After a successful Early Access Program, we are also excited to announce that Microsoft Copilot Studio autonomous agents are now in preview. Copilot Studio enables more customers and users to build powerful autonomous agents for a multitude of use cases. We’re also introducing major updates to Power Platform to enhance developer capabilities. Finally, we’re sharing streamlined management of security and governance for Microsoft Power Platform, including your agents.

Over the past year, we’ve witnessed how reimagining business processes with Copilot and agents has revolutionized what we build, including intelligent apps and AI agents. Additionally, enhancing efficiency through automation and AI has fundamentally changed how we build, unlocking even more rapid low-code development.

Supercharge business processes with agents: Change what we build

For years, Microsoft Power Platform’s AI-infused low-code capabilities have empowered organizations to create and deploy applications with ease. Now, with Copilot as the new UI for AI, any organization can build powerful agents that augment their workforce and execute business processes right inside Copilot Studio—without any coding. Autonomous agents can work independently, detecting events like an email arriving, and use generative AI to trigger a series of actions. By automating complex tasks, these agents can orchestrate workflows and work unprompted alongside or on behalf of users or entire teams.

Autonomous agents now in preview

Since its debut at Microsoft Ignite 2023, Copilot Studio has transformed how businesses apply AI to common conversational workflows. By enabling users to create custom agents with advanced AI integration, we’re empowering organizations to streamline customer engagement, employee experience, and partner relationships.

And the introduction of autonomous agents (preview) is a game-changer. Agents built in Copilot Studio can now operate independently, dynamically planning and learning from processes, adapting to changing conditions, and making decisions without the need for constant human intervention. These autonomous agents can be triggered by data changes, events, and other background tasks—and not just through chat.

We’re also announcing agent library (preview) so users can get a head start by choosing agents based on commonly used scenarios and autonomous triggers (preview), allowing agents to automatically respond to signals across your business and initiate tasks. These advancements make it easy to automate complex tasks and processes.

Agent builder in Microsoft Power Apps now in preview

We’re also announcing the preview of agent builder in Power Apps, enabling organizations to rapidly transition into the AI-first era. By using existing knowledge, logic, and actions already built into the apps they create, makers can develop agents to handle tasks autonomously, eliminating repetitive processes, redefining individual productivity, and improving overall business efficiency.

Stories and benefits from the Copilot Studio autonomous agent Early Access Program

Autonomous agents are expanding the boundaries of what’s possible, enabling the creation of innovative applications and solutions that drive significant business outcomes:

• Accenture, a leading global professional services company that specializes in IT services and management consulting, has created agents to simplify complex operations and boost customer satisfaction.

“Accenture joined Microsoft Copilot Studio’s Early Access Program on autonomous agents and tapped into our deep industry and functional expertise to swiftly create high-impact, agent-driven use cases that drive workforce efficiency and enhance customer experiences. We developed nine powerful agents for Business Operations and Industry, positioned to increase operational efficiency by 40%, raise customer satisfaction scores by 10% to 20%, and lower costs by 15%. The simplicity of Copilot Studio’s agentic platform, ease of use, and configurability played a critical role in our success.”

—Rich Holsman, Senior Managing Director of Global Data and AI, Accenture

• Pets at Home, a leading pet care business in the United Kingdom, has used Copilot Studio to create autonomous agents for specific business workflows. One agent that was created for the profit protection team enabled more efficient case compilation for human review, potentially saving seven figures annually.

“We’re using AI to do the time-consuming work so our colleagues can use all resource and expertise to make decisions quickly based on large amounts of data. It’s truly helped empower colleagues through both the level of information at their fingertips, and in time spent on more nuanced and insightful work. The agent solution allows the profit protection team to more effectively assess cases for potential profit loss and dedicate more of their time to skilled analysis, rather than simply information gathering.”

—William Hewish, Chief Information Officer, Pets at Home

Enhance efficiency with AI in low-code: Change how we build

Microsoft Power Platform has always been focused on enabling rapid development of solutions. With Copilot, that is truer than ever. It is increasingly possible to use natural language, images, and documents to develop applications, automations, and more. This will unlock faster development and make Microsoft Power Platform increasingly accessible.

Plan designer in Power Apps now in preview

The new plan designer in Power Apps (preview) is a game-changer, integrating AI-powered assistance directly into the app creation process. Makers can now simply describe their business challenges and provide context like process diagrams, data models, or even screenshots of legacy applications. From there, Copilot will draft user roles and requirements, which can then be refined or modified with AI assistance. Copilot offers real-time suggestions and automation within a single conversational interface, leading makers from problem definition to solution architecture.

Unlock endless possibilities with deeper Microsoft Azure integration

By integrating Copilot Studio with Microsoft Azure AI Foundry Portal, users can bring their own models, prompts, and knowledge, ensuring a smooth and efficient connection with Azure services—without the need for extensive coding.

Copilot Studio pay-as-you-go with your Azure subscription

As accessing Azure AI capabilities in Copilot Studio becomes more common, flexible pricing has become essential. On December 1, 2024, Microsoft will introduce an option to buy Copilot Studio messages with pay-as-you-go consumptive billing through existing Azure subscriptions. This pricing option empowers developers to harness the full potential of Azure AI, while providing the flexibility needed to scale and adapt to changing demands.

Empower administrators with streamlined governance and security

In 2022, we transformed governance with managed environments, empowering tens of millions of citizen developers around the world.

Now, we’re taking it further with managed security and managed operations. These new features bring advanced threat protection, proactive alerts, and seamless disaster recovery to Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Integrated directly into the reimagined Power Platform admin center, these capabilities ensure your business applications are secure, scalable, and always performing at their best.

Embrace the future of AI-first development

The integration of Copilot and autonomous agents is further revolutionizing development in Microsoft Power Platform. These advancements are not just about automating processes; they are reshaping the landscape of digital innovation. Microsoft Power Platform enables organizations to become AI-first companies—innovating faster, making smarter decisions, and delivering greater value to their customers.

Explore Microsoft Power Platform blogs and sessions for Microsoft Ignite 2024

Copilot Studio introduces autonomous agents, agent library:

• Blog: Learn more about this update
• Breakout: What’s new with Copilot Studio and agents
• Breakout: Extending M365 Copilot with Copilot agents: Best practices
• Breakout: Reinventing business processes with autonomous agents 

Copilot Studio and Azure AI announce new tools for developers:

• Blog: Learn more about this update
• Keynote: Microsoft Ignite Keynote
• Breakout: Better together: Copilot Studio and Azure AI
• Breakout: Developers guide to building your own agents

Copilot Studio enhances platform with new updates:

• Blog: Learn more about this update
• Breakout: What’s new with Copilot Studio and agents
• Breakout: Get the most of your enterprise knowledge with Copilot Studio
• Breakout: Get started with best-in-class Copilot connectors in Copilot Studio
• Breakout: Ground Microsoft 365 Copilot in your business knowledge

New capabilities in Power Apps help leverage AI for business productivity:

• Blog: Learn more about this update
• General session: Unlock the value of Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio
• Breakout: The Future of Power Platform: Intelligent Apps
• Breakout: Building intelligent applications with AI and Power Apps
• Breakout: Unlock Productivity with AI in Power Apps
• Breakout: Deep Dive: Create, monitor and optimize enterprise apps with Power Apps
• Theater: Building complete solutions with Copilot and Power Apps

New AI and governance features in Microsoft Power Automate:

• Blog: Learn more about this news
• Breakout: Unlock innovation with practical strategies in Power Automate
• Breakout: Revolutionize the way you work with Power Automate and AI 
• Breakout: Automate email, doc, and image processing with GPT in Power Automate

Power Platform Admin Center simplifies security and governance experience:

• Blog: Learn more about this news
• Breakout: Enterprise Scale: The Future of Power Platform Governance
• Theater: Leveraging rich visibility to secure AI driven business applications
• Theater: Getting the most out of the new Power Platform Admin Center

The post Redefine development: AI-first innovation with agents and Microsoft Copilot in Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your journey, this event is designed to inspire, educate, and connect developers, IT professionals, business users, and like-minded tech enthusiasts who share enthusiasm for digital transformation. Microsoft is the proud lead sponsor of the third annual Power Platform Community Conference: a three-day, in-person, action-packed community event taking place at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, from September 18 through September 20, 2024. At PPCC, get ready to:

• Take advantage of the latest cutting-edge advancements in technology with generative AI and Microsoft Copilot.
• Gain skills and learn best practices to help your team stay ahead of the newest developments.
• Connect with like-minded individuals who share your interest.
• Have direct access to experts who can answer your questions for your business scenarios.

