Support Microsoft Power Platform champions in your organization

Champions drive awareness, adoption, and education in your organization. Peers recognize champions as the "go-to" experts for Power Apps, Power Automate, or Copilot Studio. Champions build and share their knowledge even when it's not part of their official job role. Power Platform champions influence and help colleagues in many ways, including solution development, skills improvement, and troubleshooting.

Why are champions important?

Champions are essential to the success of your Power Platform community.

• Driving adoption: Champions are early adopters who influence their peers and encourage widespread use of Power Platform. Their enthusiasm and success stories serve as powerful testimonials.
• Knowledge sharing: Champions possess deep knowledge of the platform and act as mentors, sharing best practices, tips, and insights with other community members.
• Innovation: Champions lead innovative projects and experiments, pushing the boundaries of what Power Platform can achieve. Their creativity inspires others to think beyond traditional approaches.
• Community building: Champions build a sense of community by organizing events, facilitating discussions, and connecting members. They create a supportive environment where everyone can learn and grow.
• Recognition and motivation: A champions program recognizes and rewards the efforts of these individuals, boosting their morale and motivating them to continue contributing to the community.

How will champions support your organization and Power Platform community?

Champions play a vital role in evangelizing and training their colleagues and teams on new ways of working with Power Platform. They build awareness, understanding, and engagement throughout the community.

Here are some ways champions support the community:

• Create enthusiasm: Champions generate excitement and drive the adoption of improved ways of working, promoting the value of Power Platform across teams.
• Build influence: Champions build a circle of influence within their teams and help members understand the benefits and how it helps them.
• Bring new ways of working to life: Champions actively implement and demonstrate new ways of working across teams.
• Identify challenges and solutions: Champions identify business challenges and propose innovative solutions using Power Platform.
• Provide feedback: Champions act as a bridge between the community and the Center of Excellence (CoE) team and sponsors, providing valuable feedback on the platform's features and usability.

Champions are integral to your Power Platform community in several ways:

• Mentorship: Champions provide guidance and support to new and existing members, helping them navigate the platform and overcome challenges.
• Advocacy: Champions advocate for Power Platform, promoting its benefits and encouraging adoption across teams and departments in the organization.
• Event organization: Champions often lead the organization of hackathons, workshops, webinars, and other community events that foster collaboration and learning.
• Content creation: Champions contribute valuable content such as tutorials, case studies, and videos that help others learn and succeed.
• Feedback loop: Champions act as a bridge between the community and the organization, providing feedback on the platform's features and usability, which can inform future improvements.

How to identify champions

Identifying champions involves recognizing individuals who exhibit certain qualities and behaviors.

• Passion and enthusiasm: Champions are genuinely excited about Power Platform and actively seek opportunities to learn and experiment with it.
• Expertise: Champions have a strong understanding of the platform and can demonstrate their skills through successful projects and solutions.
• Leadership: Champions take initiative and lead by example. They're proactive in sharing knowledge, organizing events, and helping others.
• Collaboration: Champions are team players who actively engage with the community, participate in discussions, and collaborate on projects.
• Impact: Champions make significant positive contributions to the community or the organization.

Often, individuals aren't directly asked to become champions. Instead, they're identified by the Center of Excellence (CoE) and recognized for their ongoing activities, such as frequently answering questions in internal discussion channels or participating in lunch and learn sessions.

Find your champions with the right tools

If your organization uses Microsoft 365, some individuals might discover Power Apps through exploration or when Power Apps appears in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or OneDrive.

Check the tenant-level analytics in the Power Platform admin center or use the Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit dashboard to identify makers and understand app usage.

The dashboard in the CoE Starter Kit gives you a tenant-wide overview of makers in your environment, including the connectors they're using to create apps and flows. You can view your top app and flow makers, the departments they belong to, and trends over time.

You can learn how many connectors your makers use and who explores different connectors. Identify experienced makers by observing those who experiment with the various connectors.

Create a champions program

Consider the following key actions to initiate, grow, and sustain your champions network.

