Microsoft Power BI Archives - Flyte

Microsoft Power Platform: How AI Can Help You Get Started

Flyte Team — Fri, 30 May 2025 08:38:06 +0000

AI is already built into Microsoft Power Platform. Most organisations using it are only scratching the surface of what that means. Here is what is actually available, where it adds the most practical value, and how to start using it effectively.

Most businesses adopting Microsoft Power Platform focus on the fundamentals first — building apps, automating workflows, creating dashboards. That is the right place to start. But there is a layer of AI capability embedded across the platform that many organisations reach later than they should, often because it is not obvious it is there.

This is not AI as a separate product to procure or a feature to unlock at additional cost. It is built into the tools your organisation is likely already using. Power BI can answer questions about your data in plain English. Power Apps can recognise images, analyse text, and validate data without custom development. Power Automate can detect anomalies, learn from patterns, and trigger actions based on conditions rather than schedules. Copilot Studio can build intelligent assistants that handle complex customer interactions without a development team behind them.

Understanding what each of these capabilities does in practice — and where they are most worth applying — is what separates organisations that get sustained value from Power Platform from those that plateau after the initial deployment.

What AI Actually Does Inside Each Part of the Platform

Power BI: From Dashboards to Answers

Power BI is widely used for reporting and data visualisation. The AI layer shifts it from a tool that displays information to one that can interpret it.

Natural language querying allows business users to type questions directly into a dashboard, such as “which region had the highest returns last quarter” or “show me customer churn by product line” — and receive answers without building a new report or waiting for an analyst. AI-driven anomaly detection flags unusual patterns in data automatically, surfacing issues before they appear in a monthly review. Predictive analytics models can forecast demand, revenue, or resource requirements based on historical data, giving leadership a forward view rather than a backward one.

For organisations where reporting still requires significant manual preparation, the AI features in Power BI alone can reclaim substantial time.

Power Apps: Building Smarter Applications

AI Builder, embedded within Power Apps, gives organisations access to pre-built AI models that can be added to applications without custom development or data science expertise.

In practice, this means an application can be built to read and extract data from invoices or purchase orders automatically, removing manual data entry entirely. It can analyse customer feedback for sentiment, categorise support requests, or validate identity documents as part of an onboarding workflow. Image recognition models can be added to inspection or quality control apps, flagging issues from photographs rather than requiring manual review.

These capabilities were previously the territory of bespoke AI development projects. Within Power Apps, they are configuration rather than construction.

Power Automate: Workflows That Think

The most common use of Power Automate is rule-based automation — if this happens, do that. The AI layer moves beyond rules into judgement.

Machine learning models within Power Automate can learn from historical workflow data to optimise routing, prioritisation, and timing. Anomaly detection can trigger an alert or escalation when a pattern breaks. This might be a payment that falls outside normal parameters, a response time that exceeds a threshold, or a document that does not match expected formatting. AI-driven processing can extract and validate data from unstructured inputs, such as emails or scanned documents, before passing it into a workflow.

The result is automation that handles exceptions as well as standard cases, which is where most manual effort actually sits.

Copilot Studio: Intelligent Assistants Without the Development Cost

Copilot Studio, previously known as Power Virtual Agents and rebranded as part of Microsoft’s broader Copilot investment, has developed significantly over the past twelve months. It now allows organisations to build AI-powered assistants that draw on real business data, handle multi-turn conversations, and integrate with the full Microsoft ecosystem and external systems through Power Automate.

A well-configured Copilot agent can handle customer enquiries, guide staff through internal processes, triage support requests, and escalate to a human when the conversation requires it. In 2026, with Microsoft’s continued investment in the underlying models, these agents are considerably more capable than earlier iterations — handling nuanced queries and accessing live data in ways that were not straightforward to configure even a year ago.

For customer-facing teams managing high volumes of routine enquiries, or internal teams supporting employees across multiple locations, a properly built Copilot agent reduces workload without reducing the quality of the interaction.

Where to Focus First

The breadth of AI capability across Power Platform can make it difficult to know where to start. The organisations that get the most value tend to begin with a specific, high-frequency problem rather than a platform-wide AI strategy.

A useful starting point is to identify one process that currently requires a person to interpret unstructured information. Reading a document, assessing a request, reviewing a form. Ask whether AI Builder or Power Automate’s AI processing could handle that step. In most organisations, there are several candidates. Picking one and building a proof of concept is a faster route to demonstrable value than designing a comprehensive roadmap before anything is live.

The second consideration is data quality. AI features within Power Platform perform significantly better when they draw from well-structured, governed data. Organisations that have established Dataverse as their data foundation find that AI capabilities integrate more cleanly and produce more reliable outputs. Those still working from SharePoint lists or unstructured spreadsheets may find the results less consistent until the underlying data is in better shape.

Getting the Most From What You Already Have

For most UK businesses using Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365, the AI capabilities described in this article are already available within their existing licence. They do not require a separate AI product or additional infrastructure. They require a clear understanding of where they apply, a well-structured data foundation to build on, and the right starting point.