The event kicks off with pre-conference workshops on September 16 and September 17, followed by the main event from September 18 through September 20. Additionally, there will be a day of post-conference workshops on September 21.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to be part of the Microsoft Power Platform revolution. Register now and join us for an event that will inspire, educate, and empower you to achieve more.

Thriving together: The Microsoft Power Platform community experience

Prepare to immerse yourself in the dynamic world of low-code/no-code. This group of problem-solvers, developers, and analysts is united by a common goal: to unlock the full potential of Microsoft Power Platform. By exchanging ideas, best practices, and building on each other’s work, this vibrant community breaks down barriers and elevates the platform to new heights. The Microsoft Power Platform community paves the way for a future of seamless integration, automation, and data-driven decision-making, enriching the lives of businesses and individuals alike.

This year, PPCC will continue to feature the latest and greatest in generative AI and Copilot with several sessions showcasing how these cutting-edge technologies are transforming Microsoft Power Platform and the business landscape. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from Microsoft’s senior thought leaders, product experts, and engineers who are driving these innovations.

Building on the success of previous events such as the European Power Platform Conference, DynamicsCon, TechCon365, and Global Power Platform Bootcamp, this year’s conference may be our best yet.

Networking is a key component of the PPCC experience. The conference provides numerous opportunities for attendees to connect with their peers, share ideas, and learn from each other. Whether it’s during sessions, workshops, or social events, there are plenty of chances to build relationships and expand your professional network.

In addition to the educational and networking opportunities, the conference also offers a chance to hear real-world customer stories and shared insights from industry leaders. These stories provide valuable perspectives on how Microsoft Power Platform is being used to drive digital transformation and achieve business success.

Be sure to follow the Microsoft Power Platform Community LinkedIn for more announcements, exciting executive speaker lineup updates, and continued Microsoft Power Platform Product Weeks coverage.

What’s new and next for Microsoft Business Apps

This year, we’re thrilled to present an exceptional lineup of keynote speakers who are leading the industry. Dive into 150 interactive sessions covering a diverse range of topics, many of which are led by Microsoft’s senior thought leaders and product experts.

On day one of the conference, you’ll gain valuable insights from Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Business and Industry Copilot, as he discusses how generative AI and Copilot are transforming software engineering. Jeff Teper, President of Microsoft Collaborative Apps and Platforms, will explore the future of collaboration and productivity. Kim Manis, Vice President of Product for Microsoft Fabric and Power BI, will highlight the latest advancements in data analytics and visualization.

Participate in 20 hands-on technical workshops designed to provide practical knowledge that’s immediately applicable to your work. These workshops cater to all skill levels, from beginner to advanced.

Learn about the newest features and capabilities of Microsoft Power Automate from Sangya Singh, Vice President, Power Platform Intelligent Automations. Discover how Microsoft Dataverse drives data-driven decision-making with insights from Nirav Shah, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dataverse. Ryan Cunningham, Vice President, Power Platform Intelligent Applications, will showcase the transformative potential of Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Pages. Kim Manis will provide comprehensive coverage of Microsoft Power BI. Ilya Grebnov, Vice President and Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Business and Industry Copilot, will discuss the architectural innovations behind Microsoft Power Platform, and Omar Aftab, Vice President, Conversational AI, will introduce the latest in Microsoft Copilot Studio. These sessions are crafted to equip you with the knowledge and skills to stay ahead of the curve, whether you’re looking to deepen your expertise or explore new areas.

PPCC 2024 will also feature an array of breakout sessions and other engaging activities hosted by Microsoft product teams, the Microsoft Power Customer Advisory Team (CAT), Power BI CAT, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), super users, and experts from around the globe.

Join the fun at the Power Platform Community Conference

The Power Platform Community Conference is not just an event; it’s an experience that brings together a diverse group of individuals who are passionate about digital transformation. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from some of the best in the industry, network with like-minded individuals, and gain practical knowledge that can be applied to their work.

This conference is a must-attend event for anyone who is passionate about digital transformation and wants to stay ahead of the curve. With a packed agenda, a stellar lineup of speakers, and a vibrant community of attendees, this year’s conference promises to be an unforgettable experience. So, don’t miss out—register now and join us in Las Vegas for the 2024 Power Platform Community Conference.

Register for the event and make your MGM Grand Hotel reservation today.

Power Platform conference

Join like-minded tech peers who share enthusiasm for digital transformation.

Register for the event

The post Showcasing AI innovation at the third annual Power Platform Community Conference appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

And it couldn’t come at a better time, because technology has a talent problem. There’s just not enough high-tech talent in the pipeline to help organizations develop and maintain the complex software solutions they need to stay competitive.¹

Microsoft Power Platform

Embrace the benefits of AI and low-code with Microsoft Power Platform.

Learn how

And the work is indeed complex. Developers need to solve challenges around user interface design, storage requirements, security, compliance, and scalability in their work, and finding the right talent to meet challenges is difficult.

The problem is compounded with the amount of work that needs to get done. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) have to manage growing app backlogs and pushed-back schedules for the development of the apps they know they need, and a general lack of resources for talent and software makes the outlook for new custom apps unclear. 

With more development work to be done than there are developers to do it, many CIOs and CTOs are looking to AI and low-code solutions to transform their application development approach and strategy.

AI and low-code are helping in three ways:

1. Increasing developer productivity
2. Automating repetitive tasks
3. Boosting the skills and abilities of non-developers who can now make meaningful contributions to development

Let’s look at those benefits in detail. 

Increasing developer productivity while remaining compliant and secure

The first thing that low-code can do for a team of developers is enable it to work more quickly with no tradeoff in attention to compliance and security.

As described in a recent white paper on generative AI disruption in software from McKinsey, putting AI and low-code into the hands of developers can improve productivity by as much as 45%, something which can lower code development costs considerably.

At Microsoft, we’ve observed the effectiveness ourselves. In a review of the first 126,000 organizations using Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps, developers say using Copilot makes them faster (80%) and more satisfied with their work (65%). What’s more, the developers using Copilot have a 60% higher success rate than the developers who don’t.

But it’s not all about speed. Low-code solutions don’t just accelerate development—they ensure support of standards for security and compliance, so all the newfound speed doesn’t compromise safety. And low-code makes developers into better developers, too. It amplifies existing talent and experience to help developers identify roadblocks, find solutions, and dream up new innovations.

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform website to learn more.

Automating repetitive coding tasks   

AI-powered development tools excel at automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks that drain the fun out of development work. A routine chore like debugging code can make a developer do the same find-and-fix tasks repeatedly. And development work is filled with necessary but repetitive tasks.

With AI and low-code, writing boilerplate code, debugging, conducting routine software maintenance, performing code reviews, and managing deployments can be done by an AI assistant, allowing the developer to work on the interesting, creative challenges that drive business impact.

We’ve seen this ourselves at Microsoft. In a recent survey—quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness—96% of respondents say AI increases their speed with repetitive tasks. They also say using AI makes them happier. Between 60% and75% of surveyed users said using the tool makes them feel less frustrated when coding and free to focus on more satisfying work.

Boosting the skills and abilities of non-developers

With AI and low-code, organizations can bring non-developers into the development process so they can help create apps and innovate alongside their developer colleagues. Democratizing development enhances an organization’s agility and flexibility.

Business users won’t need extensive coding expertise because AI and low-code let them contribute through natural language inputs, like “create a sales report dashboard” or “automate customer follow-up emails”. Additionally, business users can learn to build their applications faster than ever with the ability to query in-product assistants that can help them build in real time.

By equipping citizen developers with intuitive, low-code tools, they can autonomously create applications that address immediate business needs, such as a mobile app for onsite invoice submissions. This not only reduces the burden of manual tasks but also ensures more accurate data collection and enhances the efficiency of frontline workers. Meanwhile, professional developers can dedicate their expertise to more complex, strategic projects that propel the organization forward. This symbiotic relationship between low-code and traditional development practices fosters an environment where technical agility and innovation thrive, ultimately propelling the organization’s technical velocity to new heights.

When the AI and low-code development tools that an organization uses allow for simplified cross-platform integration as Microsoft Power Platform does, they can break down barriers and ensure business users receive the right oversight and collaborative inputs from colleagues’ developer and IT teams.

