration (Co-Presence, Co-Edit for example).

Here’s a hot take on some of the features included in this release.

Power Platform Release Wave 1 2022 – Top 10 Power Automate Features

February 3, 2022 / Andrew Ly

With the upcoming Microsoft Power Platform 2022 Release Wave 1, I wanted to provide a guide to the community of the upcoming feature enhancements that will help make a difference in your deployments. My intention is to provide rolling commentary across the next couple of weeks with a focus on each of the major products within the Power Platform, continuing with today with Power Automate.

If you missed my previous article on Power BI, you can read it here.

An early peek of Microsoft Power Automate 2022 Wave 1 release it shows that there have been significant enhancements in respect to Usability, Security and Monitoring.

Here is my top 10 new features that you should be across in this release.

Power Platform Release Wave 1 2022 – Top 10 Power BI Features

January 28, 2022 / Andrew Ly

With the upcoming Microsoft Power Platform Release Wave 1, I wanted to provide a guide to the community of the upcoming feature enhancements that will help make a difference in your deployments. The intention is to provide rolling commentary across the next couple of weeks with a focus on each of the major products within the Power Platform, starting with today with Power BI.

As with previous release waves, the upcoming Microsoft Power BI 2022 Wave 1 release has a number brand new capabilities that are focused on collaboration, performance, and administration.

Here is my top 10 of new features that you should be across in this release.

Continuous Threat Monitoring for Dynamics 365

January 11, 2022 / Andrew Ly

According to the Identity Theft Resource Centre, data breaches in 2021 were up 17% over 2020 (source). The average cost of data breaches was also escalating with a report by IBM indicating the typical cost was $4.24m per breach (source).

This represents a worrying trend for our industry, and it is no wonder that data security has now become top of mind for CIOs and key decision-makers.

While Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are invaluable in managing your client relationships in a central datastore, they also present a soft target for nefarious actors.

In today’s blog post, I will explain what the recently released Continuous Threat Monitoring for Dynamics 365 is and how it can be used to secure your CRM.

Power Platform 2021 H1 – 6 Announcements You Should Know About

June 20, 2021 / Andrew Ly

I hope everyone in the community is staying safe and their families are well. 2021 has been a year of many stops and starts, but one thing that keeps moving forward is the evolution of the Microsoft Power Platform. As we approach the midpoint of the year, I feel as though now is a good time to reflect upon the announcements made at both the Microsoft Business Applications Summit (MBAS) and Microsoft Build.

In this blog, I will quickly cover the top 6 features announced so far this year that will change the way you implement and use the Power Platform.

First look at PCF on Portals

April 1, 2021 / Andrew Ly

Over the past year we have seen the Power Apps Component Framework (PCF) evolve into a robust development framework for end user experiences.

Today the evolution continues with the official PCF support on Microsoft Portals with the Public Preview. I will be providing a first look at the upcoming PCF on Portals in this article and showing how you can get started with a quick start tutorial.