Power Platform Release 2024 wave 2
Here we go again, another wave of new features and hidden gems announced for the Power Platform.
The following is the list of what I think are the most interesting Power Platform features, I’ve used the new experience to dig into the release wave documentation, so go I highly recommend it if you haven’t started using yet.
I know it is a quite large list, but these 23 features caught my eye like those really cool features in AI Builder where you can create cards using GPT prompts, but no spoilers, so without further introductions, let’s get started.
Power Apps
Use the Power Platform Environment Settings app
The Power Platform Environment Settings app introduces a semi-modern, accessible and flexible way to manage settings. Designed for application developers, this app aims to provide a cohesive and unified experience for managing application settings.
I said semi-modern because we now have a model driven app in which, yeah we will have all the app settings centralized in one place, but still having the old classic buttons and the old UI of the advanced settings that we currently have. At least now we got this app where everything is centralized.
The Power Platform Environment Settings app is aiming to replace the outdated web client, offering a streamlined and unified experience for application developers. It retains the same security, access control, and extensibility features as the previous version.
The feature will be rolled out incrementally, starting with the settings application itself, ensuring existing extensions and solution imports remain functional. Initially, links to advanced settings within Power Platform will redirect to the new app. Administrators have the option to disable this redirection until the feature is generally available by adjusting the Advanced settings redirection setting in the Power Platform admin center.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Aug 2024
General Availability : Oct 2024
Work together in real time to create canvas apps
Previously, only one maker could edit a canvas app at a time, which slowed down the development process. With the new coauthoring feature, multiple makers can now author and edit a canvas app simultaneously. This collaborative capability speeds up app development, allowing teams to build and refine apps more quickly. It also improves debugging, code reviews, and training by enabling multiple makers to work together in real time.
I tried this feature at the beginning of this month and I have to say it really works, your changes can be seen in real time by your peers, nevertheless there are some limitations to take into account that are even documented in Microsoft learn web page:
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Jul 2024
General Availability : Oct 2024
Visualize and work with complex data using copilot
Power Apps has traditionally offered a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface for app building, which is well-received by makers. However, setting up the data model behind the app for business logic has remained a challenge, requiring makers to navigate a plain schema view of tables and relationships. To address this, Power Apps is introducing a new data modeling experience through a WYSIWYG editor.
Makers can now create tables from various data sources such as Excel files, SharePoint lists, or through conversation with the help of copilot in the new data model visual editor. This feature allows for the simultaneous creation of multiple tables with relationships established using copilot’s capabilities. The created tables and relationships are displayed in an ERD (entity relationship diagram) view, enabling makers to understand the data model better. Additionally, makers can use copilot inline to create new tables, update schemas, or get suggestions for improving their data model.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: —
General Availability : Aug 2024
Governance & Administration
Create and edit pipelines in Power Platform admin center
Setting up and editing pipelines in Power Platform is now more streamlined, as it no longer requires the Deployment Pipeline Configuration model driven app. All pipeline capabilities are now integrated into the Power Platform admin center and also in the maker portal. This in-product pipeline management simplifies onboarding for organizations, eliminating the need to install additional packages to use pipelines. Makers can now edit pipelines or link additional developer environments directly within the maker portal, without needing to switch to a model driven app.
The user experience for pipeline configuration and management in the Power Platform admin center offers several benefits:
- Seamlessly enable in-product scenarios like pipelines on-ramp and environment routing.
- Update pipeline capabilities more quickly and easily.
- Access pipelines without needing to install the Power Platform Pipelines package.
- Edit pipelines, stages, and access settings without using the model driven app.
- Enforce Managed Environment licensing for dependent, target environments more efficiently in the future.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: —
General Availability : Aug 2024
Use management connector in Power Automate and Logic Apps
The updated management connector for administrators will always align with the latest version of the Power Platform API. This ensures that customers can easily manage their tenants and environments at scale without needing to develop custom software around the REST API.
