The answer usually isn’t model quality or tooling. It’s whether organizations are establishing the right constraints, setting the right ambition, and designing for scale from day one. The counterintuitive lesson I keep seeing: the organizations moving fastest are the ones that kept their guardrails tightest.

As I shared with Keith, organizations that succeed don’t treat AI as a side project. One customer we discussed, a leading American multinational financial services company, is a good example of getting this right. Their first AI deployment wasn’t about a vague AI-adoption goal, or a generalist chatbot. It focused on a concrete, human problem: employees across branches spending time searching through hundreds of forms and procedures during customer interactions. The agent allowed branch staff—across consumer, small business, and other roles—to describe what they needed in natural language and be routed instantly to the right process.

The impact was immediate: shorter wait times, smoother interactions, and more time focused on the customer, without introducing new risk. Importantly, the agent didn’t approve transactions or make financial decisions. It helped people move faster, and the guardrails were exactly what made that possible at scale.

By setting clear ambition while focused on a high-impact, low-risk use case, they were able to build confidence in the technology. They created momentum while not forcing the organization to compromise governance.

Humans stay in control

Scaling AI successfully means keeping people in the loop. I’ve seen that the most successful implementations are explicitly human led. Transparency is key. Audit trails, activity logs, and clear explanations of agent behavior build trust and make systems easier to improve over time.

Success also requires the right kind of guardrails. In regulated industry workflows, it’s not enough for an agent to be right, it needs to be explainable. For example, in a power of attorney verification—agents can handle extraction, matching, and analysis in seconds. Ambiguous or high-risk cases are escalated to humans. With agents as colleagues, teams can spend less time on routine checks and more time applying judgments where they actually matter.

Scaling without sprawl

As adoption grows, the challenge isn’t just proliferation—it’s clarity. Successful organizations distinguish between:

• Personal productivity agents.
• Team-level agents.
• Enterprise agents.

Each category carries different expectations for governance and oversight. A personal agent helping someone summarize documents doesn’t carry the same risk as an agent touching customer data across systems. Builders can solve problems for themselves or their teams, but expanding solutions generally triggers reviews and accountability.

Governance as an enabler

The fastest-moving organizations have created clear, governed pathways for experimentation and deployment of agentic solutions. New solutions are started in constrained environments with limited data access. As they prove value and maturity, they can be promoted into environments with broader reach and tighter oversight. This approach enables innovation while maintaining visibility, accountability, and control over data access and sharing.

Here’s the reality leaders can’t ignore: people will use AI regardless. The choice is whether they do it inside your platform, with your data protected and your policies enforced, or outside of it.

The urgency has changed

Over the past year what’s changed most isn’t the technology—it’s the level of urgency. Organizations no longer ask why they need AI. They ask how to govern it so they can move now.

In the organizations I’ve worked with, the platforms and controls are often already there. The differentiator is execution: choosing the right first problems, designing with governance in mind, and scaling in a way that keeps humans firmly in control.

That’s how AI moves from a pilot to production—and stays there.

Watch my full conversation with Keith Kirkpatrick to hear more real-world examples and lessons from regulated enterprises putting AI to work today.

The post Scaling AI with purpose: How organizations are balancing ambition and control appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place.

AI-powered Development

Check out the latest updates in this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

This month we’re giving you tools to share plans with your project stakeholders, we’ve added a maker setting to tailor your authoring experience, and we want *your* feedback about User Defined Functions and User Defined Types! Take a look at these updates and more in this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

Enhanced Component Properties are now Generally Available

Enhanced Component Properties (ECPs) are now generally available (GA) and are ready for your production workloads! ECPs are a great way to modularize and reuse your logic across an app, with the added bonus that ECPs can be shared across apps through a component library.

Use ECPs to write a formula once and reuse it throughout your app, making large apps easier to understand and maintain. The property acks like a function can perform a calculation, pull data from a database, or perform side effects such as updating a database.

While ECPs and User Defined Functions (UDFs) do similar things, UDFs are defined in the App. Formulas property using purely syntax and are limited to the current app, while ECPs are defined as properties of a custom component with configuration dropdowns and formulas and can be used across apps through a component library.

UntypedObject data type renamed to Dynamic

Until the introduction of User Defined Functions (UDFs) and User Defined Types (UDTs), the names of data types weren’t used in Power Fx syntax. In reviewing the names, we’ve found that UntypedObject is not a great name, being a long compound word, and the data type is not truly untyped, nor always an object.

Before UDFs reach GA, we have renamed UntypedObject to Dynamic. The term Dynamic fits the data type better and is used by our connectors and in C#. Not to worry, there is no change in semantics, this is a name change only. If you aren’t using UDFs or UDTs, there is no change at all. The only difference one would notice, and need to update, is passing UntypedObjects as UDF parameters, using it as a UDF return type, or using it in a UDT.

Fully Managed Platform

Audit original Choice data type Label description public preview  

We are announcing the ability to audit the original user-selected Choice data type label. 

By default, audit logs for a Choice data type display the current label description of the selected value. If a user selects a choice (e.g., “red”) and the label is later changed (e.g., to “pink”), the audit log will reflect the updated label (“pink”), not the original (“red”).

This feature allows administrators to retain the original user-selected label in existing audit records. 