Next steps for CIOs and CTOs

If you want to fully embrace the benefits of AI and low-code by incorporating a solution into your tech stack at scale, consider a strategic plan that addresses the following:

• Identify high-impact use cases to begin testing. Determine what type of solutions would benefit your organization most: Do you need web or mobile apps for employees or customers? A website with customizable content management, styling, and data access requirements? Or perhaps custom AI agents that handle specific tasks? Once you’ve identified the best pilot project, implement the solution to deliver quick wins and demonstrate the value of AI and low-code. Document successes and share them to build momentum within your organization.

• Manage risks by ensuring data security and regulatory compliance. It’s important to choose an enterprise solution like Microsoft Power Platform that includes governance, management, and monitoring capabilities. With your solution in place, you can then establish a governance framework to maintain control, such as setting up regular review meetings to ensure compliance and having your IT department or risk management team conduct periodic risk assessments.

• Build a low-code center of excellence. With governance in place and some development wins under your belt, think about upskilling your workforce. Offer tailored programs to upskill both developers and non-developers, promoting continuous learning and cross-functional collaboration, such as hosting workshops and interactive training sessions, where your low-code users and developers can work together. The Microsoft Power Platform Adoption website has workbooks, best practices, and training materials to support organizations with this endeavor.

By following these steps, you can effectively integrate AI and low-code solutions like Microsoft Power Platform, bridging the development gap and driving innovation in your organization.

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform website to learn more.

Source:

¹ Forbes, Research: quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness, March 6, 2023

The post Fast track development with AI and low-code appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Customers are already achieving innovation and efficiency with Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot. Cineplex, a prominent media and entertainment company in Canada, has revolutionized its operations by leveraging Microsoft Power Platform products to drive automation across various departments, from finance to guest services, saving the company over 30,000 hours annually.   

Create custom copilots with new agent capabilities with Microsoft Copilot Studio

With Microsoft Copilot Studio, we’re introducing new agent capabilities that enable copilots to orchestrate tasks and functions. Developers provide their copilot with a defined task, equip it with the necessary knowledge and actions, and then Copilot Studio orchestrates dynamic workflows and acts behind the scenes to seamlessly integrate them to automate the task. These capabilities in Copilot Studio are available for customers in limited private preview. It’s early days, and we look forward to learning alongside our customers before wider availability later this year.  

Consider the customer success function, which involves many repetitive tasks. A copilot can help new customers navigate through an onboarding experience, offer training and relevant resource guides, seek feedback that can shape future enhancements, and respond promptly when a customer flags a concern.

These new capabilities allow you to delegate authority to your copilot to automate long-running business processes, reason over actions and user input, leverage memory, learn based on user feedback, record exception requests, and ask for help when it encounters unfamiliar situations. Now, your copilot can recall past conversations to add relevant context and deliver new levels of personalization to experiences that revolutionize how your work gets done. And your copilot follows tight guardrails so you always stay in control.

Whether you’re building using natural language, starting from a template, or using topics to define and control copilot responses, these advancements—together with our commitment to security and responsible AI—mean that Copilot Studio provides an optimal approach for you to build and manage your own custom copilots. 

New Copilot connectors make it easy for developers to integrate and innovate

In addition, Copilot Studio is introducing Copilot connectors to simplify how developers connect their business and collaboration data to their copilots. Copilot connectors include more than 1,400 Microsoft Power Platform connectors, Microsoft Graph connectors, and Power Query connectors—with Microsoft Fabric integrations coming soon. This makes it possible for copilots to use various data sources, including public websites, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Dataverse tables, Microsoft Fabric OneLake, and Microsoft Graph, as well as leading third-party apps. IT teams will soon be able to curate and manage available Copilot connectors to ensure their developers are using a trusted catalog.

New capabilities coming soon to Copilot Studio will also allow developers to publish their copilots as Copilot extensions. These extensions expand the actions that Microsoft Copilot can take on the user’s behalf, customize grounding knowledge with relevant business data, and enable hand-off to other copilots.

Introducing AI flows in Power Automate

We’re also bringing enhancements to Power Automate by delivering new AI-powered automation tools. With AI flows, automation shifts from rules-based to AI-based automation that is adaptive and outcome-based. And with the new AI recorder, desktop flows are getting smarter and more intuitive too. Just show and tell—with your voice—and AI recorder will automate for you.  

Today in Power Automate, you can rapidly and easily build cloud and desktop flows. With AI flows, a new type of workflow, available in an early access program, provides an entirely new approach to process automation that uses generative AI to streamline operations and reduce costs. Now, Power Automate can interpret process objectives, generate automation plans, autonomously select actions, and validate outcomes—all while allowing for easy adjustments. Developers can set guardrails to control the boundaries of autonomy for the AI flow, ensuring safe execution. AI flows make it easier to create more resilient and more capable automations.

AI recorder allows developers to develop robotic process automations (RPA) through screen sharing and voice coaching, leveraging multi-modal understanding for comprehensive training. Using AI, the Power Automate recorder captures the user’s desktop process through voice and video, completing UI automation in minutes, instead of days. This combination of visual and voice allows AI recorder to more easily adapt to changes. For example, it can promptly detect UI changes in app interfaces and then any necessary edits can be made using natural language with Copilot. This feature is available in an early access program.

Microsoft Power Platform invests in new capabilities for professional developers

As AI and Copilot dramatically shift how apps are developed, the developer skills become even more critical. From debugging, to security, to troubleshooting, developers will play an even more pivotal part in providing technical expertise and oversight. This will be particularly important as the sheer number of solutions and apps being built skyrockets with Copilot.

Microsoft Power Apps already empowers professional developers to create modern enterprise applications at scale with ease and efficiency―supporting developers to do their best work using a combination of Copilot, code, and low-code. We’re excited to share new enhancements, demonstrating our investment to make sure that Power Apps continues to be a critical tool in any ProDev’s toolkit.

With native Git integration, developers can synchronize their Power Apps environment with Git repositories. And unlike previous application lifecycle management (ALM) tools, Git integration and pipelines in Microsoft Power Platform are readily available and drive consistency in ALM processes and governance across projects. Additionally, the ability to work directly with code in Microsoft Power Apps Studio further increases effectiveness. From within Power Apps Studio, developers can now view and use source code in a readable YAML format, create templates for screens, reuse code, and store files in a code repository. This all contributes to a more efficient app-development process. 

Experience the future of automation and innovation today

As technology advances at a swift pace, the combination of generative AI and low-code is fundamentally changing how developers build solutions. The growing shift from coding to developing with natural language promises to be as transformative as the impact of cloud platforms and open-source software. In this AI era, low-code technology is essential for your developer toolchain and enables you to easily build generative AI-powered applications and copilots.

Try Copilot Studio and Power Automate to start building solutions that drive efficiency and productivity in your organization today. The Power Apps Developer Plan unleashes your imagination to create powerful apps that transform the way you work. Don’t wait―join the revolution and start building with low-code and AI today.

Lastly, we want to invite you to our community conferences this year:

• The European Power Platform Conference (EPPC) will take place in Brussels, Belgium, June 11 through 13, 2024 at SQUARE Brussels Meeting Centre. Register here.
• The Power Platform Community Conference (PPCC) will take place in Las Vegas, United States, September 18 through 20, 2024 at MGM Grand. Register here.

Microsoft Copilot

Copilot already works alongside you; now your copilot will also be able to work for you.

Try a free version

Check out these blogs and sessions at Build

• Blog post: The future of conversational AI with Copilot Studio: Now build copilots that can act like agents 
• Blog post: Revolutionize the way you work with automation and AI 
• Blog post: Power Apps is making it easier for developers to build with Copilot and each other
• Blog post: Power Pages: The new standard in secure, AI-driven web development  
• Blog post: Unlock new levels of productivity with Microsoft Dataverse and Microsoft Copilot Studio  
• Featured breakout: Shaping next-gen development: the future of Copilot in Power Platform 
• Breakout: What’s new with Microsoft Copilot Studio 
• Breakout: Building the apps of the future today with Power Platform and Copilot 
• Breakout: Revolutionize the way you work with automation and AI 
• Breakout: Reimagine Enterprise Website building with Low Code using Power Pages 
• Breakout: Activate enterprise data in AI-enabled business applications   
• Podcast: Visit the WorkLab Podcast to hear Charles Lamanna talk about no-code tools and how business leaders can use them to transform their organization.

