Blog

Services We Provide: Business Process Automation

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Welcome to a new blog series here on Imaginet.com (an Improving Company). In this series, we will take you through some of the services we provide from our different practices and demonstrate how we deliver them to our clients. We hope to shine a light on the delivery process and how we operate at Improving Winnipeg. Today, we are kicking it off with business process automation. Selection of a Process At the very start of this type of engagement, we need to identify a process that would benefit from being automated. This helps to define and limit the scope of our engagement, which helps keep our team on task and … Read more

Load SharePoint Items into Power Apps Without Delegation Limitations

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Load SharePoint Items into Power Apps

Loading large datasets into Power Apps galleries or data tables can be a significant challenge in app development, especially when dealing with SharePoint’s 5,000-item limit and Power Apps’ 2,000-delegation row limit. In this blog, we will be discussing how you can easily load all SharePoint items into Power Apps with a simple solution. These constraints often result in incomplete datasets being retrieved from a SharePoint list or library. In practice, delegation issues are difficult to avoid, especially when search, filter, or sort operations are applied to complex columns. The following formula offers a dynamic solution to the challenge of loading large datasets into Power Apps and has been used successfully … Read more

Top 3 Beginner Tips for Developing Canvas Power Apps

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Canvas Power Apps is a handy tool from Microsoft that lets you build custom business apps without needing to write any code. Imagine you’re working with a blank canvas where you can drag and drop different elements to design your app’s interface the way you want. You can connect your app to many data sources, like Excel, SharePoint, or third-party services. You can also use Excel-like formulas to add logic and functionality. Canvas Power Apps is perfect for creating apps that work on the web, mobile, or tablet, and you can share them with your team to use on any device. Below, we’ve compiled the top three beginner tips to … Read more

Clean Data, Clear Decisions: How to Optimize Data Quality

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Clean Data

Last week, I sat down with one of our data experts, Olena Shevchenko, to get her thoughts on clean data and why it’s important. As someone with a non-technical background, I wanted to understand the steps you can take to ensure you are working with clean data.   Clean Data: Step 1  Olena explained the first step she would take is exploring. She gave the example of having a very wide data table, where you may or may not know the source of the data. You want to explore what kind of naming standards there are for the columns and understand what the underlying data behind it is. You also want … Read more

Why Power Pages Are Better than Squarespace, Wix, and DIY for Businesses 

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In today’s digital era, choosing the right platform to build your business website is a critical decision. There are many options, ranging from do-it-yourself platforms like Squarespace and Wix, to bespoke builds crafted from the ground up. However, Power Pages have emerged as a compelling alternative that outshines these options, particularly when examining costs, security, and overall platform efficiency.  This blog will discuss the costs (both realized and hidden) and security concerns involved when building a DIY/custom website vs. when building with Power Pages.   Cost to Build from Scratch  Building a website from scratch can seem appealing for the tailored customization it offers. However, the costs associated with this approach … Read more

Internal Oversharing Concerns? Microsoft Has a Solution

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Internal Oversharing

Microsoft Copilot is still relatively new technology. Therefore, users are likely experiencing some uncertainty in using or adopting it. With this uncertainty comes the risk of oversharing – the unintentional or inappropriate sharing of sensitive or confidential information within an organization. Internal oversharing concerns are normal, and Microsoft has a deployment blueprint to address these concerns.   When Does Internal Oversharing Happen?  Oversharing happens when users share documents, emails, or other data with individuals who should not have access to it, either within or outside the organization.  This can lead to various risks, like data breaches, loss of intellectual property, and compliance issues. The Microsoft Copilot blueprint provides strategies and tools … Read more

AI’s Secret Weapon: The Importance of Quality Data for AI Insights 

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Quality Data

There are many conversations surrounding the benefits of AI. Two of the benefits often discussed are the amount of time AI can save you and its ability to provide key organizational insights. Unfortunately, many people fail to realize that just because AI simplifies many aspects of a job, doesn’t mean building it requires a simple approach. Using quality data for AI insights is key to ensuring you are getting the most out of AI technology.   Why Quality Data for AI Insights Matters  High-quality data ensures AI models can detect patterns accurately and then uses those patterns to make correct predictions to provide actionable organizational insights. With poor-quality data, you run … Read more

Basic PowerFx Functions Every Developer Should Know

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Basic PowerFx Functions

PowerFx is a declarative, Excel-like programming language, created by Microsoft, primarily for the creation of Canvas Apps. Like Excel, it uses functions and expressions to accomplish tasks with little to no need to specify step by step procedural logic. It abstracts away the implementation details, so the focus is on the ‘what’ and not the ‘how.’  This blog will highlight some of the basic PowerFx functions every developer should be familiar with. Take the following table that lists the items and their cost in a ‘Shopping Cart’ for example.   ShoppingCart  ID  Item  $ Cost  1  Bread  2  2  Milk  5  3  Butter  7  In an imperative language, the developer would have … Read more

Microsoft Sample Solution Gallery: Unlock Innovation 

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Microsoft Sample Solution Gallery

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants”. – Sir Isaac Newton  Isaac Newton, one of the most influential scientists in history and known for formulating the laws of motion and universal gravitation which laid the groundwork for much of modern physics and mathematics.   Newton is saying that innovation is a process and is often built on the ideas and work that existed before and seldom by isolated inspiration as often depicted in popular television. This type of innovation is exactly what Microsoft is attempting to inspire with the creation of their Sample Solution Gallery.   For those not already familiar, the Microsoft Sample Solution … Read more

Industry 4.0 Adoption – Part 6 

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Alright, if you’ve stayed with us so far, you’ve finally reached the end of this blog series. We’ve spent five articles going over the background, benefits and challenges, components and offerings related to Industry 4.0. You might be thinking, “This is all great, but what’s next?” How does you company move forward with a strategy for Industry 4.0 adoption? We’ll provide some direction for that in this final post by asking some thought-provoking questions.  Industry 4.0 Adoption 5-Step Plan In the Digital Operations Signals report referenced in post one of this blog series Microsoft outlines a simple 5-step plan that some businesses use for an Industry 4.0 adoption project:   Industry … Read more