Reduce system downtime with streamlined customer-managed key processing

We are announcing an enhancement to reduce the system downtime while processing customer-managed keys.

Previously, when you applied customer-managed keys or reverted a customer-managed key to a Microsoft managed key, the environments were deactivated until all the Dataverse storage services complete the data encryption.  This system downtime could take up to 4 days for all data encryption to complete.  

Dataverse now allows environments to come back online sooner during customer-managed key encryption. Once the core storage services that require downtime completed applying your key to encrypt their data, the environment is re-enabled with a status of “Encrypting – online.” Users can access the environment while the remaining services continue encrypting in the background.

Preview and Feedback Programs

User Defined Functions enter Preview

User Defined Functions (UDFs) take another giant step forward and are nearly complete, a few months away from reaching general availability. Now is a great time to try them out and provide feedback in the community experimental features forum.

Use UDFs to write a formula once and reuse it throughout your app, making large apps easier to understand and maintain. The function can perform a calculation, pull data from a database, or perform side effects such as updating a database.

While UDFs and Enhanced Component Properties (ECPs) do similar things, UDFs are defined in the App. Formulas property using purely syntax and are limited to the current app, while ECPs are defined as properties of a custom component with configuration dropdowns and formulas and can be used across apps through a component library.

Learning Updates

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Build a Power Apps canvas app for a real estate solution with data from Excel
• Build a Power Apps canvas app for a real estate solution with Copilot in Power Apps
• Create tables in Microsoft Dataverse
• How to build the User Interface in a canvas app in Power Apps
• Manage apps in Power Apps
• Navigation in a canvas app in Power Apps
• Use Copilot in Power Apps

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: June 2025 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place.

Build 2025 Sessions

We had a great set of sessions at Microsoft Build, you can watch the recordings on demand to catch up!

• BRK128 – Build agent-first solutions with Power Platform and Copilot Studio
• BRK126 – Collaborate with a team of agents to build intelligent solutions
• BRK125 – Build and deploy AI apps faster with low code and DevOps
• BRK130 – Extend your Copilot Agent in Power Apps with Copilot Studio and new SDK’s
• BRK132 – Enhancing Agent Management Controls for AI-Ready Enterprises

AI-powered Development

Check out what’s new in this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

Make plans for your existing solutions, import data from multiple worksheets in an Excel workbook, get rich AI-powered summaries of your data in model apps, and understand your variables faster than ever! Check out these exciting updates in this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

Plans are now generally available

You can now work with a team of agents to define requirements, map processes, create data models, and architect multiple components of a solution to work together. Whether you’re expanding on existing assets or starting a fully new solution, plans bring it all together, guiding you from problem statement to working code.

The new process mapping agent, now available in public preview, helps transform solution requirements and user personas into comprehensive process maps that anchor the plans. This visual blueprint provides an end-to-end view of the process, data, and solution architecture to optimize it—detailing how each component addresses specific business challenges.

Additionally, suggested solutions will also include reports, portals, and Microsoft Copilot Studio agents. This expansion allows developers to architect a comprehensive, intelligent solution upfront, before diving into creation of individual artifacts.

Copilot Studio Agents in your plan

We are happy to announce that plans now support Copilot Studio Agents. A Copilot Studio Agent is designed to streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and answer customer questions. Once the Agent is created from your plan, you will be redirected to Microsoft Copilot Studio to review and make any necessary changes such as adding a trigger, actions, etc. before publishing your agent. 

Create Power Pages sites from plans

You can now create a Power Pages site directly from the plan designer. When you click “Create” on a proposed Power Pages site, it launches the Power Pages design studio with a prefilled setup—complete with layout design, domain configuration, and pages aligned to your goals. This streamlined experience eliminates the need to configure everything from scratch, letting you jump straight into customizing your site.

Fully manage your data model when building plans

Plan Designer now gives makers full control over their data models – create new tables from scratch, import from Excel or SharePoint, and edit or add existing tables – all within the data workspace. In addition, the data agent is now faster and more powerful, offering intelligent assistance for modeling tasks and accelerating your workflow.

Add existing components to your plan

Reusing what already works is smart—and now it’s easier than ever.

Whether you’re building a new solution from scratch or iterating on an existing one, the ability to pull in previously created assets means you can focus on innovation rather than reinvention. It also helps teams align on standards and reuse best practices across environments. This capability is especially useful for organizations with a library of apps that serve as templates or starting points. By integrating them into your plan, you ensure continuity and accelerate delivery—without compromising quality.

See multiple solutions associated with the plan

A plan can be associated with multiple solutions. For example, adding an existing Microsoft Dataverse table to a plan’s data model links solution(s) associated with that table to the plan. Similarly, adding an existing Power App to the plan establishes a connection with its associated solution. You can now view all related solutions in the Objects view. These solutions appear as tabs across the top of the Objects view. Simply select a tab to explore the objects contained within that solution.

Create a plan from your existing solution

You can now build a plan from your existing solution. The plan uses AI to extract information from your solution, generating the business problem and user requirements. Once the plan is saved, you can edit the user requirements and generate additional apps, tables, and other components for your solution. To generate a plan, your solution must include at least one app and one associated table, and the apps must be published.