The post New ways of development with copilots and Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

This morning’s Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, available to view on-demand, includes highlights and demonstrations of features from the release wave, as well as a firsthand look at how organizations like Lenovo, Sonepar, Ford, Omnicom Group, and G&J Pepsi are using these capabilities in transformative ways.  

Extend Microsoft 365 with role-specific Copilot capabilities

The central theme across this release wave is how, across the business and productivity applications organizations depend on, Copilot is helping to better empower employees, improve business processes, and engage customers. In fact, 68% of surveyed Copilot users told us that it helps them jumpstart their creative process, and 70% said Copilot made them more productive so that they could do their job faster and easier.¹

Since each role is unique, we have extended Copilot for Microsoft 365 even further to tailor Copilot experiences for specific business functions. This includes Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Microsoft Copilot for Service and the recently announced Microsoft Copilot for Finance—all integrated with the apps and data you use every day so that you can spend less time searching for data and more time engaging with customers and driving a strategic agenda for your organization.

Underpinning these Copilot extensions is Microsoft Copilot Studio, which makes it easy to customize and build your own customer and internal-facing copilots using your data and workflows. We are excited to dive deeper into Copilot this release wave and help you use it to transform your business.  

Business Applications Launch Event

Tune into demos of new capabilities, on demand.

Watch here

Transforming customer and field service with generative AI 

Release wave 1 introduces new Copilot capabilities to help customer service agents and frontline workers boost efficiency, reduce training costs, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. 

New Copilot capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Copilot for Service—which infuses generative AI into your existing contact center and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions—include Copilot-drafted knowledge articles to streamline the knowledge creation process, as well as proactive Copilot responses for conversations with customers. 

At the launch event, we shared how Lenovo is integrating Dynamics 365 Customer Service, third-party solutions, and custom bots to scale its innovative service delivery solution, Premier Support Suite for PC devices. Thousands of agents can now provide omnichannel support to customers in 200 regions and in more than 40 languages globally.   

We also spotlight how G&J Pepsi, the largest family-owned and operated Pepsi franchise bottler in the U.S., has reduced operating costs by 6.6% and increased revenue by 8% with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Microsoft Power Platform. They expect Copilot to further streamline work order management and enhance their best-in-class service by giving the field service teams access to a complete picture of their accounts in real time.   

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Copilot for Service, and Dynamics 365 Field Service.  

The future of enterprise resource planning (ERP)

ERP is going through a once-in-a-generation transformation. For decades, employees across the globe have manually completed a significant amount of ERP processes daily to keep their companies running. Microsoft is pioneering a new vision for ERP—a world where ERP solutions powered by AI operate more independently, continually adjusting to evolving circumstances, involving users when necessary, and opening new possibilities for businesses.  

At the launch event, we spotlighted how Omnicom Group, a global leader in marketing communications, envisions leveraging Dynamics 365 for a new, autonomous ERP model that will help it to accelerate growth, become more efficient, and power its ability to innovate. They can use the new Copilot to optimize their strategic decision-making and transform their operational processes, such as prompting Copilot to identify opportunities for growth expansion and gauge the performance of initiatives.  

We also introduced new Copilot capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central that help small and medium businesses to automate processes and complete tasks faster. A new Copilot chat pane allows users to quickly find and go to data, reveal insights, and get help with tasks. Users can prompt Copilot to create sales lines, match e-invoices with purchase orders, answer questions about data analyses, help with repetitive tasks, and more.  

Other updates include sustainability tracking, the ability to connect Business Central with Shopify B2B (business-to-business), and developer tools for Copilot.  

Explore the release plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Microsoft Copilot for Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Business Central.  

Accelerate development with Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform is the rapid modernization platform of choice of hundreds of thousands of organizations, providing AI-first, low-code tools to build enterprise-wide solutions and automations. Copilot is seamlessly integrated across Microsoft Power Platform, empowering you to create applications, automations, and analytics through simple, natural language and conversational interactions.  

At the launch event, we demonstrate how Ford is leveraging Copilot to produce connected services to enhance the driving experience. Like Ford, organizations can take advantage of new Copilot capabilities in this release wave to transform workflows. Microsoft Power Automate introduces new ways to create cloud flows, desktop flows and process mining using natural language prompts. Microsoft Power Apps accelerates app development with enhanced user reasoning and data insights in custom apps. Microsoft Copilot Studio enables organizations to build custom copilots, with new ways to build custom prompts and generative actions, along with access to OpenAI’s custom GPTs and AI Builder models for extended scenarios.   

Explore the release plans for Power Apps, Microsoft Power Pages, Power Automate, Microsoft Power BI, and Copilot Studio.  

Deliver more personalized customer experiences  

Buyers expect businesses to cater to their unique set of needs. To do so, marketing and sales teams need a unified understanding of the customer and the ability to orchestrate experiences across marketing, sales, and service.  

Sonepar is leveraging Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to become the first global B2B electrical distributor to provide a fully digitized and synchronized omnichannel experience to every customer. With Copilot alongside sellers, Sonepar can personalize marketing content, improve the quality of leads, and enhance every engagement with customers.  

New Copilot capabilities in release wave 1 provide recommendations, summarize data, retrieve information, and perform actions in context and within the flow of work—so they can stay productive and focus time on engaging customers.  

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Copilot for Sales, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. 

Watch the virtual Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event  

We invite you to tune into the launch event on-demand for more details and demos of new capabilities across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. In addition, you can explore several special topic presentations covering the evolution of generative AI, including small language models and AI experiences to help transform strategic, cross-domain business problems.  

Be sure to read the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform and keep track of what’s new and upcoming, as well as create a personalized release plan in the release planner.  

Sources:

¹ Microsoft Work Trend Index Special Report: What Can Copilot’s Earliest Users Teach Us About Generative AI at Work? (microsoft.com) 

The post 2024 release wave 1 kicks off with hundreds of AI-powered capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

AI and Microsoft Copilot empower non-coders and coders alike

AI is still unfolding its full potential for the world, but its transformational effect on how businesses work is already evident. Copilot is constantly becoming more helpful within the low-code ecosystem of Microsoft Power Platform—new features are being released every month and with Microsoft Build coming up this May, we will be sharing the next wave of Copilot innovation.

We’re thrilled to see the excitement in the community. At the Microsoft Power Platform Conference, we spoke with attendees and gathered their thoughts on how Copilot empowers them as developers, makers, and end-users to elevate their personal work and business operations. Whether it’s facilitating data management and process optimization, streamlining app creation, or achieving superior business outcomes, Copilot is revolutionizing their work and enhancing their overall effectiveness.

Enabling innovation starts with strong security and governance

Microsoft is built on trust. With the introduction of generative AI technology and Copilot to Microsoft Power Platform products, we affirm our dedication to safeguarding data and processes within Microsoft. Our unwavering commitment to data security, privacy, and responsible AI principles inform every facet of our development journey. Customers can confidently trust that their data remains theirs, protected by robust measures at every turn.

Who better understands the crucial role of security and governance within Microsoft Power Platform than those leading its practices within their organizations and actively building apps and automations on our comprehensive low-code platform? While our engineers responsible for building Microsoft Power Platform may possess deeper technical insights, let’s first hear from people in business who are using Microsoft Power Platform: Nishant Kumar (S&P Global), Blake Jones (Chevron), Farzeen Daruwala (Coca Cola Bottling Canada), Mohammed Alkuhlani (Baker Hughes) and Mary Myers (WorldMax). They will share their perspectives on why they trust and feel confident in building with Microsoft Power Platform in the video below.

Traditional code developers and other makers alike find speed, ease, and scale with Microsoft Power Platform

Is this going to be simple enough? Will it scale? And how fast can we get to seeing the real value?

These questions are critical whenever you’re thinking of a new project—whether it’s a brand-new scope or modernization of an existing solution.

Ahmed Salih, Senior Power Platform Solution Architect at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Microsoft MVP shared how easy it was to bring Microsoft Power Platform, and especially Microsoft Dataverse, to his organization with so much security and accessibility right out of the box.

“We have people who are nurses, accountants, students, teachers who actually can go there and create security models in Dataverse. So, as a pro developer, imagine you come there, how efficient you can be.”

Ahmed Salih, Senior Power Platform Solution Architect at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Microsoft MVP

Hear what Ahmed had to say in the video below.

Yes, it’s true that Microsoft Power Platform does see remarkable success with makers who don’t come from a traditional coding background because it’s simpler for them to start building solutions with the visual tools, Microsoft Power Fx language, and the useful features in Microsoft Power Platform that help accelerate the work. But traditional developers get the same advantages, combined with their deep experience and know-how—resulting in an even more powerful combination than “just” a code-first approach can provide.

