Jayanta Mukhopadhyay (editor) - Digital Techniques for Heritage Presentation and Preservation

Become a citizen developer and lead the digital transformation wave with Microsoft Teams and Power Platform

Srikumar Nair

BIRMINGHAMMUMBAI

Copyright 2021 Packt Publishing

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Group Product Manager: Pavan Ramchandani

Senior Editor: Hayden Edwards

Content Development Editor: Aamir Ahmed

Technical Editor: Joseph Aloocaran, Saurabh Kadave

Copy Editor: Safis Editing

Project Manager: Divij Kotian

Proofreader: Safis Editing

Indexer: Tejal Daruwale Soni

Production Designer: Nilesh Mohite

First published: September 2021

Production reference: 1290921

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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To the loving memory of my parents, Sridevi Nair and Krishnankutty Nair, for their sacrifices and exemplifying grit through all difficult times in life, which continues to inspire me every day to be my best self.

To my lovely wife, Neetu, for being a great partner and my pillar of support.

To my wonderful kids, Siddhesh and Nandini, who inspire and encourage me with their unbounded energy and relentless curiosity.

To my teachers, who nurtured my curiosity and passion for learning.

To my friends and family, who stood with me through all times.

To all the frontline COVID warriors around the world, who have sacrificed a lot during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to keep all of us safe.

- Srikumar Nair

I have known Srikumar Nair for 4 years through our work together on building the Power Platform. As the Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Platforms at Microsoft, I lead the development of the low-code/no-code Power Platform as well as the Dynamics 365 suite of business applications that power businesses across the world. For businesses in every industry and every geography on this planet to deliver on the surging need for digital transformation, we need to empower everyone to contribute to the effort. This is where low-code/no-code development comes in, and this book by Srikumar is a fantastic way to get started.

We are seeing unprecedented digital demand, with companies focusing on rapidly building digital-first, intelligent experiences. It is estimated that 500 million more apps will be created in the next 5 years, which is more than all the apps built in the last 40 years. On the other hand, there are not enough developers to meet this need in the United States alone, there is a developer shortfall of 1 million today. To meet this demand, we need to equip everyone to be a developer. This is possible through low code, which empowers everyone from citizen to professional developers and IT admins to go faster.

This book introduces key concepts in Power Platform, and provides step-by-step tutorials on building, deploying, and managing your first app, bot, and flow. It also includes pointers to additional resources to help you continue to learn and grow your skills. It encapsulates not only how to build solutions to meet your organization's needs, but also how to secure and govern your business-critical data and resources. With this book, I am confident you will be equipped to begin your journey as a citizen developer.

Charles Lamanna Corporate Vice President, Business Applications and Platforms, Microsoft

References:

[1]

[2] BLS, NSF, NCES, IDC, Gartner, LinkedIn, C+AI Corp Strat

Srikumar Nair is a product management leader with 20 years of experience building new products and features and improving the efficiency of products such as operating systems and business/productivity applications. Being a mechanical engineer, he started his career in the manufacturing sector but later developed a flair for software and joined Infosys as a software engineering intern. He eventually graduated as a professional developer in Java and .NET and then turned toward product/technology management with Microsoft, working in Office 365, SharePoint Online, enterprise mobility, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform. He is currently working as the principal group program manager in the Microsoft Dataverse team, focusing on infrastructure provisioning at scale, licensing, and improving service efficiency.

I want to thank the following people who helped me immensely in converting the vision of this book into reality:

Group Product Manager: Pavan Ramchandani, for reaching out to me with this proposal

Senior Editor: Hayden Edwards, for setting a high bar for content reviews throughout this book

Content Development Editor: Aamir Ahmed, for his thorough review and patience while working with me throughout the content development of this book

Technical Reviewer: Marc Mercuri, for taking time out of his busy schedule to provide technical input for various chapters in this book

Marc Mercuri led and launched Dataverse for Teams. Across close to two decades at Microsoft, he has held a number of product, strategy, and innovation roles. He has authored 4 books and has over 25 patents issued or pending.