Preceding this internship I obtained my PL-900 certification on the business value of Microsoft's Power Platform. Studying for this certification gave me a well-rounded understanding of the benefits of the platform and its scalable potential.

Five main components, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Virtual Agents, Power Apps, and Microsoft Dataverse, make up this platform and are integrated well with one another.

Power Automate is the tool I have used the most during my internship. Power Automate uses Azure's Logic Apps API for automating business processes and incorporates a simplified interface for low-code users, but some pro-code features are available for more experienced developers under a few layers of settings.

Power BI is a visualizations tool that allows organizations to see data in real-time so that crucial decisions can be made quickly. I worked on a Power BI dashboard for the university's admissions office to aid in interpretation of the load of enrollment data already available. This visualization tool made it possible for recruiters to act on daily numbers compared to the respective day of the previous year instead of waiting to make tactical changes the following year.

Power Apps is advertised as a low-code tool for managing organizational data. In my experience so far, Power Apps requires significantly more expertise than Power Automate for a worthwhile outcome. I helped complete an app that was capable of updating the university's VDI resource pools based on the request of a user, which was a great learning experience, but a better solution was found that didn't require an end-user experience.

Power Virtual Agents is a chatbot service with a simplified building interface. So far, I haven't had experience with this service, but I am observing and participating in a test project to deploy a chat bot using the ChatGPT 4 model for our Helpdesk.

The Microsoft Dataverse is a cloud database service that functions similarly to Microsoft Lists, except with tight security integrations and significant scope control for data across and within environments. The best part about Microsoft Dataverse is that its features are built in and integrated with all other components of the Power Platform, requiring little configuration to access the information needed in other tools on the platform.

Aside from the Power Platform, I have spent significant time extending the SharePoint framework by developing custom webparts using TypeScript, JSON, and JavaScript for various departmental needs.