As the Power Platform API evolves, it becomes increasingly important for related tools to be automatically updated and current. This new management connector version will be accessible in both Power Automate and Azure Logic Apps. This offers additional flexibility for customers who prefer to use ARM templates and manage tenant automation within Azure. Conversely, customers who wish to avoid the added complexity of Azure can continue managing their environments within Power Automate and Power Platform.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Nov 30, 2023
General Availability : Oct 2024
Permit or deny guest access to an environment
Admins can now configure an environment setting to control guest access, preventing guests from accessing environments and stop them from establishing new connections, making new API calls or connecting to data sources, performing maker actions, and using shared apps or flows.
Existing connections and resources will be disabled rather than deleted, ensuring that guests cannot interact with the environment while preserving the integrity of the data and settings.
This security measure is managed directly within the Power Platform admin center, eliminating the need for additional controls like conditional access or continuous access evaluation.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Sep 2024
General Availability : Dec 2024
Share system views with security role
Role-based views enhance the usability of business apps by catering to the specific needs of different users. For instance, team leads or supervisors working with the case table have different system view requirements compared to case service representatives. Standard system views like My Cases and My Cases Closed Today can clutter the interface for supervisors, leading to the creation of multiple apps for a cleaner experience.
Currently, users see an extensive list of system views when accessing a table form, such as an account form. This list can be overwhelming, with many views not relevant to the user. Makers and admins lack the ability to customize this list based on user roles. The new feature allows admins to select and share appropriate system views for users based on their security roles. Consequently, users will only see the system views relevant to their specific roles, streamlining their experience and reducing clutter.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Jul 2024
General Availability : Sep 2024
Power Pages
A lot of new features have been included for Power Pages in this release wave, which makes me happy to see how Microsoft is paying so much attention to Power Pages, even in those little details that are probably not on one’s list of priorities, such as improving the user interface and the performance of the Entity list component.
Explore additional enhancements to modern list
The modern list, which offers improved performance, a refreshed visual design, and enhanced styling capabilities, now includes additional functionalities to match the classic list, such as custom JavaScript for styling.
The modern list introduces several enhanced features:
- Intuitive and visually refreshed UX: Offers an updated and visually appealing user experience.
- Better performance: Reduces loading times for Power Pages site users.
- New loading experience: Features new animations while loading list data.
- Infinite scroll: Automatically loads content as users scroll to the bottom of the list.
- Inline filters: Provides default filters for all columns in the list view.
- Low code styling: Allows for easy styling using the design studio with options for standard, header, and row levels.
- Improved productivity: Enables copying and pasting of styles from one modern list to another.
These enhancements also add new functionalities, including custom JavaScript, metadata filters, and controls for calendar and map views, further extending the capabilities of the modern list feature.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Sep 2024
General Availability : —
Improve site security with security scan
Performing a security scan can significantly enhance your site’s security by identifying and addressing vulnerabilities. This process helps protect your site from potential attacks, ensuring a safe online environment for users.
You can schedule security scans to safeguard your site from various threats. These scans, which include both static and dynamic security evaluations, detect weaknesses and potential threats to your site’s stability. Running a security scan allows you to assess the security status of your site, receive a detailed report with the findings, and review recommendations for further actions to enhance site security.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: May 21, 2024
General Availability : Sep 2024
Use Power Fx in web template components
Web templates as components is a feature that has been available in Power Pages for over 1 year. With web templates pro-code developers can create web templates combined with html and liquid that can be reused in different parts of the website, so low code makers can go to the Power Pages studio and use these web templates and send parameters to it.
With web templates as components, makers in the Power Pages Design Studio can set parameter values when incorporating them into a web page. And now they will be able to also include dynamic data using Power Fx formulas or expressions. Key aspects of this feature include:
- Use of the formula bar to author Power Fx formulas, setting the value of a component’s manifest properties.
- Application of data from Power Fx formula results in the web template for logic and experience, enabling developers to create components that are independent of specific data querying methods.
Of course questions arise as to if Power Fx replaces liquid, and I would say no, that it is more of a combination of features for a better experience when creating a Power Pages website. Of course, the description of this feature is a bit wide open, so it could be interpreted differently, but in my opinion I don’t think liquid is going to be replaced by Power Fx anytime soon.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Oct 2024
General Availability : —
Power Automate
Create Power Automate flows in Excel
Makers can now effortlessly create powerful flows directly from the Automate tab in Excel. As one of the most widely used data tools globally, Excel’s features are now further enhanced with Power Automate, streamlining the automation of tasks and processes from within Excel.