Flyte works with organisations across the UK to identify exactly that — where AI within Power Platform will have the most immediate impact, how to configure it correctly from the outset, and how to build on early results as the platform matures.

If you want to understand what AI capability is already available within your Microsoft licence and where it could have the most practical impact for your organisation, talk to a Flyte consultant today.

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Power BI: Making insights accessible

Flyte — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 10:15:56 +0000

Aaron Watt, BI Solutions Developer at Cloud Cover IT

Over the last few months, Microsoft Teams has become the go-to platform for remote working to work effortlessly. From a quick chat on the messenger function to easy file sharing and collaboration to the team video calls with the odd interruption. With all of us looking at Teams all-day, Microsoft has been hard at work integrating Power BI.

Fully integrated App

Microsoft has integrated the Power BI portal into the Teams platform. You can now access all your reports from the side bar without having to go anywhere else. Forgot those figures for this month’s sales in the meeting? You can quickly click the Power BI icon and have all the information at your fingertips.

Teams Group Integration

To improve your team’s workflow, you can add a Power BI report into a team’s group. It can empower the team as they have oversight to the reports and have a closer eye on their KPIs enabling them to work smarter and make informed decisions.

Microsoft has also added a chat window for Power BI. This helps encourage a data culture by getting everyone involved discussing the data that impacts them daily.

Dashboards can be fully integrated to Teams and updated regularly

Power BI Service Integration

There have also been changes to the Power BI service to bring Power BI and Teams closer together. While viewing a report in the Power BI Service you can now click ‘chat’ in teams to send the report to a team’s group. With this, you can spotlight a certain visual so everyone can see exactly what part of the report you are talking about. A great tool to focus the attention during meetings.

E-wallet Sales Analysis by Month has been highlighted in the chat to focus the team’s attention to this section of the report

The switch to remote working and digital collaboration makes Power BI’s integration to Teams even more important. Dashboards give staff more information on how the business and their team is performing, KPI’s and objectives can be easily set against current data and staff are more empowered to make the right decisions. It’s the improved efficiency.

We appreciate starting on Power BI can be daunting, but we’re here to help. If you want to know more about Power BI or get started, drop us an email or give us a phone on 0141 280 2882.

Did you miss our Lunch and Learn on how Power BI can transform your business? No problem, you can watch the recording from the Lunch and Learn on our YouTube channel here.

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Power BI: Does your data empower your team?

Flyte — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 10:55:34 +0000

Aaron Watt, BI Solutions Developer at Cloud Cover IT

One of the themes at Microsoft’s Ignite conference in 2020 was empowerment. Out of all the products in the Microsoft stack, personally I do not think there is one that deserves this title more than Power BI.

The public release of Power BI five years ago shook the world of data analytics. It made business intelligence affordable and approachable for all, no matter size from one person operations to fortune 500 companies.

It has been great watching Power BI develop from not much more than an excel skin to a fully featured cloud data analytics tool and the journey doesn’t stop there. Every month Microsoft release an update and without fail, there’s always something new to empower decision making through using data intelligently.

Empowering individuals

Power BI empowers individuals by allowing them to take back control of their data. No longer do users have to contact IT professionals to make changes. Basing decisions on incomplete information can be as bad as basing it on information that is wrong, and Power BI helps to stop this from happening.

Here are some of the features that allow individuals to be more agile and empower their decision making:

Self-Service Analytics: Power BI desktop’s intuitive user interface lets users with little experience build their own dashboards and add missing pieces in minutes to suit their own needs.

Data Flows: Data Flows is one of the relatively new features. It allows users to mashup multiple data sets to compare and contrast then develop an integrated report.

Question and Answer: Question and Answer uses Microsoft cognitive services. It is able to understand the English language. All you need to do is ask it a question and it will show you what you’ve asked for, building the element into the report for you.

Empowering teams

The big difference between Power BI and other data analytics tools is that it encourages collaboration between team members; much like the other Microsoft applications and tools. Once a report and published to a workspace, anyone in that workspace can view, modify, and transform the report and can build their own report based the data presented.

This allows a team to all piece together their own insights and, therefore, empowering the team to make smarter decisions.

Empowering organisations

Traditionally business intelligence wasn’t readily available to SME’s due to the high cost of the software and the need for IT professionals to configure, maintain and manage the reporting infrastructure. This led to large amounts of time and money being invested before getting a single report. With Power BI, the entire estate is managed in the cloud. There’s no costly infrastructure to be maintained by IT professionals as it’s per user licence, so you can buy as many or as few as you’d like and only roll out Power BI fully once you know it’s right for you.

Are you ready to empower your teams using data? Watch the recording from the Lunch and Learn on YouTube here.

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Power BI: So much data, so little insight?

Flyte — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 15:10:47 +0000

Aaron Watt, BI Solutions Developer at Cloud Cover IT

The way we work has changed. From being in a physical workspace with colleagues to working remotely, creating home offices. It is not without its issues. The speed at which we moved to home working was sure to throw some curve balls – collaboration, reporting and informing staff.

Keeping up with project management, tracking data and analysis had, for many, become chaotic and scattered. At Cloud Cover we recognised some, if not all our clients had been affected by this. So, we are accelerating the shift to a data driven culture and hope to inspire and assist our clients to do the same.

