Why did I implement a full blown Power Platform Center of Excellence SharePoint portal in my two man company?
In this blog post I will take you through the process and while doing so answer the question abowe, so read on to get an insight into my train of thought on this one.
This all began as a part of a project I have been working on for a large retail company here in Iceland. They have been using the Power Platform with some success but as many companies face after some time the IT Admins and the managers had no oversight of the solutions that had been built. Some solutions had started to break, some are in company wide usage in the default environment, they had multiple DEV environments without any special purpose or reason why there were two DEV environments, there were no DLP’s, it was random if envrionements had security groups assigned to them, apps and flows were being shared manually with users etc. You get the picture, the had lot of solutions, some were working some were not and others hadn’t been launced.
So income me and my colleague with the task at hand to tidy up and get a grip on the situation. This blog will focus on the bit that has to do with the request from the client to establish a Power Platform Center of Excellence and they wanted us to help them install the starter kit from Microsoft. At the first steps I mentioned the fact that a vital part of any Power Platform CoE as part of the infrastructure and architecture is more then just installing a tool from Microsoft. I covered this in an earlier post that is good to read to get a better perspective on the topic of this blog.
One essential part of establishing a PP CoE is to implement a centralized information hub where you communicate things like best practice, governance, where to begin, training and support material etc.
Why I created a SharePoint Portal
SharePoint is the perfect tool to build a centralized information hub within your company or organization with the main purpose to share information and knowledge. SharePoint offers wide range of things we can use to share information and knowledge and we can have in one central place everything we need to communicate to our staff.
Lets look at the Center of Excellence portal and see what it has to offer
I have been working on this portal on and off since mid December 2024 when we first started to talk about this Power Platform project here in Iceland and the fact the client needed to implement good CoE culture. I have spent over 100 hours working on the portal and it has changed many times since I first started to build the content. But now I have a version that I am very happy with as well as the structure and organisation of the pages in the navigation section. The portal has seven main areas which I will now cover:
- Where to begin
- Development
- Administration
- Training
- Use cases
- Other information
- Newsfeed
1. Where to Begin
The first section has all the information an employee needs to get started if they want to use the Power Platform and implement one or more solutions, either for them self or a wider group of employees.
Here employees will for example find a page that guides them on how to start and what they need if the want to create an app, a flow, use AI or something else. This section has also a page that lists all the contact persons for the employees that are responsible and leaders/managers for various departments or sections within the company that one might need to contact for help or guidence. The last two bits inform users about different Power Platform environments and how they should be used, it answers the question weather a maker should use the default environment, a personal developer environment or one of the shared development environments in the tenant.
2. Development
The development section has four subsections: General, Security, Development and Deployment.
General section: Has as the title implies general information about the Power Platoform, Usage policy, license information, again on the environments and how to share apps with their intended users
Security section: We want the applications that are being built within our companies and organizations to be secure and here makers will find guidence on how to secure their Power Platform solutions
Development section: Everything the makers need to know and read on regarding how to make stuff using the Power Platform including best practices on naming conventions for tables, apps and flows.
Deployment section: Outlines how solutions are deployed to downstream environments. This is normally taken care of by either the IT admin team or a dedicated deployment team that builds and maintains various deployment pipelines. This section has example of deployment templates and how to create deployment pipelines in Azure DevOps.
3. Administration
Here we have one page outlining common text for compliance for the Power Platform and this section needs to be adjusted for each client since the compliance bit is problably the one that is most reliant up on
3.1.1 Compliance
Here we have one page outlining common text for compliance for the Power Platform and this section needs to be adjusted for each client since the compliance bit is probably the one that is most reliant upon input from the client at which tenant the SharePoint Portal is being implemented for.
Here we for example add links to the compliance apps and elements that we install from the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence starter kit. Here we can provide sample email templates for the various emails sent out from the CoE compliance flows.
Here we outline the rules makers need to follow regarding environments, why any of the Power Platform elements have been created. This includes information to makers what apps, flows, AI models, Copilot bots and more need to include to be compliant and approved for companywide usage.
There are few things that most if not all compliance information requires is the following:
- Business Justification: Describe the business need and the problem you’re solving with this solution.
- Business Impact: Define the operational impact this solution has on the people using it.
- Access Management: Describe who has access to this resource, how access is managed (individual user access or access through group membership) and how joiners/movers/leavers processes are managed.
- Dependencies: Describe any dependencies this solution uses—for example, external or internal APIs or Azure resources.
- Conditions of use: (For connectors only) Describe in which situations the connector can and should be used.
- Mitigation Plan provided: For critical solutions, upload a mitigation plan that details what business users do if there isn’t an outage.
3.1.2 Tenant settings
Here we have general instructions on how the tenant settings should be configured, one example would be what users can create wha types of environmentws.
4. Training
The training section is a one stop section for all employees to find internal and external material on learning things for the Power Platform. This is also a section that is highly influenced by the needs and requierments from the client.
Training and learnig section: Here you find information on what path and training material you should focus on regarding what you are most interested in learning. For various maker personas there are information about learning material from Microsoft.
Resource library section: Here users will find usefull links to information and material from Microsoft and the community such as LinkedIn profiles, blogs, YouTube channels and more. Here I include links to material and professionals that I have been following for quite some time. When companies implement this SharePoint portal from me and my comapany I encourage them to grow this library as time passes.
Certifications section: There are few certifications we can take depending on our area of interest and this section guides users what routes they can take if they are interested in certifications. I also include a bit of information about what has helped my taking my certifications through out the years.
5. Use Cases
This section is intended to give users ideas if they need them by highlighting problems and challenges that have been solved with in the company.
User stories section: Here users find stories and information how people have used the Power Platform to help them with their daily jobs and how they solve and face challenges with the Power Platform
Examples What Solutions Have Been Created section: This is a platform to showcase interesting and helpful solutions that have been made with in the company. Here users find links to the people responsible for the solutions and can collaborate with them to get help or boucnh of ideas.
6. Other
Here I have create a section with everything else for our central hub of information and at the moment I have two sections here for documents and a One Note notebook. These two sections are quite self explanatory so I wont go into any details about them
7. Newsfeed
The last section is the SharePoint newsfeed webpart displaying news from the Power Platform team for the whole company to read and get information about Power Platform projects and gain insights into what is happeing on the Power Platofmr front.