Bring your own model and model fine-tuning from Azure AI Foundry in Power Platform (Public Preview)

Copilot Studio continues to integrate deeply with Azure AI Foundry, and now you can bring your own model for prompts and generative answers. Makers can access more than 11,000 models in Azure AI Foundry, including the latest models available in OpenAI GPT-4.1, Llama, DeepSeek, and custom models, and fine-tune them using enterprise data. This fine-tuning helps agents generate even more domain-specific, high-value responses. This experience is also available in Power apps and Power automate.

Enhanced Component Properties are now Generally Available (GA)

Thanks to your feedback in Preview, Enhanced component properties (ECPs) have moved to General Availability (GA). With an improved UX and distinct types of properties including data and function, ECPs enable the ability to share logic across apps through a component library.

Fully Managed Platform

Enhanced weekly admin digest emails for Power Platform Administrators

Power Platform administrators will now benefit from an enhanced email digest experience that delivers actionable insights to help improve their tenant’s security posture and maintain licensing compliance. These emails are tailored to highlight the most critical recommendations, enabling administrators to quickly assess and prioritize next steps for their tenant.

Each recommendation includes direct links to the relevant areas within the Power Platform Admin Center, streamlining the process of taking corrective action. This update is part of our ongoing commitment to empower administrators with the tools and guidance they need to manage their tenants more effectively and proactively.

Introducing the updated Copilot hub experience for confident Copilot adoption

We’re excited to announce the new Copilot Hub experience in the Power Platform Admin Center, unveiled at Microsoft Build, which brings a host of improvements based on your feedback. This updated experience provides Power Platform and environment admins with a central place for Copilot management – offering best-practice guidance for starting on your Copilot journey in the “Get started” page, greater transparency on upcoming features in the “What’s new” page, deeper usage and cost insights in the product-specific pages, and unified settings for easier governance in the “Settings” page. Simply head to the Power Platform admin center, select the “New admin center” toggle in the upper right corner, and click on Copilot in the left navigation to explore the new capabilities.

Intelligent Apps

Customize Copilot Chat experience change

As part of the introduction of the Agents pane in App Designer, the experience for adding an agent for a customized Copilot change has changed. The app navigation “… > Configured in Copilot Studio” is now the Interactive agent in the Agent pane. The configuration is done using the Interactive agent context menu.

Supervise agents in model-driven apps

Users can now supervise generative agents in model-driven apps with agent feed. Agent feed in Power Apps lets business users easily manage and work with agents directly in their apps. It makes apps a central hub for human-agent collaboration by showing a complete activity feed of what agents do for them, wherever they are in the app. The experience is currently optimized for agent actions using Dataverse tools as users will easily be able to take over those actions directly in a model-driven app. To enable this experience makers can add agents to any model-driven app in the modern-app designer. The agent must be published, use triggers, and have generative AI enabled. 

Preview and Feedback Programs

Private preview of generative pages

Imagine describing the page you want in your model-driven app and watching it come to life in minutes. No more starting from a blank canvas. No more manual adjustment of the layout or selection of fields. With Generative pages, that future is here.

We’re thrilled to announce the early access preview of Generative pages—a new AI-powered experience in Power Apps that simplifies and accelerates how you design and build pages in model-driven apps. 

Just describe the page in natural language, link it to your Dataverse tables, and optionally upload an image of your desired layout. The agent takes it from there, generating React-based code tailored to your description, connected to your app’s data model, and styled to match your existing app theme. Need changes? You can iteratively refine the page through an interactive, conversational experience.

Ready to try it out? Sign up for the preview at https://aka.ms/PowerAppsEAP. A full blog post with all the details is coming soon—stay tuned!

Code Apps in Power Platform

Code Apps is a new way for developers to bring Power Apps capabilities into web apps built in a code-first IDE. These capabilities are available both during local development and when an app runs in Power Platform.

Key features include:

• Out-of-the-box Microsoft Entra authentication and authorization
• Access to 1,500+ Power Platform connectors, callable directly from JavaScript
• Easy publishing and hosting of line-of-business web apps in Power Platform
• Adherence to your organization’s Managed Platform policies (app sharing limits, Conditional Access, Data Loss Prevention, etc.)

The managed platform accelerates innovation in safe environments. When ready, apps can be deployed to dedicated production environments. Code Apps and the managed platform reinforce safe, rapid innovation, and, when ready, these apps can be deployed to dedicated production environments.

Learning Updates

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Manage solutions in Power Apps and Power Automate
• Create a machine ordering app with Power Apps – Online Workshop – 4 modules
• Get started with Power Apps canvas apps
• How to build the User Interface in a canvas app in Power Apps
• Use Monitor to troubleshoot Power Apps
• Use Copilot in Power Apps
• Create tables in Microsoft Dataverse

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: May 2025 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place.

AI-powered Development

See what’s new with this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

This month we’re excited to share updates that make working with user details and data even easier in the Plan Designer! We’ve made some updates to make some Power Fx formulas easier to use and debug, and finally we’ve made a change to managing the availability of views in model apps. All this and more in this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

Expanded limit for plan prompts

This April, we introduced a new homepage designed for a more streamlined plan designer experience. You’ll find a larger natural language input box ready for your most complex prompts, sample starter prompts that are now easier to access when you need inspiration, and a clean visual refresh for improved clarity and organization. Give it a try today by visiting make.powerapps.com and activating the “Try the new Power Apps experience” toggle.