Discover firsthand accounts from individuals beyond Microsoft MVPs about the simplicity and value they’ve experienced when using Microsoft Power Platform.

We interviewed Michael McCullough (Amtrak) with and Mark Stocks (JE Dunn Construction), and they both attest to the ease of establishing and scaling Microsoft Power Platform practice.

“We went from two apps six years ago to 6,238 apps as of this year. We went from two developers six years ago to 538 developers as of last month.”

Michael McCullough (Amtrak)

In the video below, learn more from them as they talk about their transformation and slashing development time from months to mere days and enabled the creation of intricate business applications.

Microsoft Power Platform

We’d love to hear your insights and experience with Microsoft Power Platform.

Share your story

The excitement and energy around Copilot, governance, security, and Dataverse is steadily increasing.

In Q3 earnings we shared that more than 230,000 organizations have used AI capabilities in Microsoft Power Platform, which was a strong 80% increase over the previous quarter.¹ Our product teams are dedicated to advancing governance and security for people and organizations using Microsoft Power Platform. Enabling fast and scalable innovation is at the core of the Microsoft Power Platform offering—whether it’s building apps, automating processes, designing and deploying pages, or customizing and creating copilots.

We can’t wait for the next event so we can share new exciting news with our community. If you’re thinking about joining us for Microsoft Build this May, you can register here.

¹ Microsoft Fiscal Year 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call, January 30, 2024

The post The Microsoft Power Platform community is buzzing about Microsoft Copilot, governance, and scale appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform is our solution to help you create a powerful, agile, and secure data and AI foundation, made simple. Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform is a suite of technologies with Microsoft Fabric at its heart that helps organizations harness the full power of their data. By natively integrating products across four workloads—AI, analytics, database, and security—organizations no longer have to bear the cost and burden of stitching together a complex set of disconnected services from multiple vendors themselves. Instead, focusing on making bold, real-time decisions and empowering teams to create and innovate without limits. Learn more about the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform and how Microsoft Fabric fits in by reading Jessica Hawk’s blog “The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform: unleash your data to accelerate transformation.”

Many of our customers are already taking advantage of our focus on integration to accelerate their time to insight and empower more people to make data-backed decisions. For example, One NZ, one of the largest mobile carriers in New Zealand, wanted to provide nearly 1,000 users with a real-time, tailored view of customer data to provide more tailored and timely customer service. But as Strathan Campbell, Channel Environment Technology Lead at One NZ explains, “Our increasing data volumes started leading to delayed refresh rates in what should have been real-time Power BI dashboards.” They turned to Microsoft Fabric and in particular, Fabric’s real-time analytics capabilities to provide a seamless and easy-to-manage solution.

“What drew us to [Fabric] was that it was an all-in-one solution. Since we didn’t need to buy new components and were already embedded with Power BI, putting the architecture and security in place was quick and easy. Most dashboards are updated every 10 seconds now, which is six times faster than before.”

—Steven Easton, BI Channels Specialist at One NZ

Learn more about One NZ’s journey.

Microsoft Fabric

Bring your data into the era of AI

Try today

Join the thriving Microsoft Fabric community 

It’s been fantastic meeting so many of our most active community members at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference this week. We launched Microsoft Fabric 10 months ago at Microsoft Build—a reimagining of analytics with a single, SaaS platform that could tackle every step of the analytics process, all on a multi-cloud data lake foundation. We were thrilled by the excitement across the millions of active Power BI, Data Factory, and Synapse community members who came together to answer thousands of questions, post ideas, join user groups, and help each other along their data journeys. Your feedback has helped us create and refine so much of what makes Microsoft Fabric great. Thank you all for your ideas and constant support. 

We have created new resources to help you ramp up on Microsoft Fabric and advance your career. First, visit the new Fabric Career Hub, to access a comprehensive learning journey with free on-demand and live training, discounts on certification exams, career insights from community experts, and role guidance to understand how Fabric can open potential opportunities. You can also join the vibrant Fabric Community today and engage with a huge community of data professionals to get help when you’re stuck, learn from peers, showcase your work, and even suggest product improvements. 

We’ve also published an enhanced portfolio of Microsoft Credentials, including the new “Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate” certification, along with several new Microsoft Applied Skills covering scenarios using Microsoft Fabric, like implementing lakehouses, data warehouses, real-time analytics and data science solutions—with more coming out over the next few months. Check them all out on the Microsoft Credentials homepage.

New capabilities coming to Microsoft Fabric 

We have been working tirelessly over the past year to create the richest and most intuitive analytics platform on the market. We are thrilled to share the latest in a long line of innovation that is helping us fulfill the four core promises of Fabric:

1. Fabric is a complete platform
2. Fabric is lake-centric and open
3. Fabric can empower every business user
4. Fabric is AI powered

Fabric is a complete platform

Our first promise is that Fabric is a complete analytics platform with every tool your data scientists, data engineers, data warehousing professionals, analysts, and business users need to unlock value from data in a single unified SaaS platform. It also has the end-to-end, industry-leading security, governance, and data management capabilities needed to protect and manage your data. Let‘s take a look at the latest enhancements to the Fabric platform: 

Over the past few months, we have made significant updates to our platform to help you tackle projects of any scale and complexity. First, we are transforming Microsoft Fabric’s CI/CD experience. This transformation includes support for data pipelines and data warehouses in Fabric Git integration and deployment pipelines. Spark job definition and Spark environment will become available in Git integration. We are also giving you the ability to easily branch out a workspace integrated into Git with just a couple of clicks to help you reduce the time to code. Additionally, because many organizations already have robust CI/CD processes established in tools such as Azure DevOps, we will also support both Fabric Git integration APIs as well as Fabric deployment pipelines APIs, enabling you to integrate Fabric into these familiar CI/CD tools. All of these updates will be launched in a preview experience in early April.

Second, we are significantly updating our dataflows and data pipeline experience in Fabric to help customers more quickly ingest and transform their data. With Fast Copy in Dataflows Gen2, you can ingest a large amount of data using the same data movement backend as the “copy” activity in data pipelines. For data pipelines, you can now access on-premises data using the on-premises Data Gateway—the same gateway used with dataflows. We are also excited to add a new activity, semantic model refresh, that enables you to use Data Factory to orchestrate the refresh of semantic models in Microsoft Fabric. Finally, we are doubling the number of activities supported in a data pipeline from forty to eighty. All of these updates are now in preview and you can try them today. 

We have also listened to your feedback over the past few months and added some highly requested features to make working in Fabric even easier. We’ve released the ability to create folders in your workspaces, now in preview, and we are announcing the ability to create multiple apps in the same workspace, coming soon. We are also excited to share a feature coming soon that will give you the ability to add tags to Fabric items and manage them for enhanced compliance, discoverability, and reuse. Finally, we want to show you a sneak peek of a new feature we are bringing to Microsoft Fabric called task flows. Task flows can help you visualize a data project from end-to-end: 

Security in Microsoft Fabric 

With all your data flowing into the same platform, you need to be certain that data is secure at every step of the analytics journey. With that in mind, we have released a number of enterprise security features that can better protect your data. We recently announced the preview of Azure Private Link support for Microsoft Fabric which can provide secure access to your sensitive data in Microsoft Fabric by providing network isolation and applying required controls on your inbound network traffic. We also announced the preview of Trusted Workspace Access and Managed Private Endpoints which allow secure connections from Microsoft Fabric to data sources that are behind a firewall or not accessible from the public internet. Similarly, we released VNET data gateway into general availability in February which lets you connect your Azure and other data services to Microsoft Fabric and the Power Platform while ensuring no traffic is exposed to a public endpoint. We are thrilled to announce the expansion of these VNET data gateway to include on-premise data behind a VNET—now generally available.

We are also announcing deeper integration with Microsoft Purview’s industry-leading data security and compliance offerings to help you seamlessly secure data across your data estate. First, we are excited to announce that security admins will soon be able to define Purview Information Protection policies in Microsoft Fabric to automatically enforce access permissions to sensitive information in Fabric. Also coming soon is the extension of Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies to Fabric, enabling security teams to automatically identify the upload of sensitive information to Fabric and trigger automatic risk remediation actions. The DLP policies will initially work with Fabric Lakehouses with support for other Fabric workloads to follow. Finally, we are thrilled to announce the upcoming integration with Purview Insider Risk Management which will help you detect, investigate, and act on malicious and inadvertent data oversharing activities in your organization. Learn more about all of these upcoming integrations in the latest Microsoft Purview blog.

