Introducing the Microsoft 365 Lighthouse and Microsoft Power Platform Integration Guide

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We’re excited to announce the launch of the Microsoft 365 Lighthouse and Microsoft Power Platform Integration Guide. This guide provides a clear, step-by-step approach to integrating Microsoft 365 Lighthouse and Microsoft Power Platform into your organization and addresses the unique aspects and specific nuances of Microsoft 365 Lighthouse.

 

As Lighthouse seasoned users, you're already familiar with its capabilities to efficiently manage services for customers. With Lighthouse and Power Platform together, you can really push the envelope. This guide is designed to elevate your expertise and take service management to the next level.

 

Power Platform is a suite of business application tools, including Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, and Copilot Studio. It provides a low-code environment that empowers users to quickly build custom business solutions. Many of you are likely already familiar with Power Platform in one way or another. The entire platform is built on top of an underlying data model called Microsoft Dataverse.

 

Integrating Lighthouse and Power Platform can revolutionize how your organization handles Lighthouse data, automation, and customer management. The integration allows for customized solutions that address specific organizational needs, driving efficiency and innovation.

 

Additionally, the recent general availability of Microsoft Copilot marks a turning point in how we approach AI in business processes. We’ll not only show you how you can integrate Lighthouse with Power Platform, but we’ll take it a step further and demonstrate how to develop your own Lighthouse copilot using Copilot Studio—built on the foundations of Power Virtual Agents and other Power Platform technologies. You'll learn to pull and analyze Lighthouse data in new ways, from crafting personalized reports to setting up smart automations, all enhanced with the savvy insights of AI.

 

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse: A quick recapScreenshot of the Microsoft 365 Lighthouse home page.Microsoft 365 Lighthouse empowers Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to deliver value to their customers consistently and at scale. It offers AI-driven insights for customer acquisition and retention, streamlined management of security baselines for securing and driving productivity, and comprehensive risk-management tools.

 

Key features:

• Proactive account management with Sales Advisor, an AI-powered tool that provides insights and recommendations to improve customer relationships.
• Simplified onboarding across all customer tenants, with a guided onboarding process that follows best practices.
• Tenant configuration that’s efficient, consistent, and simplified, providing insight into users across all customer tenants.
• User, device, and data protection for both MSPs and their customers, with the ability to quickly identify and act on threats.
• Proactive monitoring and alerts to easily identify gaps in end-customer configurations.

Check out Microsoft 365 Lighthouse and learn more at Microsoft 365 Lighthouse: 2023 Year in Review.

 

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse API

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The Microsoft 365 Lighthouse API, currently in its beta phase and accessible through Microsoft Graph, is available via the OData subnamespace microsoft.graph.managedTenants. It provides MSPs with a comprehensive and programmable interface and offers extensive capabilities to streamline operations, bolster security, and ensure compliance across multiple customer tenants.

 

Key details:

• Provides access to over 20 different endpoints
• Accessible via the “beta” path through Microsoft Graph
• Requires multifactor authentication (MFA)

To familiarize yourself with the API, we recommend that you try it out using Microsoft Graph Explorer. In Graph Explorer, select beta from the version drop-down menu, and then enter a URL such as: https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/tenantRelationships/tenants. Make sure you also sign in using MFA. To learn more, see Work with Graph Explorer. 

 

APIs under the beta version of Microsoft Graph are subject to change. Use of these APIs in production applications is not supported. We encourage feedback on which endpoints you’d like to see in the beta version or in v1.0. To provide feedback, use the Microsoft 365 Lighthouse feedback portal.

 

Why integrate Power Platform with Lighthouse?

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Integrating with other services can significantly enhance the business value of Microsoft 365 Lighthouse. You can access data quicker, connect it with your own business apps, and develop custom workflows. We’ve already seen that Power Platform can provide some huge benefits to an organization:

 

• Improve performance: Leverage the low-code/no-code capabilities of Power Platform to improve operational efficiency and outcomes.
• Integrate with other services: Leverage thousands of pre-existing connectors to connect your Lighthouse data with your organization’s business apps to uncover meaningful trends.
• Save on costs: Automate manual processes and reduce operational costs, while indirectly saving by improving product quality and resource utilization.
• Mitigate risks: Use applications to improve data security and compliance, reducing the risks of sensitive data leakage.

 

Topics covered in the guide

The first version of the guide walks you through various aspects of the Power Platform and Lighthouse integration, including these high-level steps:

 

1. Register your app in Entra: We’ll start by registering a new app in Entra that gives Power Platform permission to access Lighthouse on your behalf.
2. Create your custom connector: We’ll show you how to create custom connectors to connect to your Lighthouse account.
• Custom connectors in Power Platform serve as bridges between your data sources and applications. In the context of Lighthouse, they can be used to fetch real-time data directly into your custom applications or dashboards.
• The connector we’ll build will be extremely simple. However, its importance cannot be overstated. With this connector, you’ll have a multifactor-authenticated way to pull data from Lighthouse to use in Microsoft Power Automate, store in Dataverse, create Power BI reports, or (in the case of this guide) create a Lighthouse copilot.
• Once your connector is set up, we’ll test it by simulating various scenarios to ensure that the connector accurately fetches data as intended.
3. Authorize your connector: Using your registered app from step 1, authorize your new connector for use in Power Platform.
4. Use Lighthouse with Power Automate: Power Automate allows you to create automated workflows that integrate with your Lighthouse data via your custom connector. These workflows can streamline tasks like incident reporting, compliance checks, and user management.
5. Build your Lighthouse copilot: We'll delve into how you can build a comprehensive management and monitoring system by fully leveraging the capabilities of Lighthouse and Power Platform.

 

Next steps

We’ll dive deeper into each aspect of integrating Lighthouse with Power Platform. Our goal is to provide you with a step-by-step guide to truly transform the way you manage and deliver services to your clients.

 

Join us in exploring the full potential of this integration and how it can elevate your MSP operations to new heights of efficiency, security, and business value.

 

Start using Microsoft 365 Lighthouse today!

 

To learn more about Microsoft 365 Lighthouse, see Sign up for Microsoft 365 Lighthouse or review the Microsoft 365 Lighthouse documentation.

 

To learn more about Microsoft Power Platform, review the Microsoft Power Platform documentation.