The first time I learned the fundamental pieces of Power
Platform—the apps, entities, forms, connectors, flows, etc.- I struggled to wrap my mind around it. These foundational pieces are the building blocks and terms I needed to understand how to make each table work. I dug into the terminology, function, and why I needed each piece. The component that I struggled the most with was the solution.
A solution is a container that groups related components together.
The term “solution” can be confusing because it implies the answer to a problem. Rather than thinking of it as solving a need, it holds the pieces that will- i.e., the solution is a backpack.
Like any other backpack, you fill it with what you need for the task. If you take a backpack on a hike, you take things like a first-aid kit, snacks, water, and maybe some emergency supplies. It’s the same concept as a solution. You pack your table, your forms, your apps, your connectors in the solution, making it easier to build the product. By building the components within the solution, it’s much easier and faster to publish changes to see everything updated in the product.
The solution I built for tracking customer complaints using Copilot Service Workspace needed to combine out-of-the-box tables and custom ones. I needed to easily find Copilot Service Workspace and Copilot Service Admin, as well as a form embedded in Power Pages to create a way for users to track complaints from when they were received through to resolution. We built automations to send status notifications and surveys to customers, to share survey responses with managers, and to route rewards members to elite teams based on status. Five people were working on the proof of concept, and all the pieces became difficult to track. Adding or starting in the solution made it easier to find problematic pieces and troubleshoot.
Three of us worked on creating automations and found an issue with Power Automate where the connections weren’t working. Because we built the flows in the solution, the connectors automatically appeared in the same solution. We removed the ones we didn’t need and identified the correct connector for the flows. Because we had the identifiers for each flow, we could ensure the connections in the automations were correct and implement standards across our project. Without the solution, finding and identifying the connector would have been like finding a needle in a haystack. This experience showed me how important it was to understand and use this fundamental piece: it made the project easier to manage, streamlined our workflows, and made navigating blocks simpler.
The resolution for our problem—or the solution—was the solution. Experiencing it in a project made the backpack metaphor feel practical, not just memorable. Thinking of it like a backpack—where everything you need for your project is packed—builds a better foundation when diving in. Just like it did for me when I was working on automations and tracking customer complaints. While the solution is not the final product or the answer itself, it is an important container that aids in building, testing, and publishing the solution.
