Microsoft has recently released a new feature for PowerApps that involves harnessing Artificial Intelligence without the deep technical background needed otherwise for using these cutting edge technologies.
This is great news for those looking to dive into learning about AI abilities along with creating PowerApp solutions.
This blog post will serve as an introduction guide to take a look at the different options offered by the AI Builder using the PowerApps framework.
- To start off, navigate to make.powerapps.com.
- Click ‘AI Builder (preview)’.
- Click ‘Build’.
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After Clicking ‘Build’, you will be redirected to the screen as shown below. This screen allows you to select from the different options of AI that are currently available to be used with PowerApps. The four options currently available are the following: Binary Classification, Form Processing, Object Detection, and Text classification. I will explain in detail the four different types of options below.
Binary Classification
The first option is Binary Classification. Microsoft gives the following explanation for this type:
“Binary Classification uses historical data to predict whether new data falls into one of two categories. You can use these insights to develop actionable intelligence for your business.”
Why Should You Care?
This will allow your PowerApp to classify data automatically however a business defines it. This will save time on manual data entry and data manipulation to get the data how the business needs to see it.
Form Processing
Next comes the Form processing. Microsoft gives the explanation as written below:
“Form Processing identifies the structure of your documents based on examples you provide to extract text from any matching form. Examples might include tax forms or invoices.”
Why Should You Care?
Form processing will allow you to take a picture of a form or document and have that data be automatically uploaded to the PowerApp for further actioning. This will save tons of time on monotonous data entry that is tedious and costs the business money for no value addition. Powerapps can now do this task automatically with this AI tool.
Object Detection
After that we have Object Detection. Microsoft’s description is below:
“Object Detection lets you count, locate, and identify selected objects within any image. You can use this model in PowerApps to extract information from the pictures you take with the camera.”
Why Should You Care?
This will give your PowerApp the ability to detect objects in an image based on previous images fed into the AI to train it to know what it should look for in all future images. So, say if an automated returns process is taking in pictures of broken products, this AI feature can ensure that the product is actually included in the picture and send a notification if it is not detected to alert of malicious intent on the return.
Text Classification
Lastly, we have Text Classification. Microsoft defines it as follows:
“Text Classification tags any snippet of text based on the historical data you provide. Streamline your business by automatically tagging new text.”
Why Should You Care?
Imagine how good it would be with AI tagging offensive comment content coming in from a company’s social media posts and allowing social media marketers to quickly act to take down the bad content with a targeted AI approach instead of a more manual process.
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Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence will allow PowerApps to get to the next level and I am very excited to see how all of this unfolds. AI leads to amazing solutions to business problems and needs that were impossible to solve without this new technology. Now is the right time to learn these new abilities as it will become increasingly prevalent in the future.
Stay tuned for the upcoming posts in this series where I will dig further into actual examples of these four options in more detail. If you are new to PowerApps and are still looking for resources to learn, then here are 5 resources to learn PowerApps. Read more about
Go forth with PowerApps!
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