Governing data in Microsoft Fabric

With the massive growth in the volume of data, organizations are increasingly moving towards federated governance models where data is governed and managed according to the line of business needs. That is why, when we launched Fabric, we included the ability to create domains which allow tenant admins to delegate control to the domain level, enabling each business department to define its own rules and restrictions according to its specific business need. We have listened to your requests and have added, in preview, the ability for organizations to create subdomains to further refine the way your Fabric data estate is structured. Moreover, we are making it easier to create and manage domains with the ability to set default domains for security groups, the ability to use public admin APIs, and more. Learn more here.

To complement and extend the built-in data governance capability within Microsoft Fabric, we also natively integrate with the Microsoft Purview Data Governance solution. Today, Microsoft is announcing a reimagined data governance experience that offers sophisticated yet simple business-friendly interaction for your multi-cloud, multi-source data estate governance practice. Informed by Microsoft’s own internal journey, this reimagined experience is purpose-built for federated data governance that offers efficient data curation, data quality, and data management backed by actionable insights that help you activate and nurture your governance practice. Microsoft Fabric’s built-in governance, like item inventory, data lineage and metadata are reflected in Purview to accelerate your multi-cloud data estate governance practice.  Learn more about the new Microsoft Purview experience by reading the latest blog.  

Fabric is lake-centric and open

Our second promise was to design Fabric to be lake-centric and open to help you establish a trusted data foundation for your entire data estate. With OneLake, you can connect data from anywhere into a single, multi-cloud data lake for the entire organization, and work from the same copy of data across analytics engines. Two key features in OneLake, Shortcuts, and Mirroring, simplify how you bring data into OneLake.  

Shortcuts enable your data teams to virtualize data in OneLake without moving or duplicating the data. We are thrilled to release the preview of shortcuts to the Google Cloud Platform. We are also announcing the ability to create shortcuts to cloud-based S3 compatible data sources, in preview, and on-premise S3 compatible data sources, coming soon. These sources include Cloudflare, Qumulo, MinIO, Dell ECS, and many more.

Last November, we shared a new, zero-ETL way of accessing and ingesting data seamlessly in near-real time from any database or data warehouse into the Data Warehousing experience in Fabric called Mirroring. We are thrilled to announce that Mirroring is now in preview, enabling Azure Cosmos Database, Azure SQL Database, and other database customers to mirror their data in OneLake and unlock all the capabilities of Fabric Data Warehouse, Direct Lake mode, notebooks, and much more. We are also offering a free terabyte of Mirroring storage for replicas for every capacity unit (CU) you have purchased and provisioned. For example, if you purchase F64, you will get sixty-four free terabytes worth of storage for your mirrored replicas. Learn more about these announcements by reading this blog. 

Finally, we are introducing an external data-sharing experience for Microsoft Fabric data and artifacts, helping make collaboration easier and more fruitful across organizations. Fabric external data sharing, coming soon, enables you to share data and assets with external organizations such as business partners, customers, and vendors in an easy, quick, and secure manner. Because this experience is built on top of OneLake’s shortcut capabilities, you can share data in place from OneLake storage locations without copying the data. External users can access it in their Fabric tenant, combine it with their data, and work with it across any Fabric experience and engine.

Fabric can empower every business user

The third promise we made was to empower every business user with approachable tools in Fabric to help turn data and insights into better decisions and more innovation. Power BI has been on the leading edge of helping every user access, explore, and take advantage of data with an intuitive interface and deep integration into the apps people use every day.

As part of our commitment to empowering every user, we are adding enhancements to the core Power BI visuals including more layout options for the matrix visual, additional formatting options for all cartesian charts, and new visual types like the button slicer and the new 100% stacked line area chart.

We are also introducing a metrics layer, in Fabric, coming soon, which allows organizations to create standardized business metrics, that are rooted in measures and are discoverable and intended for reuse. Trusted creators can select Power BI measures to promote to metrics and even, include descriptions, dimensions, and other metadata to help users better understand how they should be applied and interpreted. When looking through the metrics, users can preview and explore the simplified semantic model in a simple UI before using it in their solution. These metrics can not only be used in reports, scorecards, and Power BI solutions but also in other artifacts across Fabric, such as data science notebooks. 

We are also making it easier to connect to your data no matter where you are working. Later in the year, we will release the ability to live edit Direct Lake semantic models in the Fabric service right from Power BI Desktop, so you can work with data directly from OneLake. We are also enabling you to connect to over a hundred data sources and create paginated reports right from the Power BI Report Builder, now in preview. Also in preview is the new ability to create Power BI reports in the Fabric web service by simply connecting to your Excel and CSV files with relationship detection enabled. And to save you time when you are building reports, we have created new visuals for calculations we are introducing a new way for you to create and edit a custom date table without writing any Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) formulas, both in preview. Finally, you can generate mobile-optimized layouts for any report page, in preview, to help everyone view insights even on the go.

Fabric is AI-powered

Our fourth and final promise was to infuse generative AI capabilities into every layer of Fabric to help data teams accelerate their projects and focus on higher-value activities. With Copilot in Fabric, we are realizing that promise. The experiences currently in preview are already helping professionals go from raw data to insights in minutes. 

I am excited to share two important updates coming to Copilot in Fabric. In November, we announced a new feature called Explore that can help users learn more about their semantic model without building a report. We also announced another new feature called the DAX query view that helps you analyze and build your semantic model by running DAX queries. I’m excited to share we are making both of these capabilities even more powerful with Copilot. In Explore, we’ve added a new “Data overview” button which provides a summary, powered by Copilot, of the semantic model to help users get started. This feature will be released in preview in early April and will roll out to regions gradually. We are also adding the ability for Copilot to help you write and explain DAX queries in the DAX query view—now in preview.

Finally, we wanted to share a sneak peek of a new generative AI feature in Fabric that will enable custom Q&A experiences for your data. You can simply select the data source in Fabric you want to explore and immediately start asking questions about your data—even without any configuration. When answering questions, the generative AI experience will show the query it generated to find the answer and you can enhance the Q&A experience by adding more tables, setting additional context, and configuring settings. Data professionals can use this experience to learn more about their data or it could even be embedded into apps for business users to query.

Join us at Microsoft Build 

These announcements represent just the start of the innovation we are bringing to the Microsoft Fabric platform.

Join us at Microsoft Build from May 21^st-23^rd, 2024 either in person in Seattle, Washington, or online. You will hear and see our biggest announcements across the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform and the rest of Microsoft.

Explore additional resources for Microsoft Fabric 

If you want to learn more about Microsoft Fabric, consider: 

• Sign up for the Microsoft Fabric free trial.
• Visit the Microsoft Fabric website. 
• Join the Fabric community.  
• Read the Microsoft Fabric March 2024 Update blog and other in-depth, technical blogs on the Microsoft Fabric Updates Blog. 
• Explore the Fabric technical documentation. 
• Learn more about Azure Innovate, our new offering to help you adopt AI. 
• Join the Fabric Partner Community on Teams to stay engaged with the Fabric partner and product teams and attend weekly Fabric Engineering Connection calls every Wednesday at 8 am PDT.  
• Check out the Fabric featured partners that have recent experience with deploying customer solutions on Fabric.

The post Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Join us on Wednesday, April 10, 2024

See what’s new at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Register now

Redefine what’s possible with AI 

Join Microsoft product leaders and engineers on April 10, 2024, for an in-depth look at the latest AI features and capabilities in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. You’ll learn how advances in AI and Microsoft Copilot can help you connect teams, processes, and data, and respond to changing business needs with greater agility—and see how organizations across several industries already take advantage of the newest AI features to streamline business processes and accelerate low-code development.  

Register now to see key presentations from Microsoft leaders, including:  

• Business Applications Launch Event—2024 release wave 1. Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Platforms, will provide opening remarks and shed light on the strategy and vision behind new Copilot and core platform capabilities in 2024 release wave 1. 

• Amplifying contact centers and field service operations with AI. Jeff Comstock, Corporate Vice President, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, will share how Copilot is transforming the customer service landscape, boosting efficiency, reducing training costs, and ultimately delivering exceptional experiences for agents, frontline workers, and customers.  

