Meta Description: This article walks you through the Microsoft Power Platform; find out what it is, how it works, and why businesses need to implement it. What is the Microsoft Power Platform? Companies relying on traditional methods to analyze data find it difficult to remain competitive in the global economy that is fast changing. They need to use data to gain valuable insights to meet customer needs. Competitive companies rely on data and leveraging tools, such as Microsoft Power Platform, to automate processes, provide data-driven solutions, and enhance productivity in ways that have never been possible before. This post will walk you through the Microsoft Power Platform — what it is, how it works, its main components, and why your business needs it. What is the Microsoft Power Platform? The Microsoft Power Platform is a collective term for Power Automate, PowerApps, and Power BI. The tool provides an easy way for companies to analyze, automate, surface, and manipulate data. In other words, it creates simple workflows across companies, thus freeing up time for other value-added tasks. Understanding How Microsoft Power Platform Works The Power Platform uses a Common Data Model (CDM) to unify a company's data and entities across all processes, enabling interoperability among applications. This model offers one customizable metadata description, simplifying functions like sales and marketing, thus creating robust reports and new applications. Data from Forrester Research Group indicates that employing this tool reduces app development time and empowers developers to build custom apps, thus reducing development costs by up to 74%. What Are the Main Components of the Microsoft Power Platform? 1. Power BI Power BI is an interactive data analytics and visualization tool focused on business intelligence. Its connectors integrate data sources like Excel, SQL Server, or Cosmos DB to collect, visualize essential data, and create analytics dashboards with reports. Implementing a Power BI project plan from Bennhyoff Products and Services can help you share the reports with anyone in your company and access them on multiple devices. In other words, your team will be able to collaborate easily, identify your company's competitive edge, and make data-driven decisions. 2. PowerApps This product creates and uses custom applications using a low-code approach, allowing businesses to connect their data and work across mobiles and the web. Without PowerApps, businesses use the point-and-click strategy to quickly create applications without coding skills.With PowerApps, your business can be more productive with its data, enabling you to digitize and automate processes quickly. Since the apps are available across platforms, you can make remote updates and share applications among team members. 3. Power Automate Formerly known as Microsoft Flow, Power Automate is an enterprise system that allows companies to synchronize, automate, and integrate workflows between third-party apps or Microsoft services. Power Automate increases productivity and efficiency as automating workflows prevents staff from doing repetitive tasks. The tool has several pre-built app connectors that help companies collate useful data from various sources and get valuable insights. With Power Automate, you and your team can create your automation by linking applications like SharePoint, Outlook, Gmail, Asana, etc., and set up automated email triggers, push notifications, and triggers without coding knowledge. 5 Solid Reasons Why Your Organization Needs Microsoft Power Platform 1. Helps Streamline Processes Task automation is essential for a company's success as repetitive tasks take effort and time. With Microsoft Power Platform, you can enhance productivity by eliminating repetitive tasks and allowing your staff to focus on important tasks in a connected and accessible way. The most significant advantage of task automation is that your staff gets more time to do more productive tasks. That said, some of the most common routine tasks you can automate using this product include: Document approval Scheduled flows Document generation 2. No-code/Low-code Development Traditionally, companies had to rely heavily on their IT staff to develop business applications. The learning curve of developing these business applications limited non-tech-savvy individuals in sales, marketing, and finance from wholly uncovering the insights in their data. The Microsoft Power Platform has a low/ no-code approach, making it easier for non-IT professionals to leverage AI, build powerful workflows, utilize rich apps, and get intelligent insights from data. Individuals get these capabilities using a simple drag-and-drop, which allows developers to build and deploy apps while the end users can use and adopt all features with little or no involvement from the IT staff. 3. Easy Integration with Existing Microsoft Tools As a business, you can use the Microsoft Power Platform independently or combine it with other software to optimize your business and increase efficiency. Since the Microsoft Power Platform is a product of Microsoft, it integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products. This allows developers to use data from Microsoft apps such as Excel, Outlook, and SharePoint per a company's preferences and needs. The tool also has connectors that can link with other third-party services, such as websites, social media, and niche-specific ERP systems, allowing you to simplify processes and manage company data. 4. Reduces Your Dependency on Third-Party Tools With the Microsoft Power Platform, your business can consolidate automation, development, design, and powerful analytics tools in a single suit. This eliminates the need for software maintenance and licensing, thus minimizing the stress on your IT team and reducing costs. 5. Enhanced Security The compliance and security standards are higher than ever with data privacy regulations in place; companies have to be careful with how they handle data, as it can have severe consequences if a company gets it wrong. However, with the Microsoft Power Platform, you can enhance, automate, and accelerate processes involved in data security. Companies need to control who has access to data to prevent security issues. The Microsoft Power Platform uses multi-factor authentication, integrated identity management, and double encryption to prevent unauthorized access, ensuring companies stick to compliance regulations. You can also use the tool to set reminders for your staff to delete sensitive data after a specific time. Take Advantage of Microsoft Power Platform Using Bennyhoff Products and Services Many businesses are using the Microsoft Power Platform to expand on a larger scale, be more flexible, and be faster. Bennyhoff Products and Services is your trusted partner who can help you implement your inside Power BI, helping you create a blueprint of your data to help you understand the relationship between data sets. Bennyhoff Products and Services goes over your company data and reporting concept to help you implement a plan to aggregate large amounts of data to analyze it and get valuable insights that can help you make data-driven decisions. That's not all — Bennyhoff Products and Services can also help your organization implement a customized strategy for collecting data from various sources into a single database to make it easy to analyze and share with various departments and stakeholders. If you'd like to leverage the power of Microsoft Power Platform to navigate the ever-changing business landscape successfully, check out Bennyhoff Products and Services and get in touch.

