How does Power Virtual Agents add value?
Power Virtual Agents is an integral part of the Power Platform, a robust offering from Microsoft targeting the no-code marketplace. As such, for organizations invested heavily in Microsoft technologies, it simply makes perfect business sense to obtain services that would keep them in the same technology realm. This provides easier maintenance, less of a need to reskill existing support and administration staff, and a better integration story across the board.
In addition, Power Virtual Agents leverages some of the same technologies that other platforms use, for example, Dataverse. Dataverse is the data model formerly known as Common Data Service (CDS) – it powers a few other solutions in the business applications space and can also be leveraged with other components of the Power Platform. This allows the creation of unified solutions, sharing data, and creating robust business processes unbound by standard application limitations.
Also, from a licensing perspective, the ability to leverage Power Virtual Agents with your Microsoft 365 license allows organizations to start taking advantage of these features without incurring any additional costs.
From a usability perspective, with Power Virtual Agents being an integral part of the Power Platform, you have the ability to leverage a large number of pre-built connectors and services to increase the capability of the services you provide through chatbots.
Finally, from a user experience perspective, the ability to use Power Virtual Agents through a common interface, similar to other Microsoft services, provides a level of familiarity to users. This greatly reduces the need for training and adjustments from one solution vendor offering to another.
These are only some of the highlights; there are a lot more benefits to implementing chatbot functionality using Power Virtual Agents, as we will continue to see throughout the following chapters.
In the next section, we will tackle the licensing aspect of Power Virtual Agents at a very high level.