Case study / 02
Power Platform Internal Operations Suite
Power Apps / Power Automate / Microsoft Lists
Three staff-facing tools built in April–July 2025 that moved contractor management, housekeeper attendance and stock ordering off paper, spreadsheets and verbal handover into structured, auditable workflows.
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Challenge
Hotel operations ran on paper sign-in sheets, Excel and chat messages. Nobody could answer “who is on site”, “who has signed in” or “has that order arrived” without asking around.
Contribution
Went onto the operational floor, mapped each manual workflow, modelled the data in Microsoft Lists, built the Power Apps screens staff actually used and wired the Power Automate logic behind them — then kept revising in live operations.
Phase one · April – July 2025
Before the platform,
three tools on the floor.
The first stage of digitising hotel operations. Each tool started from a real front-line problem, was modelled in Microsoft Lists, given a Power Apps screen and a Power Automate flow, and revised in live use.
- 01April 2025Contractor & visitor management
- 02April 2025Housekeeper sign-in & attendance
- 03July 2025Stock & order tracking
Three workflows
Each one replaced
a manual process.
Same skeleton every time: the problem, what the screen does, how the data is modelled, what automation carries, the lifecycle a record moves through, and what the hotel got from it.
Contractor & Visitor Management
April 2025
- Power Apps
- Microsoft Lists / SharePoint
- Power Automate
- Microsoft 365
Problem
Maintenance crews, suppliers and other contractors arrived with no shared record. Front desk could not see who was due today, who was already inside or who had left — and there was no history to check afterwards.
What the app does
- Registration: name, company, phone, vehicle registration, purpose of visit, scheduled arrival and departure
- Today / Upcoming view so front desk sees the day's and the coming days' contractors before they arrive
- One-tap Check in and Check out that stamp actual arrival and departure times
- Management view over the complete record; front desk works the current and upcoming list
Data model
- Name
- Company
- Phone
- Vehicle registration
- Purpose of visit
- Scheduled arrival
- Scheduled departure
- Check-in time
- Check-out time
Automation
Power Automate keeps the working list and the long-term history in step, so the daily view stays short while every visit is retained.
Lifecycle
- 01Scheduled
- 02Checked in
- 03Checked out
- 04History
Business valueFront desk can answer who is coming, why they are here, whether they are inside and when they left — with a full record kept for operations, security and audit.
Housekeeper Sign-in & Attendance
April 2025
- Power Apps
- Microsoft Lists
- Power Automate
- QR-based workflow
Problem
Housekeeping sign-in, sign-out and hours were recorded by hand. Most housekeepers had no Microsoft 365 account, so an ordinary office app would never have been used.
What the app does
- QR-based entry into the sign-in flow at the start of a shift
- Records housekeeper name, sign-in time, sign-out time and a signature
- Working hours computed from the two timestamps
- Designed around the floor, not the office: large controls, minimal input
Data model
- Housekeeper name
- Housekeeper
- Sign-in time
- Sign-out time
- Attendance
- Working hours
- Signature
Automation
Power Automate handles the sign-in and sign-out logic and calculates actual working hours from the recorded times.
Lifecycle
- 01Sign in
- 02Working
- 03Sign out
- 04Hours calculated
Business valueAttendance moved from handwriting to structured records. The design direction then extended toward room task assignment, cleaning status, inspector notification and inspection flow — an early sketch of what the full platform later built.
Stock & Order Tracking
Active by July 2025
- Power Apps
- Microsoft Lists / SharePoint
- Power Automate
- Microsoft 365
Problem
F&B, front office, engineering and housekeeping all kept ordering supplies, and nobody could quickly say what had been ordered, by whom, when it should arrive, whether it had, how much actually came, who received it or where it went.
What the app does
- Order log: item, category, order date, expected arrival, ordered by, note and quantity
- Gallery filtered to unreceived orders — Received Date is blank — sorted by expected arrival, then order date
- Receiving: received date, receiver, quantity received, receiver note, signature and storage location
- Used across shifts by front office, housekeeping and F&B staff, so handover is read, not spoken
Data model
- Item name
- Category
- Order date
- Expected arrival date
- Ordered by
- Order note
- Items ordered
- Received date
- Received by
- Items received
- Receiver note
- Receiver signature
- Stored into
Automation
Power Automate and Microsoft 365 carry the receiving updates, so an order's state is visible to the next shift the moment it is signed for.
