{"id":15683,"date":"2021-06-07T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devwww.3cloudsolutions.com\/post\/power-bi-power-automate-for-higher-education-3\/"},"modified":"2024-04-17T08:44:10","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T15:44:10","slug":"power-bi-power-automate-for-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/resources\/power-bi-power-automate-for-higher-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Power BI + Power Automate for Higher Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the feeling you\u2019d get when you could retrieve the information you wanted on your own without having to ask someone to send it to you?<\/p>\n

(sigh) Me, too…<\/p>\n

There’s something about having the option of self-service that makes our lives easier and more accessible. Whether it’s the efficiency of buying a train ticket from a Billetterie in Paris, ordering dinner through our favorite food delivery app, or answering critical questions in seconds from a self-service BI report, we feel empowered without the need for advanced tech training.<\/p>\n

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From my experience, this is true for Higher Education consumers, too.<\/p>\n

When I was a student, I loved being able to access my degree audit and run what-if scenarios:
\n– \u201cWhat if I changed my major from Computer Science to International Studies?\u201d
\n– \u201cWhat if I pursued a double degree or a double major?\u201d
\n– \u201cWhat if I stopped going to Biology this semester?\u201d (Not an example I\u2019d suggest living out.)<\/p>\n

Similarly, as a staff member and instructor, I loved the ability to:
\n– Understand student progress
\n– Know when critical systems were down
\n– See how many of my colleagues rallied their departments to contribute to the annual fund<\/p>\n

\u2026all without having to bother someone (or dial the university switchboard because I didn\u2019t know whom to bother.)<\/p>\n

Power BI has taken data democratization to another level.<\/span><\/h3>\n

Data democratization means making digital information accessible to everyone who should have access, without gatekeepers, request forms, or \u2013 in my case \u2013 university switchboard dialing. It’s a big part of the self-service paradigm that has gained significant strength in recent years thanks to demand and the pace of tech advancement in Power BI, regardless of industry.<\/p>\n

In Higher Ed, we can specifically use these advances to prioritize students<\/span><\/a> and promote an inclusive culture<\/a><\/span>. We certainly saw the impact and needs during the last year of remote learning, with virtual and hybrid education taking place throughout the world.<\/p>\n

And the capabilities continue to expand, including the democratization of artificial intelligence and data science<\/a><\/span> and the integration of Power BI for Microsoft Teams<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

So, what’s missing?<\/p>\n

A need that has come up repeatedly with folks I have worked with is to earmark records for a specific purpose. As an example, when I worked at a small liberal arts college \u2013 a business user asked if there was an easy way to select a couple of records in a report and mark them with an X so she could follow up with them later about an upper-level course offering. At a larger university, the controller wanted ways to create an exception report for records that should be flagged to reconcile later.<\/p>\n

In other words, sometimes end-users want to take action<\/em><\/span> with their data quickly, and now they can with the integration of the Power Automate visual in Power BI.<\/p>\n

Power Automate empowers us to go from insights to action.<\/span>
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Power Automate (formerly known as Microsoft Flow) enables Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and is part of the Microsoft Power Platform collective:<\/span><\/span>These four low-code tools can be used separately or together to support and improve productivity.<\/p>\n

<\/span>With the April 2021 Power BI update, we can now take action on Power BI reports interactively through Power Automate (preview)<\/a><\/span>.
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Power BI + Power Automate in action.<\/span><\/h3>\n

The following demo is an example of Power BI + Power Automate in action, built on top of Microsoft\u2019s Open Analytics for Education<\/a><\/span> dataset:<\/span><\/p>\n

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