In this series of blog posts, I will explain how you can integrate Power BI, Power Apps, Flow, Azure Machine Learning and Dynamics 365 to rapidly build a functioning system which allows users to analyze, insert, automate and action data. The tutorial will be premised on analyzing whole sale customer purchases using the Wholesale customers Data Set from UCI Machine Learning Repository.

The conceptual architecture of the system is illustrated below.

We will build out this system in the following order; Power App, Azure Machine Learning, Power BI and then last MS Flow to connect the components. Before you can begin this tutorial there are some required prerequisites.

Prerequisites

• Power Apps
• MS Flow
• Power BI Pro or Premium
• Access to Azure Active Directory to register Power BI App
• Dynamics 365

Build the Power App

First we will build a very simple Power App. The app will allow users to enter in new purchase orders directly in a Power BI dashboard by leveraging the Power Apps custom Visual for Power BI.

Our app will have fields to capture the following data elements:

• Customer Name
• Channel
• Region
• Amount spent on FRESH produce
• Amount spent on MILK produce
• Amount spent on GROCERY produce
• Amount spent on FROZEN product
• Amount spent on DETERGENT and PAPER products
• Amount spent on DELICASSEN products
• Category number

The app will look as follows when complete.

Log onto Power Apps https://web.powerapps.com/home and select create new blank app. Select portrait layout.

This will open up a blank canvas. Your screen should look similar to the following image below.

Next we will add text input fields for each one of the data entry items listed above.

To do this navigate to Insert > Text > Text input.

Size the input field and enter in the appropriate name for the control, remove the default and add a text hint.

Repeat this for each data entry field.

When finished you should have a text input field for the following data elements:

• NAME
• CHANNEL
• REGION
• FRESH
• MILK
• GROCERY
• FROZEN
• DETERGENT
• DELICASSEN
• CATEGORY

Your app should now look like the following image.

Next we will add a button. To do this click on Insert > Button. Rename the button to SUBMIT and position it in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Your screen should now look as follows.

Save the app and give it an icon. I called mine the Customer Data Entry App.

This concludes the first part of this series. Next, we will build the Azure Machine Learning Studio experiment that we will use to categorize the customer if the customers category number has not been filled out in the app.

Hopefully you have found this to be another practical post.

Until next time

Anthony

References

@ChuckSterling has an excellent series of videos on embedding a Power App in a Power BI Dashboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKTPI2pEl9I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZb3vzp1WFE&list=WL&index=46&t=706s

@NathanPatrickTaylor also has a great video on integrating Power BI, Power Apps and Flow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au4a3AEIbKw&index=47&list=WL