Utilising Power BI, we have migrated our data to the platform which allows up to build tailored dashboards to keep up to date and make informed decisions based on real time data and insights. With this insight, our team can collaborate on reports and identify key areas of improvement, working together to get the job done.

Traditionally, businesses reported data on Excel and many still do but without that physical presence to get fully involved with the spreadsheet, it can throw a spanner in the works. Power BI eliminates this. It is easy to set up, user friendly and you can personalise it to fit your needs to get those meaningful insights without digging.

So Why Choose Power BI over spreadsheets?

1. Visualise your data

One of the standout features of Power BI is the ability to transform data into visually pleasing and consumable graphics. Charts, images, and graphs can tell you in real time how the data is performing. The dashboards are completely customisable to the needs of the organisation, team, or department, helping to inform the decision-making process.

2. Collaboration

Power Bi allows users to share reports with anyone in the organisation and allow multiple users to work on the same report or create new reports off the existing data sets while ensuring the data is secure. You can add Power BI reports to Teams. The integration into everyone’s workflow means teams can start discussions about the data no matter where they are working.

3. Mobile

Whether you are in the office, home or even the coffee shop you can securely access and view your reports and dashboards with applications for Windows, Android and IOS devices. This enables the user to annotate, comment, and share reports on the move.

4. Automation

The automation ability within Power BI can transform your data and help the user to build the report once. After this, a schedule can be set for the report to refresh and get the latest data. Allowing hours of time to be saved each week as you no longer need to search for this month’s data or wait for someone else to finish what they are working on to put data from a single source.

5. Self Service

Power BI follows the same principals as the rest of the Power platform with no-code to low-code. This allows anyone of any skill level to jump straight in and build or modify reports. Eliminating the need for specialised staff or resources compared to traditional BI reporting tools.

Do you want to know more about how Power BI can transform your business? Watch the recording from the Lunch and Learn on YouTube here.

If you’d like to know more information regarding the webinar or any service, please contact Caitlyn Gillespie or call us on 0141 280 2882.

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Free webinars for Microsoft Teams, Office 365 and more

Flyte — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 09:28:06 +0000

We’re offering free Platform Immersion Webinars and bespoke training for anyone working from home due to the coronavirus

With many of us now working from home, digital solutions which enable remote working are becoming increasingly fundamental in keeping us connected and productive. As Microsoft Gold Partners, we have a wealth of knowledge in Teams, SharePoint and Power BI, utilising them within our own workforce as well as integrating them into our clients’ operations. Now, we are keen to share that expertise with businesses that need it.

Platform Immersion Webinars on Microsoft Teams, Office 365, Power BI and more

Whether your team has been using Microsoft solutions for a while but need a refresher, or they are completely new to you – we can help! To share our expertise and help you to realise the full potential of these products, our Head of Cloud Development Alasdair and his team will be leading a series of Platform Immersion Webinars, accessible online for FREE.

Each webinar will focus on a single platform within the Microsoft stack, with participants invited to explore a demo-version of the application in action. Populated with data, documents and personas, these demo-versions represent a virtual ‘sandbox’ – an open, interactive environment in which participants can explore and discover the strengths of the platform. The Seminar leader will prompt discussion and offer tutorials throughout each session, allowing participants to learn hands-on how the platform can offer tangible benefits to communication, collaboration and productivity.

Personalised training

If a more bespoke tutorial would be preferred, Alasdair and the team can conduct a private Webinar to walk you and your team through the relevant platform at your own pace, in line with your specific needs and goals. This will showcase how the solution can directly relate to your day-to-day workflow and deliver real value for your organisation.

Keep an eye on our social channels for updates. For more information or to set up private tutorials for your team, please contact Alasdair Gauld or call us on 0141 280 2882.

Our free webinar sessions:

Below is a description of each of the scheduled Platform Immersion Webinars. You can sign up to one or more of these sessions using the form at the bottom of this page.

1. Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Time: 12:00 (noon)
Date: Tuesday 7 April
Duration: 15 mins

The right licence for you
Back to basics: How to set up a meeting
Q&A session

2. Teams and Office 365: the bigger picture

Time: 12:00 (noon)
Date: Wednesday 8 April
Duration: 30 mins

A brief overview of the Office 365 ecosystem
OneDrive – You personal storage on the Cloud
SharePoint – Migrating your data
Planner – Keeping track of your project & Agile Methodology
Teams – Promote and manage collaboration
Q&A session

3. How to collaborate on Teams

Time: 12:00 (noon)
Date: Thursday 9 April
Duration: 30 mins

Sharing documents in a Team channel
Sharing documents in a chat
What happens when I create a new Team – SharePoint Sites
Collaborating on documents
Q&A session

4. Integration with Teams

Time: 12:00 (noon)
Date: Friday 10 April
Duration: 30 mins

Standard applications that integrate with Teams
Power Automate – setting up workflows
PowerBi – Reporting on your data
Integrating Zoom with Teams
Q&A session

Missed our webinars?

No problem – you can catch up here.

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