Set up tools to support your community

At the heart of growth is a community—a place where people collaborate, share ideas, and discover new ways to use technology to achieve more. Building a thriving Power Platform community requires enthusiastic members, robust infrastructure, and the right tools to support communication, collaboration, feedback collection, and information sharing. This article explains how to use various tools to build an effective support system for your Power Platform community.

Viva Engage

Viva Engage is specifically designed to foster open communication within your community. Members engage in meaningful conversations through posts and comments, building a sense of belonging.

Use Viva Engage to create discussion threads where members can share ideas or ask questions about different aspects of Power Platform. Plan events like webinars or workshops by creating dedicated event pages to share details and manage RSVPs.

Microsoft Forms

Collecting feedback is important for understanding the needs of your community and for improving future initiatives.

Use Microsoft Forms to gather feedback after hosting a training session or webinar on Power Platform topics like Copilot Studio or Power Automate. Ask participants what went well and what can be improved.

Regularly survey your community members using Forms to understand their challenges with using the platform and to identify features they want.

SharePoint communication site

A SharePoint communication site serves as a central repository to securely share important information while being easily accessible to all community members. Set up your own SharePoint Hub or Teams site to share success stories, upcoming events, rules of engagement, and guidelines with your maker community. Get started with the Power Platform Hub template. This site is intended to be a one-stop shop for makers to learn everything they need to get started with Power Platform.

Here are a few tips on what to include in a SharePoint communication site:

• Announcements: Post important updates about new features in Power Platform or upcoming events so that all members are informed.

• Success stories: Highlight success stories from your community that show how users have used Power Platform effectively in their projects.

• Policies and guidelines: Share best practices, guidelines, and policies related to the use of Power Platform to ensure that all members are aligned and informed.

  • Environment strategy: Share the available environments including how to request access to existing environments or request new ones. Make sure makers know the boundaries of an environment's licensing, security, and connectors.
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy strategy: Share which connectors are available in each environment and how to request additional connectors or a new environment for a specific project.

• Training and reusable resources: Share internal and external training resources, reusable components and templates, and any brand guidelines or naming conventions you want your makers to follow.

• Community: Explain how to engage with the internal community, become a champion, find a mentor, and the benefits of the community.

• Responsibilities of a maker: Explain the responsibilities of a maker. For example, to:

  • Keep the tenant tidy by deleting unused resources.
  • Ensure apps are only shared with required end users.
  • Support their apps in the default environment.
  • Engage with the Center of Excellence team before implementing a business-important or mission-critical app to plan appropriate support.

  Ensure makers are educated about the processes in place for business-important or mission-critical apps, such as engaging formal support.

• Support process: Share how makers and solutions are supported.

• License management: Explain the available licenses, what's included in them, how to request premium licenses, and who pays for premium licenses if cross-charging from IT to business units or teams applies.

• UI/UX: Provide a discussion area about corporate standards, styles, and best practices for user experience (UX).

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a versatile tool that can be used for various administrative and collaborative purposes within your community. For example:

• Administration: Use Teams to manage community administration tasks, such as coordinating with organizers and tracking progress on community initiatives.
• Meetings: Host virtual meetings and workshops on Teams to facilitate real-time collaboration and learning. This approach is especially helpful for remote or geographically dispersed community members.

Catalog in Power Platform

Organizations that build and share customized, reusable components and templates get more value from Power Platform. Successful organizations use a fusion teams model where pro-developers, makers, and admins work together to deliver the best solutions for users and derive the highest value possible from Power Platform. Learn more about using reusable templates and components.

Nurture components in the CoE Starter Kit

The Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit includes nurture components that support and grow the Power Platform community within an organization. These components include the Video Hub, which centralizes video content for training and best practices, and the Training in a day solution, which manages internal training events and registrations. The Maker Assessment and Pulse Survey components help gauge the skills and engagement levels of community members. These components help organizations onboard new makers, share best practices, and foster continuous learning and innovation.