Summary
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) needed a new way to collect field data, automate processes, analyze and reuse data and gain valuable insights. Read why the agency turned to Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft PowerApps and Microsoft Power Automate Desktop training from ExistBI.
About the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), part of the Department of the Interior, is a federal agency responsible for overseeing and administrating water resource management in the western United States. The agency is known for its role in constructing and operating hundreds of dams and water diversion structures, including iconic facilities like the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, which provide water for drinking and irrigation, and generating hydroelectric power.
The USBR also focuses on drought management, water conservation, and restoring fish and wildlife habitats affected by its projects. It plays a crucial role in addressing the challenges posed by water scarcity and environmental concerns in the western states, working with other federal agencies, state governments, Native American tribes, and local entities to sustainably manage the region’s water resources.
Challenge
As an agency that is frequently out in the field, the USBR had many data collection needs and processes. Many of its employees rely on paper forms to record data and then must wait until they are back in the office to enter the data into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to record the data and submit it for approval.
These manual processes can be very problematic. The process of manually recording the data on paper and then entering it into spreadsheets can be slow, time-intensive, and prone to errors. It also delays processes that rely on field data. Using spreadsheets to store data also did not allow the USBR to extract data for reports or identify trends easily.
The agency sought a new way to collect data through their smartphone, tablet and other devices while in the field, quickly analyze data, automate more processes, and create and deliver timely reports.
Solution
After speaking with the consulting team at ExistBI, the team at USBR realized that they already had the tools within their Microsoft Office 365 subscription that would allow them to increase productivity and gain efficiency. These include the following:
Microsoft PowerBI is a powerful business analytics tool that enables users to visualize data and share insights across an organization or embed them in an app or website. Power BI can connect to local, cloud-based and streaming data and transform and clean them for analysis. Users can create interactive, customizable, shareable reports and dashboards with various visualization tools.
For power users, Power BI includes features like DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) for creating custom calculations and measures and relationships for modelling complex data scenarios. Artificial intelligence capabilities enable users to access image recognition and text analytics, create machine learning models, and more.
Microsoft PowerApps allows a broad range of users to build custom applications that can run on web browsers, tablets, and smartphones for their business needs without requiring traditional coding skills or extensive development knowledge. The low-code development environment offers a user-friendly interface to build custom apps from scratch or using pre-built templates.
PowerApps supports connecting to a wide range of data sources, including Microsoft services (like Dynamics 365, Office 365, and Azure SQL Database), third-party services (like Salesforce, Dropbox, and Google Docs), and custom data sources. Users can design the UI any way they want, using various UI components and controls to create interactive and responsive applications.
PowerApps can be used for various applications, including:
- Streamlining operations like travel requests and expense approvals,
- Collecting and managing data from surveys, inventories, and inspections,
- Enhancing existing business systems by creating custom front-end interfaces or extending functionalities.
Microsoft Power Automate Desktop automates repetitive desktop and web-based tasks that many users perform daily to enhance productivity, reduce manual errors, and free users to focus on more strategic tasks.
The app includes a vast library of prebuilt actions to automate tasks across various applications and services, including web browsers, email, Excel, databases, and more. The web and desktop recorder allows non-technical users to capture user actions and translate them into a sequence of steps in an automation flow. Examples of applications that Power Automate Desktop can tackle include:
- Automating data transfer between systems, such as entering data from paper forms into digital databases or migrating data from one application to another,
- Extracting information from websites and web applications for data analysis,
- Automating the organization, renaming, and management of files and folders on a computer,
- Managing email notifications and responses.
Results
The USBR team decided to attend training offered by ExistBI. As a Microsoft Business Intelligence Partner, ExistBI experienced trainers offer Microsoft-certified training and Microsoft community training courses, including:
- Analyzing Data with Power BI – Learn methods and best practices that align with business and technical requirements for modelling, visualizing, and analyzing data with Power BI.
- Microsoft PowerApps – Learn how to design, test, and publish new apps that work with various data sources to build new applications for their business.
- Microsoft Power Automate Desktop – Learn how to create flows from scratch and from existing templates; work with triggers, actions, conditions, and approvals; work with variables, loops, functions, and expressions; use RPA automation’s power and error handling.
The team at USBR was thrilled with the trainers, content and hands-on exercises offered by the ExistBI courses. Since then, other federal agencies have contacted ExistBI for Microsoft training.