Enhanced Undo Redo

We are thrilled to announce a significant improvement to the undo redo experience in Power Apps Studio. This improvement aims to enhance your authoring experience by providing more control and reliability.
Enhanced Reliability – The new undo redo experience is built on a more reliable foundation removing common errors. Description of the Actions – introduces a description of the actions you can undo or redo. Improved Capacity – You can now undo up to 100 actions.

Action Pane in VS Code

We’ve introduced an Actions Pane for Power Pages sites in VS Code Desktop to streamline CLI workflows and reduce tool-switching. With a simple right-click, developers can perform context-specific actions whether sites are active, inactive, or local without leaving the editor. For active sites, you can preview (with cache cleared), upload, download, view site details, open code in File Explorer, or open in Power Pages Studio. Inactive sites support site management and detail viewing, while local sites can be uploaded or revealed in Explorer. This feature simplifies site management, boosts productivity, and offers a unified experience for Pro-developers.

Enterprise-Grade Governance

Power Platform Dataverse – Enable Audit Settings in Security Compliance General Availability

We are announcing the General Availability of enabling Audit settings via the Security Compliance in Power Platform. It enables administrators to audit specific Dataverse environments.   

Previously, you could enable audit settings in the environment/settings/Audit and logs page and choose which Dataverse data to audit. When audit settings are enabled via the Security Compliance page, you can still select the Dataverse data to audit. Additionally, all security-related tables are automatically audited to ensure compliance. ​​

Git Integration is Generally Available

Git Integration in Power Platform is now generally available, revolutionizing fusion development by effortlessly synchronizing agents, apps, automations, and other solution objects with source control. This integration eliminates the complexity, lengthy setup, and need for managing multiple tools. The integration replaces the experimental Power Apps integration, providing clear visibility into source code.

Power Platform Dataverse – Prevent data exfiltration by securing app access General Availability

We are announcing the General Availability of preventing data exfiltration by securing app access via the Security hub in Power Platform. It enables administrators to select which Dataverse environments to secure and what apps can run in the environment.   

Admins can protect against data exfiltration by controlling what apps can be run in your Dataverse environment. This feature helps to prevent malicious users from creating or using unapproved apps to export sensitive data from your environment.  

Admins will be able to utilize the following features from the Power Platform admin center:  

• Create a list of approved applications that can access an environment.  
• Utilize enforcement mode to ensure that only the approved applications can access your environment.  
• Utilize audit mode to review the current applications that are approved or denied access to your environment.  

The New Power Platform admin center is here!

We’re excited to announce the new Power Platform admin center! Designed with administrators in mind, this new experience brings a modern, intuitive interface that simplifies navigation, improves productivity, and aligns with Microsoft’s latest design principles. Administrators can now access core areas like environment management, security, and analytics with ease, thanks to clear icons, intuitive menus, and enhanced search capabilities. Additional features like Discovery Agent and a new dark mode makes the new admin center more functional and aesthetically pleasing to work with!

The redesign features Microsoft’s consistent design language, offering visual and functional cohesion across cloud services. Refined styling and interaction patterns provide a unified interface, reducing the learning curve and promoting seamless workflows.

All pages from the classic admin center are now logically grouped in the new interface, enhancing discoverability and efficient management of features. The updated admin center significantly boosts efficiency and productivity for Power Platform administrators. Discover the redesigned interface today and enjoy a future-ready platform that drives innovation for your organization!

Intelligent Apps

Customize Copilot Chat in apps

The ability to customize the Copilot Chat announced earlier is completing the public preview rollout for standalone model-driven apps. It enables each model-driven app to extend the app’s agent with knowledge sources and topics.

Learning and Documentation Updates

Announcing the Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio Architecture Center

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio Architecture Center, your one-stop hub for everything architecture-related within the Power Platform and Copilot Studio ecosystems. It offers a wealth of resources, including architecture key concepts, reference architectures, and solution ideas, all based on real-world experiences.

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Get Started With Power Fx Functions – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Build Power Fx Functions – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Create a machine ordering app with Power Apps – Online Workshop – Training | Microsoft Learn – 4 modules
• Create tables in Microsoft Dataverse – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Use Azure and external tools to manipulate data – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Use common low-code plug-in scenarios – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Shape data in a Power Apps canvas app – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Common command bar scenarios – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Work with canvas app source code – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Use Monitor to troubleshoot Power Apps – Training | Microsoft Learn

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: April 2025 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place.

AI-powered Development

Check out some of our latest improvements in this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

This month we are so excited to share some small but mighty improvements that are sure to make your life easier! We’ve made it simple and intuitive to reorder screens and controls in the canvas designer, we’ve brought even more power and understanding about Power Fx formulas to Copilot, and now you have full editing capability of existing tables right in the data workspace.

Announcing the winners of the 2025 Powerful Devs Hack Together

The 2025 Powerful Devs Hack Together brought developers together to build secure and scalable AI-powered solutions using Power Platform, Azure, AI Builder, and more. We are pleased to announce the winners across 8 different categories for this year’s hack. 

