From Separate Worlds to a Winning Team: The Perfect Integration Between Microsoft and Mendix

When it comes to business digitalization, it’s hard to find an organization that hasn’t adopted at least one Microsoft solution. Whether it’s Microsoft 365, Dynamics, or Azure, most businesses have started – or consolidated – their digital transformation precisely by leveraging MS technology. Over the years, Microsoft has evolved and expanded its offering, building an integrated ecosystem of tools capable of addressing increasingly complex needs. However, businesses’ needs are becoming more specific, and in many cases, they go beyond the boundaries of the Microsoft world.

What does this mean for businesses? Do they need to abandon the tools they’ve been using for years and adopt completely new solutions? Absolutely not.

Today, it’s unimaginable to think of a business technology ecosystem that doesn’t include integration with the Microsoft world. For this reason, when we chose the low-code technology to offer our clients, we at WEGG immediately took into account the importance of perfect compatibility with the Microsoft universe.

Yes, we’re very familiar with PowerApps, which is part of the MS world: interesting, especially for those already working in a Microsoft context. However, it’s not always sufficient to cover more complex, structured, or cross-functional needs. This is why we propose Mendix: a low-code/no-code development platform that doesn’t replace Microsoft but extends it. Thanks to its flexibility and native integration capabilities, Mendix easily fits into existing workflows, enhancing them without disrupting them.

Before diving into the details of integration methods, let’s look at the main differences between these two technologies.

Differences Between Microsoft and Mendix

Microsoft is an ecosystem made up of various applications, each designed for a specific purpose. Within it, we find productivity and collaboration tools, such as the Microsoft 365 suite, cloud and development services like Azure, and a section dedicated to rapid development and data analysis, known as the Power Platform.

Mendix, on the other hand, is a complete low-code development platform designed to create various types of applications with an agile and scalable approach.

It’s true: with Microsoft tools like Power Apps, it’s possible to create small developments. However, these tools show their limits when it comes to handling more complex use cases that require intricate workflows, advanced business logic, and integrations with heterogeneous systems.

The comparison between Mendix and Power Apps is a topic we often address during the presales phase. For this reason, we at WEGG have already discussed it in this article: BPM, RPA, low-code compared for process digitalization.

At this point, let’s get into the specifics: how do Mendix applications integrate within the Microsoft ecosystem?

Mendix and Microsoft: Native Integration with Microsoft Graph

Indeed, Mendix has developed a unique connector capable of interfacing with the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Thanks to the Microsoft Graph connector, it’s possible to easily connect a Mendix application to a wide range of Microsoft services, including:

• Microsoft 365 Services: Bookings, Calendar, Delve, Excel, Microsoft 365 Compliance & eDiscovery, Microsoft Search, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook/Exchange, Contacts (People), Planner, SharePoint, Teams, To Do, Workplace Analytics;
• Security Services: Advanced Threat Analytics, Advanced Threat Protection, Azure Active Directory, Identity Manager, Intune;
• Windows 10 Services: Activities, Devices, Notifications, Universal Print;
• Dynamics 365 Business Central;

As you can see, the integration covers a wide array of Microsoft tools and services, allowing companies already using Microsoft 365 not to lose any advantages by adopting Mendix. In fact, they can enhance its use through a more flexible platform oriented towards rapid development.

Some concrete examples of integration with MS Graph

With Mendix, you can, for example:

• use Outlook directly from the app to send emails or manage calendar events
• organize and schedule meetings
• enable Single Sign-On via Azure AD
• retrieve and use data from the Microsoft 365 tenant to integrate it into the application logic