Introduction Microsoft has officially ended mainstream support for SQL Server 2016. With this version of SQL Server support ending, many are wondering what the next step will be. Some have made a switch to SQL Server 2019. However, next down the line is the same situation and the inevitable question, “When will support for SQL 2016 and 2019 end?” To find this solution, we must first understand Mainstream Support and the optional Extended Support that follows. After that, we can learn about potential solutions to help continue the lifespan of both SQL 2016 and 2019. In a nutshell, the end of mainstream support is when there are no more free fixes and updates. This means that it's time to prepare an upgrade path or plan your migration to a supported SQL version. Microsoft will only provide security and critical bug fixes until the summer of 2021, when extended support begins. However, there is another option that can provide continued support for both versions. What is Mainstream Support? Mainstream Support is the first phase of the product lifecycle. This phase provides customers with free fixes and security updates for a set period of time. During Mainstream Support, Microsoft also provides hot-fixes for non-security issues, but these hot-fixes are not supported by Microsoft. After this phase ends, Extended Support begins. What this means is that you will no longer receive free fixes or security updates from Microsoft unless you have an active Software Assurance contract in place that includes coverage under an Enterprise Agreement or Team Subscription Agreement with Software Assurance coverage. Updates and Hot-fixes Microsoft provides mainstream support for each SQL Server product for a period of five years from the date of general availability (GA). This means that during this time, Microsoft provides free patches and fixes for any issues that are discovered in the product. When this initial period ends, SQL Server enters its extended support phase, where it continues to receive security updates and non-security hotfixes for an additional five years. The end of mainstream support date was July 13th, 2021 (5 years after GA) and the end of extended support will be July 14th, 2026 (10 years after GA). As you can see below, there is a substantial difference between these two phases because they have different purposes: Mainstream Support - Provides high-quality software updates to all customers who have purchased SQL Server Extended Support - Provides critical patching and fixes only to those customers who have opted into this level of service Moving to Extended Support You can purchase Extended Support now and continue to receive patches until July 24th, 2026. After that date, you'll need to find another option to continue using SQL Server 2016. Microsoft will publish a list of security issues fixed in each update on their website as soon as they are available. The Cost of Extended Security Updates In general, SQL Server 2016 Security Updates were available as a free physical software upgrade to users of SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition, Web Edition, and Express. The cost of Extended Security Updates is approximately 75% of the on-premises license cost annually. One way to avoid paying for security updates is by upgrading to a newer version of SQL Server. Upgrading from an older version will not incur any additional fees if you qualify for an upgrade path that does not require purchasing new licenses or purchasing any additional product keys. SQL Server 2019 Support It is highly recommended to always stay up to date with the most recent version of SQL Server. For example, if you have a SQL Server 2016, many will choose to upgrade it to SQL Server 2019 as soon as possible. SQL Server 2019 will remain in mainstream support until January 14th, 2025. After that, users of this version will only have 5 years before it is no longer available. If you want to take full advantage of security updates and bug fixes offered by Microsoft during those phases, consider upgrading your SQL Server instances to an updated version as soon as possible. Bennyhoff Products and Services There is another option that could help continue the supported life of your 2016 SQL Server or 2019 version when the time comes around. That option is to utilize a third party who can support not only SQL Server 2016, but all SQL Servers from the year 2000 and up. That third party is Mike Bennyhoff with Bennyhoff Products and Solutions. Mike can help you find the right path to continue using SQL Server 2016 and/or other versions of SQL Server. He has been working with SQL Servers for over 20 years. Bennyhoff Products and Services focuses on creating business solutions and blending IT to find what will work best for you. Contact Bennyhoff Products and Services for SQL Server assessments and audits, SQL Server upgrades, or moving to Azure or cloud-based operations.

