Tickbox Analytics have completed the successful development and rollout of 2 Power Apps with database and Power BI analytics – all within time and budget for a large engineering and utilities client. The core of this system enables engineers to check and update key site and machine properties so they can ensure they have the right equipment and tools to attend for preventative and reactive maintenance tasks.
Technology chosen for this project was Microsoft’s Power Platform – mainly as it integrates securely with their M365 security and team collaboration, but also because Power Apps allows rapid low-code development and deployment. Further integration with Power BI for powerful and practical business analytics meant it was a no-brainer, as well as building on connected work delivered successfully several years earlier. Advances over those years in both Power Apps and Power BI increased confidence in Microsoft continuing to invest and extend their implementation, together with Tickbox Analytics continuing to work closely with Microsoft to develop and support such solutions.
What do the components contribute to the overall solution? Lets summarise:
1: Power Apps
The all-crucial apps running on field workers mobile devices – instead of months of development being spent fiddling with device graphics and network issues, we could focus on tuning the business data requirements with management so that workers didn’t get frustrated by the app not anticipating their needs and data expectations.
We spent valuable time making sure the data were appropriate for drop-downs, multiple selections or free text, and used PowerFX (the code inside Power Apps) to make validation and other more advanced checks (to verify bad combinations, provide warnings, help etc). Even fixed values for display could be cleaned up at source and set out in a clear and logical way to make sure everything was visible quickly – software development often goes hand in hand with business data understanding and preparation. All this could be quickly laid out for standard mobiles, of which there can be many different device models – but Power Apps handles them all nicely without additional hacks.
Another Approver App was implemented for managers to review all submitted data changes to either accept or reject them. This ensured visibility of changes (together with volume, veracity and velocity) and their shared accountability – making all teams buy into the system and data. Emails of rejections are sent out instantly to speed up problematic changes.
2: Power BI
Having a load of data selections per site and machinery is fine, and their being qualified by the Approver app assures their quality too – but an “eagle’s view” is still required to monitor all the changes across staff, teams and divisions. So Power BI dashboards were developed and rolled out to show which changes were being both submitted and approved, as well as KPIs on areas, cost centres, teams and individuals contributing to the overall site updates. This enables praise and encouragement and identifies engagement gaps so they can be investigated and turned around.
Not only do the stats, KPIs and other analytics show up on the Team’s portal through Power BI, key visuals feed back into the Power App to show overall site completion progress across areas! Amazing what can fit on a mobile app, but these charts speak volumes and are much clearer than a set of numbers – a huge benefit of Power Apps vs other low-code mobile apps.
3: Power Platform Environments
There’s more to app provision than hitting “download” – there’s the whole Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) enabling development with deployment of versions to test and production environments. These special environments are further “managed” to increase performance and stop ad-hoc changes being made which should go through the proper development and test channels. The Power Platform provides all this, with great improvements in recent years, showing Microsoft’s continued investment and commitment to this tech, and making it easier and more controlled to deploy apps professionally and securely.
4: SQL Server Database
Behind the scenes is a good ol’ SQL database. That’s right – not a data lake (or swamp) or NoSQL or any trendy tech-du-jour, but a solid Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) DB (Microsoft’s SQL Server in this case – our favourite enterprise grade DB). That’s because even a few hundred simultaneous users entering and editing data demand a full OLTP which includes solid record update handling and consistency, not just adding new ones (which data lakes are more suited). The database enforces data integrity so that bad combinations don’t get into the system and users see any conflicts immediately so they can be sure that what they are saving is real. The database can be server based on-premises and linked to the cloud through a gateway, or be fully hosted on the cloud. Easy to switch and scale too – and send the final data over to data lakes or OLAP if required.
Conclusion
Trust us to deliver – from exploratory requirement setting (and budget up front) to specification, agile development, implementation and deployment with support and maintenance. We love data analytics, including Power BI – but often the data has to get into the system, and we have 2 decades experience of providing those solutions. Most crucially, the client is very happy (references available) with a fully integrated system on the Power Platform, and staff love using the apps, data and analytics for their own critical purposes – making sites and equipment maximise their potential.
