When your Dynamics partner identifies a unique requirement that is neither available natively or with a third-party solution, should you build a custom extension or use the Power Platform?
Traditionally, Partners have long relied on developers to create customizations often resulting in expensive, hard to maintain snippets of code that can cause issues with upgrades or conflicts with other solutions as the company grows and needs change.
Since ERP systems are designed to secure, process, and store data, this makes them tough to build and encrypt. A good example of platforms that require in-depth construction and are costly are e-Commerce websites. Complex design and coding make it a high-cost liability.
With the advent of the Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics end-users now have access to a toolset that allows them to turn their workflow dreams into reality, without the overhead that comes with customizations.
What is the Power Platform?
The Power Platform suite is just that – powerful. Power Apps & Power Automate both have low to no coding requirements, using a drag and drop interface to make building out your ideas easy and impactful.Do you want a simple expense management app that meets your unique needs perfectly? Start a trial of Power Apps now and you’ll have a skeleton solution that you can deploy on any device within a few hours.Since all the apps you create run on that same platform (universal), the differences between systems are handled all on its own. The web version, mobile version and desktop versions are all exactly the same.Detailed reporting and dashboards are also advantages of Power Platform.
If your desired workflow requires connecting with another solution, Microsoft has already established connectors with many non-Microsoft products like Twilio, Basecamp or Buffer. Compare that to building a custom extension where typically a middleware solution is required. Once you get started, you will quickly start to see that everything you need is already in the Power Platform. It’s just up to you how you want to use those tools to support your business process. Plus new controls and connectors are being added every day. Custom apps inevitably require much more work and thus more money. The complexity of custom extensions is most likely going to cause more trouble over time than they are worth.
