I'm hoping to get some high-level help: We would like to build a self-service portal where employees can make and manage requests like vacation requests, absence reports, travel requests, etc. Requests would be routed to supervisors and/or other departments according to business rules. Supervisors would see only the requests from their own employees which they would approve or decline. Backoffice users would perform further processing of requests (for example, purchase plane tickets on another platform and then update the request with the details in the service portal). We would like to integrate with our HR and Finance systems through REST APIs, csv file import/export and/or direct SQL connections.
Some requests would be simple, single record forms, while others would span multiple tables with parent-child relationships. Some forms will display data from backend systems, for example, a vacation request form would show the number of vacation days remaining in the employee’s bank. We would require a feature-rich interface, with cascading drop downs, show/hide fields based on rules, etc.
We are considering two platforms for this project: Service Now and the Microsoft Power Platform. Service Now does everything this project requires, but we are already firmly implanted in the Microsoft ecosystem so it would make more sense to go this way. In terms of the Microsoft solution, from what I understand, we have three options:
Sharepoint Lists
- Plan
- Use Sharepoint lists as a database to store records
- Use PowerApps to customize forms where needed
- Use PowerAutomate for workflows (would have to purchase subscription for premium connectors)
- Pros
- Low cost, already included in our O365 A3 subscription
- Cons
- Limited functionality, no native support for parent-child records, cascading dropdowns, etc ?
- Could we configure such that managers only see the records of their own employees?
- Is this stretching Sharepoint lists for more than what they are intended?
PowerApps / Common Data Service
- Plan
- Use CDS to store records
- Use PowerApps to create forms
- Use PowerAutomate for workflows
- Pros
- Cons
- Each user has to have a PowerApps license ? Is PowerApps the only way to access the CDS ?
- Potentially a lot of app building: It seems that each process will have to have a model driven app and a canvas driven app. (?)
Dynamics 365
- Plan
- Pros
- Full-scale cloud platform
- Cons
- Expensive
- We are stuck with our back-end accounting and HR systems, we can’t get rid of them. Dynamics would have to be integrated into them. So we would essentially be using Dynamics as a front-end, I’m not sure if this is really its intended purpose.