Inline editing user roles and user needs in the Plan designer

Another UX improvement coming to the Plan designer – Makers can now edit user roles and user stories directly inline! Traditionally, editing the user stories section required typing in a prompt to copilot and a complete regeneration of the entire section. Now, with inline editing, makers can make add, remove, or edit the Requirements section, including user role, user role description, and user needs. 

Modernized Create Page

We’ve introduced a refreshed Create page in the Power Apps maker portal, continuing our effort to modernize and streamline the maker experience. Below is a quick overview of what’s new:

1. Cohesive Look and Feel: The redesigned Create page ensures a cleaner interface and a more consistent user experience.
2. Improved “Start From” Experiences: We’ve refined the “Start with” options to give you the most reliable and up-to-date starting points, aligning these entry points with the Apps page.  
3. Updated Blank Canvas Flow: The “Start with a blank canvas” flow has been streamlined. Makers can choose their preferred app size—responsive, tablet, or phone—right from the start and head straight into the canvas studio.

Data workspace now supports edit existing tables

In addition to creating new tables, you can now fully edit existing tables in the data workspace. To update the schema or data of your existing tables, select add existing table, pick the table you need, and then simply edit the table fully inline with the ERD view of your data model. No more need to jump back and forth between the table hub and the data workspace. You can now fully manage your tables and relationships in just one experience.

Enterprise-Grade Governance

Introducing Managed Availability for Power Platform, ensuring enterprise-grade reliability, continuous uptime, and seamless failover for mission-critical applications and AI workloads

Managed Availability is a new suite of capabilities designed to ensure that your Dynamics 365 applications and Power Platform resources, including Power Apps, Power Automate flows, and Copilot Studio agents, remain highly available and resilient. Managed Availability leverages Azure Availability Zones to replicate production environments across multiple physically separated datacenters, providing near zero data loss and rapid failover in case of failures.

Additionally, Managed Availability offers automated backups with options for extended retention and Self-Serve Disaster Recovery (DR), enabling you to define, test, and execute cross-region failovers. With Self-Serve DR, a copy of your environment is seamlessly maintained in a secondary region, ensuring business continuity even in the face of large-scale disruptions. For AI-driven workflows, this ensures that your Copilot Studio agents remain available, responsive, and resilient, protecting them against unforeseen events.

Power Platform Solution Assessment

This review offers a comprehensive assessment, covering every aspect of the solution, from functionality and user experience to its alignment with overall business goals. 

The assessment provides actionable insights and tailored recommendations, helping users make informed decisions that lead to more efficient, scalable, and robust Power Platform solutions.

Intelligent Apps

Model-driven Copilot Chat now supports multimedia content!

Enhance your Copilot chat conversations with dynamic and fun multimedia content, including images, videos, and cards. Customized Zero Prompt experience, combined with multimedia content, can revolutionize boring text-based chat interactions and take them to the next level!

Announcing Power CAT Tools, a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance the development experience within Power Platform

The Power CAT Tools app streamlines your development workflow by automating essential tasks and providing insightful guidance based on real-world best practices. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just getting started, Power CAT Tools offers valuable resources to help you build robust and efficient solutions with greater ease.

Fill Forms Faster with AI: Paste Images & Add Files

The data entry agent in Power Apps and Dynamics 365 model-driven apps makes filling out forms quicker and easier by reducing tedious manual data entry. A study with information workers showed that AI assistance enabled 29% faster form completion, with 95% preferring it over manual entry. Now, based on your feedback, we’re introducing four powerful new capabilities—giving you more flexibility, visibility, and expanded input options. These enhancements are available in your apps today:

• Smart paste now supports images – paste screenshots or handwritten content, and AI will extract relevant details for your form.
• Expanded file support – add .txt, .csv, .docx, .pdf, or image files (.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp) to get inline AI suggestions.
• New AI data entry toolbar – review and manage AI-generated suggestions more easily.
• More control for makers – makers can now specify fields that should always require human input, ensuring AI assistance focuses on where it’s most valuable.

Try out these enhancements today! Read the main blog to learn more.

Learning and Documentation Updates

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Perform common actions with client script in Power Platform
• Author a basic formula that uses tables and records in a Power Apps canvas app
• Build your first canvas app with Power Apps
• Export data from Dataverse and use Microsoft Excel to edit records
• Get started with Power Apps component framework
• Reduce complexity in your data model with Dataverse table relationships
• Use Microsoft Word and Excel templates with Dataverse
• Work with external data in a Power Apps canvas app
• Work with relational data in a Power Apps canvas app

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: March 2025 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place.

AI-powered Development

Code View is now Generally Available

We are thrilled to announce that Code View in Power Apps Studio is now generally available! This milestone marks a significant step forward in our mission to enable citizen developers and professional developers to collaborate seamlessly, enabling everyone to build faster.

Key features introduced during the public preview:

Sharing: Makers can use code snippets to share their work using Microsoft Teams, email or forums, facilitating collaboration and reuse.

Code View: Developers can view the code for each control, making it easier to understand the app’s functionality

Copy and paste: The ability to copy any control within Studio as YAML + Power Fx code and paste it into a code editor for modifications.