This improved Automate button in Excel now includes ready-made templates in the ribbon, providing users with easy access to prebuilt workflows. This enhancement allows users to quickly start creating workflows by simply entering information into the parameters. Additionally, makers can view and manage their flows directly from Excel, making the automation process more seamless and efficient.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: —
General Availability : Dec 2024
Use the Run Power Fx expression in Desktop flows
Makers can now use the Run Power Fx expression to directly transform data on various sources, such as data tables, lists, and variables. This feature will enable functions like Collect() and ClearCollect() to mimic the Add to list and Update list actions. This functionality is available for Power Fx enabled desktop flows, currently in preview, providing a powerful tool for data manipulation and transformation within desktop automation flows.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: —
General Availability : Sep 2024
Use Copilot to analyze cloud & desktop flow runs
The Copilot feature in the automation center offers users a multi-skill experience, allowing them to ask questions about cloud flow and desktop flow activities, work queues, and Power Automate features. By leveraging natural language queries, Copilot helps users gain a deeper understanding of cloud flow trends, statuses, and performance.
Available in the Power Automate portal, the automation center provides a comprehensive monitoring experience enhanced by AI. Users can ask Copilot questions about cloud flow run history, such as :
- The number of runs triggered by another cloud flow last month,
- Who initiated flow runs in the past month,
- How many flows failed yesterday.
Similarly, for desktop flow run history, users can inquire about:
- Which flows ran the most last week,
- The top five flows by number of completed runs yesterday,
- The distribution of flow run statuses.
Copilot’s insightful analysis helps maximize efficiency and focus on high-impact automation tasks.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: May 21, 2024
General Availability : Dec 2024
Use generative AI to achieve a process in AI flows
Rather than constructing complex rules-based processes from start to finish, you can now collaborate with AI to develop an automation plan. When executing the plan, the large language model (LLM) dynamically selects the most suitable actions based on the resources available, ensuring the desired outcome is achieved efficiently.
AI flows leverage generative AI to interpret unstructured content and determine the necessary steps and sequence to achieve a process outcome based on your natural language instructions and parameters.
This approach offers a fundamentally different user experience compared to building traditional rules-based cloud flows. The process involves describing your objective in natural language, allowing AI to create an automation plan, refining the plan by adjusting inputs, outputs, and variables, and adding reference sources and guidelines.
You can then validate the flow by reviewing its performance against the business objective before moving it into production. AI flows’ ability to incorporate both structured and unstructured data, makes them highly effective for managing complex processes, exception handling, and process loops.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Aug 2024
General Availability : Feb 2025
AI Builder
Add unstructured data knowledge to GPT prompts
First I would like to summarize what a prompt in AI Builder is:
Think of a prompt as a task or a goal you give to the large language model (LLM). With prompt builder, you can build, test, and save your custom prompts. You can also use input variables and Dataverse data to provide dynamic context data at runtime. You can share these prompts with others and use them in Power Automate, Power Apps, or Copilot Studio. For instance, you could make a prompt to pick out action items from your company emails and use it in a Power Automate flow to build an email processing automation.
Now with this new feature in AI Builder significantly enhances the value of AI prompts by incorporating information from websites and documents. Users can effortlessly integrate and reference content from internet sources and enterprise documents within their AI prompts. This enhancement allows the AI to directly access, interpret, and utilize information from web pages and textual documents, enriching the AI’s responses and making it more effective in various applications.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Nov 2024
General Availability : —
Author power cards with GPT prompts
Transform data visualization with natural language prompts using the new Prompt Builder feature. This feature seamlessly integrates complex AI outputs into user-friendly visualizations.
In a nutshell makers will be able to save these prompts as power cards, enabling the creation of dynamic, AI-powered visual components. These advanced power cards can be used across various platforms, providing an intuitive and interactive way to present GPT outputs as self-contained components within their applications. This innovation bridges the gap between sophisticated AI technology and accessible, visually appealing data representation.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Mar 2025
General Availability : —
Process images with GPT in prompt builder
In Prompt Builder, makers can now pair image inputs and prompts with the GPT-4 with Vision model. This enhancement enables a wide range of new scenarios, such as text recognition, image comprehension, chart analysis, infographic understanding, scientific diagram interpretation, and mathematical problems.
