Architecture
Intelligent Order Management is built on Microsoft Power Platform by using the model-driven app infrastructure of Microsoft Power Apps. The architecture is designed to support the requirements of a complex order processing environment where many systems and apps are in the overall order-to-fulfillment process.
Delivered as a cloud solution, Intelligent Order Management can be deployed quickly in the Microsoft Azure data centers. The app and platform are deployed in a data center region that customers choose for their business, and Microsoft manages the infrastructure. As a result, customers can focus on configuring the app to suit business order and fulfillment requirements. For more information, see Globalization.
The app and platform are designed following these basic principles:
Extensibility - Understanding that every organization has a unique combination of apps and systems that they work with. Enabling the configuration of the business process to match the requirements of the organization, and providing flexibility in extending the platform and app.
Scale - Understanding that the need to scale to support high transaction volume isn't only for enterprise organizations. Organizations of all types need an app and platform that can scale up and down as needed.
Use Power Platform - Understanding that customers search for technology vendors that can support them in their long-term plans, and using an organization's in-house skills or skills of consulting partners.
The platform is built with the following three architecture concepts:
Data pipeline - The data integration pipeline moves data in and out of Intelligent Order Management. It connects to upstream and downstream systems to receive and push changes as orders move through the order flow.
Orchestration engine - The orchestration engine provides the visualization of the business process and compiles the designed process into Power Automate flows for the business user.
Insights - The Insights components enable the flow of data to support the visualization of data in Power BI and allow data to be analyzed in machine learning models with AI Builder.
Data pipeline
The data pipeline in Intelligent Order Management provides the foundation for the providers to move data in and out of the app. Transformation of business documents that are moving through the data pipeline is implemented by Microsoft Power Query Online.
The following terminology describes components in the data pipeline:
Provider - In Intelligent Order Management, a provider is used to configure the data movement in the data pipeline. Microsoft includes providers, but customers and partners are encouraged to build their own providers. For more information, see Work with providers.
Connectors - Connectors are built by using Power Automate. Connectors wrap the external service API that will be used by the provider. Customers can use the available catalog of connectors to build their own provider. For more information, see Connectors documentation.
Connection - A connection is the specific configuration that is required to enable the connection that is used by the provider. The administrator will supply the sign-in or API tokens to communicate with the external service when the provider is enabled in the application.
Data transformations - Services have their own business document and entity concepts. As data moves between those systems, data needs to be transformed for the systems to communicate with each other. When Microsoft builds a provider, it includes transformations to common business documents for the external service. If necessary, the transformation can be changed or extended to support new providers or APIs for a service.
Business events - Business events are notifications from the processing pipeline to implement a provider action.
Provider action - A provider action is a single task of a unit of operation for a provider, as represented by Power Automate.
Orchestration engine
Order-to-fulfillment flow is complex to replicate in a single business app, but when combined with other cloud services and supply chain partner systems, the complexity grows. To help business users in the organization visualize and manage this complexity, Intelligent Order Management ships with a business orchestration designer. Business process flows that are designed with the orchestration designer are compiled into Power Automate flows when the flow is published.
The following terminology describes components in the orchestration engine:
Designer - The tool that is used by the business user to build orchestration flows.
Orchestration flow types - Intelligent Order Management provides two flow types:
Order flow - Represents the progression of an order to fulfillment.
Inventory flow - Represents the flow of inventory from a master system to the inventory service or to an external system.
Policies - Rules and configurations that the business user can provide to control an orchestration flow.
Step - A step in the orchestration is a specific tile in the orchestration flow. Each tile type provides the configuration parameters to perform that function in the orchestration flow.
Insights
The platform manages data through the application life cycle and is visualized by using Power BI. Intelligent Order Management provides several dashboards to help the business user understand key order and fulfillment metrics.
Customers can use the same technology to present and combine data from other apps as needed.
Machine learning is used to analyze data by using models and it uses advanced algorithms to find or predict patterns in data. Customers can use AI Builder to build models that use data from Intelligent Order Management so that results are updated on entities that are used during the order and fulfillment flows. This approach will help decision making in orchestration flows.
Related technology
Intelligent Order Management uses the following Microsoft platform technologies:
Dataverse - Data in Intelligent Order Management is provided through the Dataverse platform. For more information, see Microsoft Dataverse developer guide.
Power Automate - For business users, Intelligent Order Management compiles organization flows into Power Automate. Developers can further extend the solution. For more information, see Get started with Power Automate.
Power Query Online - Intelligent Order Management uses the capabilities of Power Query and the M query language to support transformation in the data pipeline for providers. For more information, see the What is Power Query?.
Power BI - The dashboards that are provided in Intelligent Order Management are built by using Power BI tools. Customers can extend the solutions or build their own by using Power BI. For more information, see What is Power BI?.
AI Builder - Machine learning models will be available in later releases of Intelligent Order Management. Customers and partners can use the same technology to build their own models by using AI Builder capabilities. For more information, see the AI Builder documentation.