Elevate your Power Platform development experience with Power CAT Tools

We are thrilled to announce the launch of Power CAT Tools, a comprehensive suite of features designed to enhance your development experience within the Power Platform. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just getting started, Power CAT Tools community offering provides valuable resources to help you build robust and efficient solutions with greater ease.

Power CAT Tools feature suite is designed to streamline your development workflow with capabilities that automate essential tasks and provide insightful guidance based on real-world best practices. This powerful suite of features includes:

• Code Review Tool: Automatically reviews your code to ensure adherence to best practices and standards, helping you identify and rectify potential issues early in the development process.
• AI generated solution documentation: Leverages artificial intelligence to create detailed and accurate documentation for your solutions, saving you time and effort.
• Risk assessment: Evaluates potential risks in your solutions and provides actionable mitigation strategies, ensuring the stability and security of your projects.
• API playground: Offers a Postman-like experience for testing and exploring APIs, simplifying the process of integrating and debugging APIs.
• Plugin monitor: Monitors and analyzes plugin performance and behavior, providing insights to help you optimize your plugins for better efficiency and reliability.

The Power CAT Tools solution is a distinctive community offering provided by the Microsoft Power CAT team, designed to elevate your development experience beyond what the native platform offers. Built on the low code platform itself, this open-source repository ensures transparency and offers unique insights into development best practices that are not available natively. The tools suite helps build robust and efficient solutions by making it easier for makers to adhere to best practices.

Create and Use Power Fx Functions Public preview

We are introducing the public preview for Create and Use Power Fx Functions in Power Platform. This preview will streamline the process for creating business logic as Power Fx functions to be used in your Canvas apps and Power Automate.

Previously, you were able to create business logic using the low-code instant plugins or using custom classes compiled in .Net framework. With the new public preview, you will now be able to create this business logic as Power Fx functions with minimal or no coding required on the Power Apps portal.

Functions are customized business logic that run a set of specific commands within Dataverse. These are server-side business logic and can be reused across multiple apps and solutions within Power Apps. This allows you to standardize business logic to promote consistency and scalability across your organization.

Enterprise-Grade Governance

Govern Critical AI Settings and More with Environment Groups

What’s new: we’re excited to introduce 3 powerful new rules for Environment Groups, designed to give tenant administrators greater control over critical environment settings, including those for Copilots and Agents. You can now configure at scale:

AI prompts

AI-powered Copilot features (preview)

Power Apps component framework for canvas apps

Why this matters: as the adoption of Power Platform soars in your company, maintaining control over key environment settings becomes increasingly crucial. These new rules allow IT to apply settings in bulk across many environments, locking them at the environment level to prevent unauthorized changes by administrators of individual environments. This approach empowers IT to delegate administration and governance to other teams without relinquishing control over key environment settings.

How the new rules work: the new rules function exactly like existing ones. When you publish a rule, it is applied uniformly to all environments within the group. These rules also lock the settings at the environment level, preventing administrators of individual environments from modifying them.

Next steps: these additional rules are automatically available within each environment group and tenant administrators must explicitly configure these rules for them to take effect. And the excitement doesn’t stop here—more rules will be added periodically, so stay tuned for continuous enhancements!

Intelligent Apps

Introducing Visualize with Copilot

Every business decision starts with insights backed by data. However, trying to spot trends while staring at rows and columns of data isn’t exactly the most efficient way to get insights. Manually exporting data, creating charts and adjusting filters can be time-consuming and frustrating, creating spreadsheet fatigue. What if you could skip all this busy work and get straight to insights? We’re introducing Visualize with Copilot, a new capability that instantly transforms your business data into a meaningful interactive chart. Whether you’re tracking sales or driving customer service excellence or managing inventory, Visualize with Copilot can help you see the bigger picture instantly.

Learning and Documentation Updates

Powerful Devs Conference – Available Now On-Demand!

The wait is over! Powerful Devs Conference is now available to stream on demand, bringing you the best insights on Power Platform for enterprise app development. Whether you’re looking for expert guidance or real-world demos, you can catch it all at your convenience.

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Create a Pipeline in Microsoft Power Platform – Training
• Deploy a Microsoft Power Platform Solution By Using a Service Principal – Training
• Use Dataverse choice columns with formulas – Training
• Customize the command bar – Training
• Design a Power Apps canvas app by using Figma – Training
• Get started with model-driven apps in Power Apps – Training

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: February 2025 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place.

AI-powered Development

Check out what’s new in this edition of Power Apps Pulse!

Your productivity is sure to get a boost from these updates! We’re excited to share the new powerful and personalizable Power Platform Admin Center, experience added efficiency and expanded capabilities in the data workspace, and get hands on with the brand new Plan Designer!

Plan designer is now available in Public Preview

The Power Apps team is excited to announce the plan designer is now in public preview and available for makers worldwide! With the plan designer, it is now easier than ever to transform a simple business requirement into a complete, end-to-end low-code solution in minutes. It enables makers with Copilot and a team of agents, with rich domain skills across solution architecture, data modeling, and user experience generation. Designed to revolutionize the way you build business solutions, the plan designer empowers you to build intelligent, impactful solutions efficiently and effectively.

Work with existing tables in data workspace

You can now visualize and manage existing tables in the ERD table designer, data workspace. Instead of starting from scratch, you can use your existing tables to build more robust data models. Once you’ve assembled your tables, the enhanced ERD view will allow you to review your existing and new tables side-by-side more easily.