This enhancement broadens the range of tasks GPT-4 can assist with, combining visual data analysis with text processing for a more comprehensive interaction.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Mar 2025
General Availability : —
Try out AI Builder with the Power Apps developer plan
The Power Apps Developer Plan now includes access to AI Builder capabilities, allowing users to try out these features in their developer environments before committing to AI capacity. With 20,000 credits provided each month, users have ample opportunity to explore and experiment with AI Builder’s potential.
This allows them to customize AI models and integrate them into their flows and apps, providing a hands-on experience with AI Builder’s functionalities without any initial commitment.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Sep 2024
General Availability : Oct 2024
Copilot Studio
Add copilots to Teams meetings
Enhance workplace productivity by utilizing Copilot Studio to create custom copilots, which act as “autonomous assistants” in Teams meetings. These copilots leverage generative AI to provide real-time support and insights, making meetings more efficient and effective.
You will be able to invite a copilot to your Teams meeting and interact with it through text, speech, and video. The copilot can analyze the entire audio conversation, chat transcript, and shared screen content to offer valuable assistance. You can issue commands like “Stop recording,” inquire about specific content such as “What was the highest value account in the shared spreadsheet?” or request contextual analysis like “Review this code and suggest improvements” or “What does this chart imply about the trend of this stock?” This integration helps you maximize the benefits of your meetings by providing relevant, on-the-spot information and actions.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Aug 2024
General Availability : —
Deploy copilots to WhatsApp, Azure Communication Services Chat and SMS channels
The new WhatsApp channel support in Microsoft Copilot Studio allows customers to reach a larger audience in various markets. Additionally, Azure Communication Services Chat integration enables engagement through custom solutions built with Communication Services chat, while Communication Services SMS adds native SMS support to Copilot Studio copilots.
Customers can provision an Azure Communication Services resource and integrate it with Microsoft Copilot Studio, connecting their copilots to these expanded communication channels.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Sep 2024
General Availability : —
Dataverse
Microsoft Fabric Insights integration with Power Apps
Linking Dataverse to Microsoft Fabric allows you to leverage Dataverse data with powerful Fabric tools. This integration enables you to merge data from Dynamics 365 and Dataverse with other sources, such as your data warehouses, devices, sensors, or even data from other clouds. Not only you can join and aggregate this data, but you can also apply AI and machine learning to uncover patterns and trends. The true value of these insights lies in the ability to act on them directly within Power Apps. Now, makers can build apps and drive actions using insights like KPIs and aggregated data from Fabric without duplicating.
For instance, you can consolidate financial data from various systems for a comprehensive view, merge historical data from legacy systems with current business data, or combine website telemetry with product and order details. Machine learning can then detect anomalies and exceptions within this integrated data.
These insights can seamlessly drive business processes in Power Apps and Power Automate without the need for data copies or third-party tools. Furthermore, with Dataverse virtual tables sourced from Fabric, low-code app builders can connect to data in Microsoft OneLake, building apps and driving business actions efficiently. This integration also supports the creation of external-facing websites via Power Pages, allowing makers to drive actions from OneLake insights with partners, suppliers, and customers.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Nov 15, 2023
General Availability : Sep 2024
Restore deleted records within a specified timeframe
You can now restore deleted table records on your own, eliminating the need for engineering support and the wait time previously required to recover deleted data.
In the course of regular business operations with Microsoft Dataverse, users often delete records or transactions, whether manually, systematically, intentionally, or accidentally. This can happen through system processes, single or multiple selections, or bulk deletions. Previously, recovering deleted data was challenging, and sometimes records were irretrievable.
To address this, a recycle bin feature is now available, allowing users to recover deleted table records from any type of deletion scenario within a configurable timeframe. This recovery can be performed both through the user interface and via APIs/SDK.
Timelines:
Early Access: —
Public Preview: Jul 2024
General Availability : Sep 2024
Conclusion
There you have it, these were my highlights for this release wave on Power Platform. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
Here you have the documentation of it, go and read it because probably you will encounter other ones that are more interesting to you.
Hello there! Welcome to my blog!
My name is Wilmer Alcivar and I’m a Power Platform fan
I’d love to share my knowledge, so please do not hesitate to connect!