Plan your program

• Design and align the champions community with your organization's objectives and vision for Power Platform. Obtain sponsorship from key stakeholders and executives. Learn more in Nurture a maker and champion community.
• Create a plan to support the champions network. Although some aspects of a champions network will always be informally led, determine to what extent the CoE will cultivate and support champion efforts throughout individual business units.
• Decide the level of commitment and time investment required for Power Platform champions. (The time investment can vary greatly from person to person and from team to team.) Clearly communicate expectations to interested participants. Get manager approval when needed.
• Determine how to respond to requests to become a champion and how the CoE will seek out champions. Choose whether to openly encourage employees to self-identify as champions (less common) or whether the CoE will observe efforts and extend private invitations (more common).
• Determine how to manage membership of the champions network. For example, via membership in a security group.
• Be clear about program requirements: Some champion programs require members to attend monthly meetings, hold office hours for the users they support, and train new users. Ensure champions understand how to successfully participate in the program.

Consider how champions will communicate with you and each other

• Decide how to communicate with the champions network (for example, in a Teams channel, via Viva Engage, and/or an email distribution list).
• Determine how the champions network will communicate and collaborate with each other directly (across organizational boundaries), to share updates and successes, and to connect with each other.
• Hold regular meetings: Promote enthusiasm and the cohesiveness of your community by holding monthly meetings. Use a mix of in-person and virtual formats, but ensure consistency to grow a thriving champions community.
• Create a champions team: Your champions should use the team you set up for all program communications, feedback, and to find resources. By doing this, they'll become increasingly familiar with the product and its benefits. Get started with the Adopt Office 365 Teams template. It creates relevant channels and apps for your champions program.

Focus on the people

Find enthusiastic champions who can commit time and effort. Ask how you can help them, unblock challenges, and celebrate their efforts.

• Provide materials to support their work like training material and templates.
• Ensure a regular rhythm for discussions with the champions on what’s working and what’s not.
• Encourage the sharing of stories, either through show-and-tell sessions or regular newsletters. Use our best practices to share success stories for ideas on how to structure these stories.
• Recognize and reward the work that champions are doing. Remember, they're not a support team but business representatives.

Shape the future of your CoE with champions

• Ensure champions have the resources they need, including:
  • Direct access to CoE members
  • Influence on environment and connector strategies being implemented (for example, requirements for a dataset certification policy)
  • Influence on the creation of best practices and guidance (for example, providing recommendations for which connectors should be available via data loss prevention (DLP) policies)
• Actively involve certain champions as satellite members of the CoE. They can provide valuable input on what works and what doesn't work when it comes to administrative and governance policies, communication, and training.
• Create a feedback loop so champions can easily provide information or submit suggestions to the CoE.

How to support and reward champions

Your champions will give you important insights into the progress and potential pitfalls of your adoption project. Routinely provide recognition and incentives for champions. Not only is praise an effective motivator, but the act of sharing examples of successful efforts can motivate and inspire others.

Supporting and rewarding champions involves providing them with the resources, recognition, and opportunities they need to thrive.

• Training and development: Offer advanced training sessions, workshops, and certifications to help champions deepen their expertise and stay updated with the latest features and best practices.
• Recognition programs: Create recognition programs that celebrate the achievements of champions, such as awards, certificates, and public acknowledgment during company events.
• Access to resources: Provide champions with access to exclusive resources, such as more powerful connectors, preview features, advanced tools, and dedicated support channels.
• Networking opportunities: Facilitate networking opportunities for champions to connect with other experts, both within and outside the organization. These opportunities include conferences, webinars, and community meetups.
• Leadership roles: Encourage champions to take on leadership roles within the community, such as organizing events, leading projects, or mentoring new members.
• Feedback and collaboration: Set up channels for champions to share feedback on the platform and collaborate with the development team to influence future enhancements.
• Company benefits: Consider tying their work to a company reward or benefit program. Could they receive vouchers, other goodies, a premium license, or their own environment to explore?

Maturity levels

The following maturity levels will help you assess the current state of your community of practice.