Enhancing Restaurant Data with Microsoft Fabric, Power Apps & Power Automate
+ BONUS Guide to connect Fabric & Apps through Automate!
Did you know your restaurant data could be amplified with Microsoft Fabric and Power Apps? The best way to bring them together is Power Automate, but unfortunately there is no pre-built connector (yet). Here’s a quick look at why Fabric and the Power Platform are beneficial, and how to get started.
At Smartbridge, we recognize that precise analytics is essential for success in restaurants and food service. This industry is close to our roots—our journey began with a pioneering quick service restaurant—so we understand your unique challenges and opportunities. By connecting the specific needs of food service with advanced tools like Power Apps, Power Automate, and Microsoft Fabric, we help streamline operations, improve data management, and empower smarter, data-driven decisions. Let’s explore how our tailored approach can drive meaningful results for your business.
The Benefits of Fabric, Power Apps & Power Automate
Benefit #1
Would you like Better Data Handling with that?
By linking Power Apps to Fabric, you can centralize data collection and storage, giving your team real-time access to essential information across all departments. Fabric’s unified analytics platform supports data movement, processing, ingestion, transformation, and real-time event routing, ensuring your data is always up-to-date and accessible.
Benefit #2
Would you like to upsize your order with Automating Tasks?
Automating routine tasks cuts down on manual work, reduces errors, and lets your staff focus on more important activities. With Fabric’s comprehensive suite of services, including data engineering, data factory, data science, real-time analytics, data warehouse, and databases, you can streamline various processes within your operations.
Benefit #3
These tools also come with Tracking Everything
With end-to-end tracking of the food processing lifecycle, you can monitor each step, ensuring accountability and quality control. Fabric’s integrated services facilitate the unification, enrichment, and modeling of industry data, enabling you to generate insights faster and more efficiently.
Power Apps, Power Automate & Fabric = Better Together
Use Cases for Restaurants & Food Service
Managing Inventory
Create custom apps to keep an eye on stock levels, set up alerts for low supplies, handle orders, and oversee supply chain activities. This ensures efficient inventory management and timely restocking. Fabric’s data solutions help manage large volumes of data, integrating information from various sources, and providing real-time analytics for prompt decision-making.
Automating Food Processing
Develop apps to track raw material intake, monitor production output, and ensure adherence to food processing protocols, enhancing food safety and quality. Fabric’s comprehensive analytics capabilities, from data movement and storage to data science and business intelligence, support these applications.
Quality Control
Implement apps that generate QR codes at each stage of food processing, allowing for real-time tracking and ensuring all processes are followed correctly, maintaining high-quality standards. Fabric’s unified platform simplifies architecture and consolidates costs, enhancing both efficiency and capability.
Staying Compliant
Design custom apps to monitor compliance with food safety regulations, ensuring all processes meet the required standards and making reporting easier. Fabric’s end-to-end analytics platform unifies data movement, processing, ingestion, transformation, real-time event routing, and report building, supporting compliance monitoring.
Ready to add Fabric and Power Apps to the menu?
By leveraging the integration of Power Apps with Fabric through Power Automate, food service businesses can achieve improved efficiency, better compliance with safety standards, and more responsive supply chain management.
So by now you are probably sold on Fabric with Power Apps. But surprisingly, the Power Platform lacks a pre-built connector for Fabric. Fortunately, developers can use Power Automate to seamlessly connect Power Apps to Fabric.
Here’s a quick how-to for using Power Automate to easily write back to your Fabric environment from a Power App:
1. Create a new Power Automate flow
You probably know how to do this, but create a new Power Automate flow by navigating to make.powerautomate.com, signing in, and selecting the “My Flows” tab on the left side of your screen.
Select “New Flow” at the top, and from the resulting drop-down, select “Instant cloud flow”.
Give the flow a name, and for the trigger, select “When Power Apps calls a flow (V2)”.
2. Configure the trigger action “When Power Apps calls a flow (V2)”
This is where you add the variables you want to be passed from Power Apps to Fabric. Select “Parameters” and add a variable name for each data point you’d like to pass. Also, define the data type each variable represents. Here’s an example using all string variables (ignore the ‘Please enter your input’ fields):
3. Send These Variables to Fabric
Within your flow, utilize either the “Execute a SQL query (V2)” action or the “Execute stored procedure (V2)” action to interact with your Fabric environment’s database. The ‘Execute a SQL Query (V2)’ action allows you to run custom SQL queries against your database, providing flexibility in data operations.
Alternatively, if you have predefined stored procedures, use the ‘Execute Stored Procedure (V2)’ action to call them directly, streamlining complex operations. In the body of this action, select the lightning bolt symbol to add dynamic values to your query or stored procedure. Here’s an example of what that might look like:
4. Send a Response to Your Power App
Add a third and final action: use the “Respond to Power App or flow” action to send any necessary information or status updates back to your Power App. This ensures that users receive immediate feedback based on their inputs. Here’s a simple example of that:
That’s it!
Although Power Automate does not explicitly reference ‘Fabric,’ these steps allow you to write back to it seamlessly. By following these steps, Power Apps developers can efficiently write back to their Fabric environment, ensuring a streamlined and responsive user experience. If this is part of a solution, make sure to create this automation within the scope of your solution for easy management. Thanks for reading!
Looking for more on restaurant analytics?
Explore more insights and expertise at smartbridge.com/restaurant
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