A client recently needed to stop and re-start their SQL Agent so that settings changes to SQL Mail would take effect and the we could send mail / alerts from the system. However when I attempted to stop the Agent has their SQL Agent it did not error out or stop. We can see in the image below that the Agent was stuck in a limbo state “Stopping” after waiting 30 minutes to see if the agent would stop I needed to take other steps. What worked for be and saved me from a reboot. Start a command prompt with “Run as Administrator” Next type queryx SQLServerAgent This should result in a screen with a PID number. Next use the taskkill (no spaces) / f /pid xxxx where the x’s are the PID from above.

For any one out there who needs to know the steps to install SQL 2019 here are the steps that I use. I did not install machine learning, that will be a separate post.

To change the Prevent saving changes that require the table re-creation option, follow these steps: 1. Open SQL Server Management Studio. 2. On the Tools menu, click Options. 3. In the navigation pane of the Options window, click Designers. 4. Select or clear the Prevent saving changes that require the table re-creation check box, and then click OK. More info from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/ssms/error-when-you-save-table

Backgrounds - Details In our previous blog, we talked about custom backgrounds for Power BI tables and matrices. However, what are the details for increasing accessibility and appeal for a report? Easy steps include: · Formatting page – no visuals · Canvas backgrounds · Browse Themes – Details “Custom themes are very helpful because it is a way to quickly change all the fonts and colors on your report without having to manually go and format each one individually,” says Grant from Collectiv. If you make “multiple reports that are all a part of the same set of reports, … you’re going to need the same style.” He confirms users who require more than 1 background use this a lot to create similar backgrounds. This enhances professionalism and ease. Buttons – Bookmarks Bookmarks increase functionality with users – click on the Information icon and make bookmarks visuals. Grant advises knowing how to use this to save space and improve Power BI reports. Other – ToolTips and Drillthrough Turn on Tooltips, click on report page, and tooltips: this increases more use of your report. Filters are applied on the page, also. With Drillthrough, detailed view of reports is a benefit. To know why your numbers are changing, increase your analyzing distribution, and save space while utilizing data, use Drillthrough.

Buttons do so much for Power BI report creators. Interaction and ease of use are paramount in Power BI. “Buttons can do more than point to bookmarks – they can also open up a Q-and-A dialogue or go to a web URL anywhere on the internet, but in this case, bookmarks are the magic sauce,” says Amanda Cofsky on Guy in a Cube. “Bookmarks … say a lot of interesting stuff about their report: cross-highlighting, filter states, if something’s visible or not: (they) have a lot of power behind (them,) but you can control what that bookmark is saving, at any given time.” Adam says you need to turn off data related things so filters don’t revert. “That part is key: … some people … get into this funky state of, ‘Woah, I hit this button, … and also … my slicers changed on me.’” Add navigation points as well. “Set up a bookmark per page of your report and tie it to the button for each of those pages,” says Amanda. Report Enhancing Different information with cards (static) can be created. Cards show data; buttons make data accessible. Layer buttons on top of cards to display interactive buttons. Hover state and blank buttons show visuals: visuals can be switched to show metrics. “The bookmark is actually changing the visual that I’m seeing … I want to be able to switch the visual to show that metric that I just clicked on … Each of these buttons is just pointing to a bookmark that is changing the visibility,” Amanda says. “There [are] many visuals layering there – I’m hiding and showing them.” Adam talks about how clients have questions about these issues. “It really can improve what we … actually show,” he says. “A lot of folks will be like, ‘How do I change accesses dynamically on the report?’ or ‘How do I get that different state and feel?’ This is a great way to go about doing it.” Amanda advises to open the selection pane to see if something is hiding. Buttons are necessary to enhance ease of use for creators. “This pane is incredibly useful: … it lists everything that you have … in the “z” order that the things are… This is also where you would change the visibility of things as well, so if you can’t find something, always open the selection pane and you can see if there [are] any hidden objects on the page.” Amanda and Adam recommend using buttons and bookmarks in Power BI to improve user accessibility and visual appeal.