Lifecycle
- 01Order created
- 02Waiting for delivery
- 03Expected arrival
- 04Received
- 05Quantity confirmed
- 06Signed
- 07Stored
Business valueLoose “wait for it, look for it, ask who signed for it” became a trackable workflow. The next shift sees the current order state instead of relying on verbal handover.
How every tool was built
Same method,
three times over.
- 01Start from a real hotel operations problem
- 02Analyse the existing manual workflow first
- 03Structure the business process into explicit steps and states
- 04Design the data model in Microsoft Lists
- 05Build the staff-facing UI in Power Apps
- 06Handle workflow and automation in Power Automate
- 07Keep revising in the live hotel environment
Where low-code hit its limits
The tools worked.
The architecture ran out of room.
As the systems grew, the same pressures kept appearing. They did not make the tools fail; they made the next system a different kind of system.
Data scale and query performance
Microsoft Lists is comfortable for a register; it strains as operational history accumulates and queries get more specific.
Delegation and filtering
Power Apps delegation limits cap what can be filtered and sorted server-side, so “show me exactly this” gets harder as data grows.
Permission models
Role-based access beyond “front desk vs manager” needs finer, enforceable rules than list-level sharing provides.
Cross-property isolation
Three hotels sharing one operation need each property's data scoped by rule, not by which list someone happens to open.
Workflow state
Real operations have exceptions, reworks and hand-offs that outgrow a form with a status column.
UI and UX control
Front-line screens need layouts and interactions tuned to the job, past what the canvas allows.
Integration
Talking to the property management system and other tools needs a proper API surface, not connectors alone.
Delivery process
How the work
came together.
From the first model of the problem to checking how the system behaves.
Observe the manual workflow
Sat with front desk, housekeeping and purchasing to see how contractors were logged, how attendance was recorded and how orders were chased before designing anything.
Model the data in Lists
Turned each process into Microsoft Lists with explicit fields, separating what staff touch every day from the history that has to survive as a record.
Build the staff-facing screens
Power Apps galleries and forms shaped around the shift: today and upcoming first, check-in and check-out as single taps, unreceived orders at the top.
Iterate on the floor
Adjusted fields, filters and flows as staff used the tools in live operations, and added Power Automate logic wherever a rule could replace a manual step.
Engineering evidence
The details
that matter.
- Three workflows live within three months, used across shifts
- Contractor register: nine fields covering identity, visit purpose and both scheduled and actual arrival and departure
- Housekeeper attendance: two core lists (HouseKeepers, AttendanceRecords), QR entry, usable without a Microsoft 365 account
- Stock & order log: 13 fields, a seven-step lifecycle from order to storage, “unreceived first” gallery sorted by expected arrival
- Day-to-day operational data separated from long-term history for audit
- Superseded by the React / TypeScript / Node.js / SQL platform once complexity outgrew low-code
Inside the decisions / Expand to read
01Separate daily operations from long-term history
The contractor tool keeps today's and upcoming visits in the working view while every visit lands in a long-lived record. Front desk sees a short list; management and audits get the complete history.
02Design for staff without a Microsoft 365 account
Most housekeepers had no tenant login, so attendance could not be an ordinary office app. A QR-based entry point and a signature field made it usable at the start of a shift, on the floor.
03Show what needs attention first
The order gallery filters to rows where Received Date is blank and sorts by expected arrival, then order date. Whoever opens it on the next shift sees the deliveries to chase, not the archive.
04Know when to leave low-code
As the tools grew, Lists data volume, Power Apps delegation limits, permission needs, cross-property isolation and richer workflow state all pushed against the platform. That pressure set the direction for the full-stack rebuild.
Outcome
Three manual processes became structured records with cross-shift visibility, and the experience set the method — observe, model, build, revise — that the full Hotel Operations Platform followed.
Internal tools running in a private Microsoft 365 tenant. No public artefacts or screenshots; field structures and workflow descriptions come from the systems as built. Later superseded by the self-built Hotel Operations Platform.
- Power Apps
- Power Automate
- Microsoft Lists
- SharePoint
- Microsoft 365
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