Pressure is always increasing on IT departments. The influence of technology is increasing within every department, the infrastructure has to perform optimally 24/7 and more and more requests are coming in from the organisation for the development of new applications. Due to this increasing pressure, the digital transformation is often slower than hoped. Fortunately, the Microsoft Power Platform offers a way out.
This platform enables employees from departments such as HR, Marketing and Sales to build their own business apps (PowerApps). However, setting up this platform must be done in a careful manner. This is because data is processed that must be secure. In this blog we explain how to set up a PowerApps environment in a safe and controlled way.
The right environment to build Power Apps
To be able to achieve success with Power Platform, it is important that you create the right environment. Within the organisation, employees should be given the opportunity to rebrand themselves as so-called citizen developers. This simply means that a non-technical person learns to create PowerApps on their own. There are roughly three ways in which you can realise this environment:
Bottom up approach
The bottom-up approach means that you give your business a lot of freedom and responsibility when developing PowerApps. The IT department takes on the role of facilitator. IT prepares the platform and then leaves it to the business to develop applications.
Blended approach
With the blended approach you also choose to give your business and employees a lot of responsibility, but IT does monitor closely. Also the business can only use predefined resources. This limits the freedom of the users but ensures a controlled growth of the platform.
Top down approach
With this approach, the business can only use apps and flows made available by IT. IT supports every part of every built application. This is the most secure option but it keeps any IT department capacity issues alive.
In addition to the cultural characteristics, it is also very important to set up a correct governance structure. The platform offers various options for this.
Governance: how do you ensure a safe and controlled environment?
The Microsoft Power Platform enables you to innovate faster. However, in order for the platform to be implemented successfully in your organisation, it is important that this is done in a safe and controlled manner. It would go too far to describe in detail in this blog how the environment is best set up according to the right protocols but to give you an idea of how you can ensure good governance, we briefly explain the basics.
There are basically two ways in which you can set up your environment:
- a single environment model or
- a multi-environment model
A tenant is a protected space in which you house all your assets and components. It’s sort of a repository for users, domains, and enrolments. A user can only own one account per tenant. An environment falls within the framework of a tenant. This is the place where data, applications and flows are stored. A tenant can contain several environments. You could see a tenant as a house, where the environments are the different rooms in the house. Different roles and security rules can be drawn up per environment. Based on tenants and environments, you can determine who gets which privileges within the organisation. It ensures that the right people have access to the environments suitable for them.
What about security and preventing data loss?
In addition to assigning roles and privileges within the Power Platform, it is of course also important that the environment is secured against external threats and possible data leaks. The Microsoft Power Platform complies with major security standards, including HIPAA, EU Model Clauses, ISO, and SOC. Also standardised (GDPR-proof) protocols are available in the event of data loss. These standards and protocols provide you with guidance when developing a compliant security plan.
Tech-Wales Power Platform Development
At Tech-Wales we are experts in setting up and maintaining your Power Platform environment. We will ensure that your Power Platform environment will be set up with the highest security standards for your peace of mind. We also have an excellent business IT support service to support your employees. Call us on 01639 326001 or contact us to discuss your Power Platform to drive your business forward.