• Streamline sales and marketing with Copilot. Lori Lamkin, Corporate Vice President, Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing, will discuss how sellers can close more deals by optimizing sales and marketing strategies and increasing productivity. 

That’s just a small sample of what we’ve got planned. You’ll also hear directly from other Microsoft leaders about their vision for AI, customer service, and operations, and get timely tips on how to use these new technologies to take on your business’ toughest challenges. If you have questions about new AI features, how Copilot experiences work, or what’s new in low-code tools, take advantage of the live Q&A chat with Microsoft experts throughout the event. 

Explore new AI features and capabilities for Dynamics 365 

We’re excited to share the latest AI features for Dynamics 365 spanning across end-to-end customer experiences, sales, finance, supply chain, commerce, and other areas. Here are just a few of the new features in 2024 release wave 1: 

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales features include recommended content for documents, insights from past successful deals, and summaries of account details—including customer buying behavior, recent activity, and more.   
• Microsoft Copilot for Sales helps teams deliver more seamless experiences within Microsoft Teams and Outlook. New features include suggested updates to customer relationship management (CRMs) systems as sellers work and suggested responses based on customer questions across platforms. 
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights empowers every organization to unify and enhance customer data, using it for insightful analysis and intelligent actions. New features now make it easier and faster to ingest and manage data, while AI enables quick insights and easier access to analytics. 
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance includes more autonomous finance features, building intelligence, automation, and analytics around every business process. This release adds AI-powered experiences to ease setup of financial dimension defaulting. 

See what AI can do for you  

Microsoft customers are already doing amazing things with the new AI features in Dynamics 365, and we can’t wait to inspire you with their stories. Register now and join us to see what’s new in the 2024 release wave 1.   

Microsoft Business Applications launch event  

Wednesday, April 10, 2024  

9:00–10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)

The post Explore the next wave of AI innovation at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

The Microsoft Power Platform comprehensive suite of security capabilities helps organizations to keep their enterprise data safe while leveraging the platform’s AI capabilities. Power Platform security features build on and augment the foundation provided by Microsoft security products and services, so customers get the deepest protection across the breadth of technologies their organization uses.  

Sign up for private preview of Security Hub

Enhance your data safety with AI

Learn more

This month we are announcing several new security features for Power Platform:

• Admins will now have one place to manage Power Platform security at scale using the new Security Hub in the Power Platform admin center.
• New advanced data exfiltration protection features, including the next generation of network isolation and continuous access evaluation of user access rights.
• Microsoft Sentinel for Power Platform integrates Power Platform apps, workflows, and connections into your organization’s security operations to provide a holistic view in the industry leading security information and event management (SIEM) Microsoft Sentinel. 

To help you understand the full security capabilities of Power Platform, we just published a whitepaper focused on enterprise security. This whitepaper shows you how to align Power Platform with your security practices.

Let’s look at these new security capabilities in more detail and explore how they can help secure your Power Platform deployments. 

Achieve the full potential of AI enabled business applications with enhanced security management in the Security Hub

In today’s fast-paced digital transformation environment in the new era of AI, organizations have a hard time understanding how to unlock the power of business data and the flexibility of Power Platform while continuing to meet the ever-evolving security and compliance requirements. Without effective tools for assessing and managing security, administrators may resort to solutions that overly restrict modernization, productivity, and business growth. Security Hub in Power Platform admin center is designed to solve these challenges and more. Administrators will be able to quickly assess the security posture for the tenant, identify and act on the topmost impactful recommendations to improve the posture, use the rich set of high values tools and security capabilities available to gain deep visibility, detect threats effectively, and proactively set policies in place to safeguard from vulnerabilities and risks.  

Security Hub is a must-have for any organization looking to achieve their security and compliance goals with minimal effort and resources, while gaining a competitive edge in the market with secure and reliable AI-enabled business applications solutions. 

Security Hub is currently in private preview, you can express interest in joining the preview here. 

Applying Sensitivity Labels with Microsoft Purview Data Map now supports Dataverse

Applying Sensitivity Labels with Purview Data Map enables organizations to identify sensitive data easily and consistently across the data estate, regardless of where it resides or how it is structured. It also reduces the manual effort and human error involved in labeling the data by using predefined rules and policies that match your business and compliance needs. 

Using the public preview, you can now register Dataverse in Purview and apply Sensitivity Labels to columns in your tables. Try the new preview feature by following “Connect to and manage Microsoft Dataverse in Microsoft Purview“. 

Admin activities now visible in Microsoft Purview 

The ability to view Power Platform administrative logs using auditing solutions in Purview has reached general availability. With enhanced auditing capabilities providing insights ranging from environment lifecycle operations to billing activities, you’re able to adhere to compliance requirements and are empowered to act on security threats. To learn more, see the documentation.  

Access audit data using Microsoft Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse and Microsoft Power BI 

Security professionals can now use their own Synapse workspace to access Dataverse audit data to comply with their auditing requirements. Power BI can also be used to create and monitor auditing events. This feature is now generally available and for more information, review the documentation. 

New advanced data exfiltration protection and network isolation 

One of the best ways to protect your data is to limit access. Limiting access too broadly, though, can often prevent valid users and trusted sources from accessing data and can slow innovation. Power Platform is introducing new ways to limit access to data while at the same time allowing the right users and apps secure access. 

Secure connections from Power Platform to Azure Virtual Network resources

Customers frequently use Power Platform resources together with Microsoft Azure applications and services hosted within their enterprise network. The new virtual network support for Power Platform allows this type of integration to be done over a private network instead of the public network. Customers can maximize their existing Azure networking investment to enable advanced network isolation that securely integrates with low-code resources without exposing any of them over the public internet.  

The following are examples of what is possible by enabling virtual network support to a Power Platform environment: 

• Use the private outbound connectivity from Dataverse plug-ins to access external data sources within the virtual network. For example, the plug-in could access an API hosted as an Azure application to integrate the logic into the plug-in processing. 

• Use private outbound connectivity from Power Platform to access Azure services such as Microsoft Azure SQL, Microsoft Azure Storage, Microsoft Azure Key Vault, and others using Power Platform connectors. For example, a Microsoft Power Automate cloud flow could securely retrieve data from an Azure SQL table that supports another enterprise application. 

These examples demonstrate how the Virtual Network integration breaks down the barriers to any Virtual Network resource integrating with any low-code app, automation, or copilot. 

Virtual network support is in public preview now and you can review the documentation for details on how to enable it in your environments. 

Protect your Dataverse data with a firewall 

Many organizations want more control over who is accessing their business data. In public preview now is a new IP firewall feature. The IP firewall helps to protect your organizational data in Dataverse by limiting user access to the data from only allowed IP locations. 

The IP firewall analyzes the IP address of each request in real time. For example, suppose the IP firewall is turned on in your production Dataverse environment and allowed IP addresses are in the ranges associated with your office locations and not any external IP location like a coffee shop. If a user tries to access organizational resources from a coffee shop, Dataverse denies access in real time. Learn more about IP firewall and how to enable it in.

Continuous access evaluation  

In today’s modern workplace, a user’s eligibility for business application access can change at any time. Evaluating eligibility for application access only during authentication would not ensure that critical events like a network change are re-evaluated when they occur.   

In public preview today, Power Platform now supports continuous access evaluation, a feature of Microsoft Entra ID. Dataverse will initially support this near real-time evaluation, and support for other Power Platform services will follow. Continuous access evaluation continuously evaluates user access to resources based on Microsoft Entra ID signals, such as critical events and changes in user location. User access to resources can be revoked/reauthenticated in near real-time if a critical event occurs, such as IP location change. 

You can enable continuous access evaluation to help mitigate insider and data exfiltration threats. For example, an employee can’t authenticate while on the corporate network, export a valid access token, and then replay it from an external location. Organizations can also use this for shutting down a terminated user and other scenarios that require immediate response. 

To learn more about the continuous access preview feature, review the documentation. 

Power Platform Managed Identity support

Power Platform Managed Identity will allow organizations to securely connect to Azure resources that support Managed Identity from Power Platform resources like Dataverse plug-ins, connections, and flows without the need for managing the credentials. Additionally, you can enforce conditional access policies on resources within Power Platform. For example, if an organization wants to enforce an Azure policy that allows the use of Power Platform resources from location, and particular device, the Power Platform resource onboarded on Managed Identity will simply honor it.

We are enabling this experience under private preview starting with Dataverse plug-ins this week and in future we will support other experiences on Managed Identity within Power Platform. You can join the private preview program here. 