User defined functions, user defined types, and enhanced component properties

Power Fx formula updates to make reuse and maintenance easier than ever:

Enhanced component properties (ECPs) have moved to preview. With any remaining feedback, we plan to take them to general availability in the next few months. ECPs enable the ability to share logic across apps through a component library.

User defined functions (UDFs) can now include behavior functions with side effects, such as Set, Collect, Reset, and Notify. Declarative is always best, so use this facility only when you must. When you do, wrap the formula in { } and you can then use the ; (or ;;) chaining operator.

User defined types (UDTs) enable tables and records to be passed in and out of UDFs. UDTs also enable bulk conversion of JSON untyped objects to typed objects, particularly useful with web APIs. Welcome the new Type and RecordOf functions, an expanded role for the AsType and IsType functions, and a new parameter for ParseJSON.

Enterprise-Grade Governance

SQL Server environment variables are now available for Power Apps

Support for Entra SQL Server environment variables is now available.  They save you time moving your solutions from one environment to another.  For example, moving your solution from an environment used for dev or test to a different environment used for test or production.

You can either manually create environment variables in your solution or set a switch in your app to auto-create them for you when you add a data source to your app while in your solution. Note that this feature is specifically for Entra. Power Apps with shared connections (e.g., SQL Auth) continue with connection references.

Unlock Seamless Data Integration with PostgreSQL as a Virtual Connector Provider

In today’s fast-evolving data landscape, seamlessly integrating and relating data across multiple sources is more crucial than ever. We are excited to announce the General Availability of PostgreSQL as a Virtual Connector Provider in Dataverse!

With this capability, you can now access real-time data from PostgreSQL without duplicating it within Dataverse. Makers can virtualize PostgreSQL data, enabling a unified data experience that combines native Dataverse and PostgreSQL data. This feature empowers users to make informed business decisions with a comprehensive, connected data view.

This is particularly beneficial for organizations managing large volumes of critical data in PostgreSQL while wanting to leverage Dataverse’s advanced data relationship and visualization capabilities. Experience the power of a seamless, integrated data environment—without the complexity of data duplication!

Manage system views with security role Public preview  

We are announcing the Manage system views with security role preview.

Previously, the list of system views shown on each table form list is fixed for all users who have access to the table. The list of system views can be long for some of your tables, and they might not be applicable to users based on their role. Now Administrators can manage which system views to show on the table form list based on the user’s security role assignment. 

Prevent data exfiltration with client app access control Public preview  

We are announcing the Public preview of the prevent data exfiltration by securing app access feature.   

How does this affect me?  

This feature will allow admins and makers to protect against data exfiltration by controlling what apps can be run in your Dataverse Environment. This feature will help to prevent malicious users from creating or using unapproved apps to export sensitive data from your environment.  

Admins and makers will be able to utilize the following features from the Power Platform admin portal:  

• Create a list of approved applications that can access an environment.  
• Utilize enforcement mode to ensure that only the approved applications can access your environment.  
• Utilize audit mode to review the current applications that are approved or denied access to your environment. 

Intelligent Apps

React and Fluent based virtual code components are now generally available

React and Fluent-based virtual code components were announced to be generally available for Model-driven and canvas apps . This feature allows customers and partners to leverage the Microsoft Power Apps platform libraries for React and Fluent, enabling the creation of a diverse set of code components without the need to package these libraries. Key benefits include unified consistent Fluent styling across multiple apps, improved performance by eliminating the need for isolated React trees and smaller control bundles, and simplified development by removing the need to include React or Fluent libraries in individual component bundles, streamlining the development process.

Unlock new possibilities by customizing Copilot chat in your apps with Copilot Studio (Preview)

Customization is crucial for organizations implementing AI solutions at scale. With Microsoft Power Apps and Copilot Studio, businesses can design tailored experiences for each app, boosting productivity and user satisfaction. We are excited to announce the public preview of Copilot chat extensibility for model-driven apps, allowing partners and customers to make in-app chat more context-aware and aligned with their unique needs. By leveraging Copilot Studio, you can enrich your Copilot chat experience with additional topics, knowledge sources, connectors, and custom prompts, ensuring a tailored and scalable AI assistant for each model-driven app.

Learning and Documentation Updates

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Extend a Pipeline in Microsoft Power Platform – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Set Up Pipeline Environments in Microsoft Power Platform – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Build a Power Apps canvas app for a real estate solution with data from Excel – Training | Microsoft Learn
• Create a machine ordering app with Power Apps – Online Workshop – Training | Microsoft Learn (Learning Path)
• Get started with Microsoft Dataverse for Teams – Training | Microsoft Learn

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: January 2025 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place. This month we’re excited to shared a simplified approach to writing Power Fx with Copilot, Performance improvements to the Canvas designer, Studio visual updates, and smart paste for model driven apps!