Microsoft Entra ID Privileged Identity Management support

Use Entra ID Privileged Identity Management to assign admin roles and use Power Platform admin center with the elevated role assignments. For more on this preview feature review the documentation. 

Prevent data exfiltration from Dataverse by controlling apps access

Secure Dataverse environments by allowing only approved apps to access. This is to prevent data exfiltration where employees cannot use apps like Excel or custom apps to download data from a Dataverse environment. This feature is currently in private preview. 

Support for IPv6 starts rolling out 

IPv6 is the latest protocol of network layer of the internet designed to address issues with IPv4, most notably, IPv4 exhaustion. Microsoft will continue to support both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols for Power Platform products and services. 

Customers using IPv6 are requested to ensure their network settings are configured correctly, especially firewall rules to allow IPv6 Service Tags.  Review IPv6 support in Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 for complete details on plans and how to prepare your organization.

Integrating Power Platform into your security operations center 

Organizations are turning to tools like Microsoft Sentinel to provide enterprise overwatch to respond to the increased complexity of detecting, investigating, and mitigating threats. Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native security information event and management platform that provides intelligent security analytics for enterprises and provides security operations center (SOC) analysts with a single pane of glass for threat detection and incident management across the organization. 

Business applications, including low-code solutions, typically don’t expose enough telemetry to the SIEM platforms for adequate threat protection. We are announcing the public preview of Microsoft Sentinel for Power Platform, a comprehensive security and monitoring solution that helps you protect and defend your Power Platform environments. With the solution, organizations can detect and respond to the following type of threats and suspicious activities: 

• Power Apps execution from unauthorized geographies 
• Suspicious data destruction by Power Apps
• Mass deletion of Power Apps 
• Phishing attacks made possible through Power Apps
• Power Automate flows activity by departing employees 
• Microsoft Power Platform connectors added to the environment 
• Update or removal of Microsoft Power Platform data loss prevention policies 

Microsoft Sentinel support for all Microsoft Business Applications  

We are also opening a private preview of an enhanced solution that extends threat detection protection with Sentinel to Dynamics 365 and Power BI, in addition to Power Platform. Customers in the private preview will be able to monitor and secure the entire business application portfolio from a single pane of glass, with substantial content update, including new data connectors, hunting queries, playbooks, workbooks, and many new threat detections scenarios. Sign up now by joining the Security Connection Program (CCP) and selecting “SIEM & XDR” as the product of interest. 

Keeping your organization’s apps and data secure is a priority. With the addition of these new features Power Platform enhances your ability to meet the requirements for your Power Platform solutions and to create a secure and productive workplace for your users. 

Learn more about Power Platform security

• Power Platform security whitepaper
• Low-Code Security and Governance
• Virtual network support documentation
• Continuous access documentation
• Admin audit logging documentation 
• Access Dataverse audit using Synapse documentation 
• Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management documentation 
• Admin audit logging documentation
• Access Dataverse audit using Synapse documentation 

The post Protect enterprise solutions with new Microsoft Power Platform security features  appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Industry-specific capabilities within Microsoft Fabric play a pivotal role in addressing the diverse business challenges faced by organizations across various sectors. By tailoring data solutions to specific industries, we empower our customers to achieve optimal outcomes. Customers in healthcare, retail and sustainability among others are interested in leveraging Microsoft Fabric with industry specific capabilities so they can collaborate and build next-generation applications finely tuned to vertical high-value use cases. Microsoft aims to foster a robust partner ecosystem centered on industry standards through strategic investments in vertical capabilities. 

Each industry contends with different data and regulatory frameworks. At HIMSS 2024, we are outlining some of these vertical investments. Healthcare data is complex, sensitive, and highly regulated. It requires a robust and secure platform that can handle the diverse and evolving needs of the healthcare industry. That’s why we are excited to announce the public preview of offerings that will help you analyze healthcare data with ease and confidence. Today we are announcing the public preview of healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric.

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Support multi-modal data management with healthcare data solutions

Healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end, analytics SaaS platform that enables you to ingest, store, and analyze healthcare data from various sources, such as electronic health records, picture archiving and communication systems, and more. The healthcare data solutions provide data models and transformation activities, which helps customers create a multi modal warehouse. It enables customers to align with industry standards, such as FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) and DICOM, and supports compliance with regulations, such as HIPAA and GDPR. With healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, you can access and query your healthcare data using familiar experiences, such as Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, and Microsoft Power BI.

Public preview for ingesting clinical data available now

In October 2023, we announced the private preview for healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric. Since then, customers have been testing it and giving us feedback. For example, the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, which holds $524 million in annual total extramural research support and is home to more than 2,000 full-time faculty members, is exploring healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric to power their Colorectal Cancer Multi-Modal Data Commons. Leveraging the capabilities of healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric accelerates UW Madison’s path for unifying data across a variety of difference sources to create an ecosystem for secure, ethical, and reproducible data management and analytics that will further drive innovative clinical and translational research to promote health in Wisconsin and beyond.

Today we are excited to announce that the healthcare data solutions focused on ingesting clinical data is available in public preview and available in the Industry Solutions workload in Microsoft Fabric. Previews designated as production-ready employ privacy and security measures typically present in generally available online services. It can be used to process data that is subject to HIPAA regulatory compliance requirements. The public preview enables customers to create a medallion architecture aligned with the FHIR standard by providing data models and transformation pipelines. These are the current capabilities: 

• Healthcare data foundations—Set up your healthcare data estate to run solution capabilities and configure it to structure data for analytics and AI/ML modeling. 
• FHIR data ingestion—Bring your FHIR data to OneLake from a FHIR service such as Azure Health Data Services. 
• Unstructured clinical notes enrichment—Use Azure AI’s Text analytics for health services to add structured to unstructured clinical notes for analytics. 
• OMOP Analytics—Prepare data for standardized analytics through OMOP (Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership) open community standards. 
• Data preparation for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Connect Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to your OneLake on Fabric for creating patient or member lists for your outreach. 

Imaging support for healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric now available in private preview

Delivering on our vision for building a multi-model healthcare data estate and energized by the feedback from customers on our healthcare data solutions preview, we are extending our capabilities to support the complex and sensitive nature of imaging data.

With imaging support for healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, you will be able to ingest, store, and analyze imaging meta data across various modalities, such as X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs. The new imaging capabilities will enable collaboration, R&D and AI innovation for wide range of healthcare and life science use cases. Our customers and partners will be able to take DICOM images and bring them together with the clinical data stored in FHIR already. Making imaging pixel and metadata available alongside the clinical history and laboratory data enables clinicians and researchers to interpret imaging findings in the appropriate clinical context, leading to a higher diagnostic accuracy, informative clinical decision making, and improved patient outcomes.

• Unify your medical imaging and clinical data estate for analytics—Establish a regulated hub to centralize and organize all your multi-model healthcare data, creating a foundation for predictive and clinical analytics. Built natively on well-established industry data models, including DICOM, FHIR, and OMOP.​ 
• Build fit-for-purpose analytics models​—Start constructing ML and AI models on a connected foundation of EHR (Electronic Health Record) and pixel-data. Enable researchers, data scientists, and health informaticians to perform analysis on large volumes of multi-model datasets to achieve higher accuracy in diagnosis, prognosis, and improved patient outcomes. 
• Advance research, collaboration and sharing of de-identified imaging​—Build longitudinal views of patients’ clinical history and related imaging studies with the ability to apply complex queries to identify patient cohorts for research and collaboration. Apply text and imaging de-identification to enable in-place sharing of research datasets with role-based access control. 
• Reduce the cost of archival storage and recovery​—Take advantage of the cost-effective, and reliable cloud-based storage to help back up your medical imaging data from the redundant storage of on-prem PACS (Picture archiving and communication system) and VNA systems (Vendor Neutral archive), and enhance your HIPAA compliance efforts. Improve your security posture with a 100% off-site cloud archival of your imaging datasets in case of unplanned data loss. 

Try healthcare data solutions today

Try out the public preview for our clinical data by going to the industry solutions switcher in Fabric and select the healthcare data solutions tile and explore all the capabilities you need from there.

This preview for imaging is available to a select group of customers who are interested in exploring the potential of imaging data in Microsoft Fabric. If you are interested in participating, please contact your account executive for more information. 

We look forward to hearing your feedback and seeing the amazing solutions you will create with these offerings. To learn more, visit our documentation.

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