AI-powered Development

Check out some of our latest improvements in this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

This month, it’s all about adding that shine! Power Apps Studio has a fresh new look, we’ve given you more ways to add web resources, and now you can customize your modern themes to get exactly the right color at each step of the ramp. Get in the know with this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

Power Apps Formula Creation with Natural Language Input

The latest update to the Power Apps formula bar introduces a new “Create a Formula” option, allowing users to craft Power Fx formulas using natural language. This innovation simplifies the formula creation process, making it more accessible for users of all skill levels. Enable this preview feature in your app settings, and then by typing a desired action in plain language, the AI suggests the appropriate formula, which can then be applied to the selected control and property.

Additionally, the update enhances the formula explanation capability, enabling users to select a portion of a formula and receive a plain language explanation of the selected part. This is particularly beneficial for understanding long or complex formulas. The Copilot in the formula bar now supports more languages, broadening the feature’s accessibility.

Modernization and visual update of the Power Apps Studio

In the effort to provide better out of the box accessibility, performance, and alignment with Microsoft product set we’ve updated the Power Apps Studio across both the canvas and model driven designers. This milestone creates a modern look and feel, as well as improved coherence throughout the Power Apps authoring experience for makers working across multiple app types, the plan designer and data workspace. No action is required to see the new updates, rolling out now.

Improved Studio performance with the new analysis engine

While you edit or play your app in Studio, a continuous analysis of app elements and their interactions is happening in the background. For example, this allows us to know that if you change an expression `Set(x, 5)` to `Set(x, {Lorem: “Ipsum”})` that the type of `x` is now a record instead of a number, and any references in your app to `x + 1` will therefore be marked as erroneous.  

To improve performance and reliability while building apps, we released the updated analysis engine, Generally Available and will be on by default for all Canvas apps, starting February 2025. To migrate ahead of this, go to app settings, and turn on ‘New analysis engine’ setting under Updates > New.

Performance Boost: The New Analysis Engine optimizes how we approach that analysis, complex Canvas apps that previously took minutes to load should now load much faster. Note that this is an authoring load time and edit time performance improvement and has no impact on app run time performance.

Accuracy: The New Analysis Engine enables more accurate determination of variable and collection types, reliably identifies the columns used in your app, and enhances Data Source call performance in published apps.

Intelligent Apps

New smart paste available in your model-driven apps

Smart paste is designed to make form-filling in model-driven apps as simple as copy & paste. Now you can effortlessly fill forms based on the information you already have, transforming the tedious task of filling forms with a smarter, faster, and more intuitive way to handle forms. We are also introducing citations so you can easily identify where suggestions come from, and expanding form fill assistance (including the new smart paste) to quick create forms.  

To learn more, read the blog at New smart paste makes filling forms as easy as copy & paste – Microsoft Power Platform Blog and documentation at Use Copilot’s form fill assistance feature in model-driven apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn.  

Learning and Documentation Updates

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Create a Dataverse table for the machine ordering app – Online workshop – Training
• Integrate a Power Apps app with Power Automate – Online Workshop – Training
• Create a model-driven Power Apps app for machine ordering – Online Workshop – Training

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: November 2024 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place. This month we’re excited to share the GA of field suggestions for Model Driven makers, Data workspace in 9 langagues worldwide and improved ALM for virtual tables and Copilot Studio!

AI-powered Development

See highlights of what’s new this month on Power Apps Pulse!

We’ve got some great enhancements to share this month! It’s never been easier to share your canvas apps, check out new ways to work with JSON-based data with updates to how you can use ParseJSON(), and build UI faster with improvements to the Copilot button inline action. Get in the know with this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

Copilot Field Suggestions for Model Driven Apps Forms and Views is available in GA

We are excited to announce that makers can leverage Copilot for column suggestions when creating new Forms and Views. You don’t have to start from blank any longer. When creating a new View, for example, makers can select Get AI generated column suggestions, which will enable Copilot to generate suggested columns for the View based on the Table columns, and View name or descriptions if they are available. This option is also available for new Quick view and Quick create forms.

The feature is available worldwide for English language users.

Data workspace is now generally available in 9 languages worldwide 

Craft your data model from natural language input, Excel file, or SharePoint list with Copilot assistance. Build deployment-ready business solutions involving multiple tables at a time in ERD view. Create not just canvas apps, but also model-driven apps on top of your business data — all available through Data Workspace in 9 languages now!

Comment Generated Formulas is now GA and available in multiple languages!

We are excited to announce that our Comment Generated Formulas feature is now generally available (GA)! This innovative tool allows you to create Power Fx formulas directly from code comments by typing // followed by your natural language request, making it easier than ever to create Power Fx formulas. Simply direct the Copilot on what you want to do in plain language, and our AI will generate the corresponding formula for you by leveraging the context of the application.

In addition to its general availability, the Comment Generated Formulas feature now supports multiple languages beyond English. This enhancement ensures that users around the globe can take full advantage of this powerful tool in their native language, whether it’s French, Spanish, German, or any other supported language. For all new apps, this feature is enabled automatically. For existing apps, you can easily turn it on from the New Settings. So make sure you have enabled the feature, and start transforming your comments into functional formulas today!

Enterprise-Grade Governance

New Rule for Generative AI features

Since some Copilots and generative AI features are not available in all geos or languages, we previously introduced two settings that enable Copilot features by allowing processing of data outside of region. This month, we are announcing a way to manage these settings at scale by using a new rule for environment groups.

Tenant admins can configure environment groups and publish the “Generative AI settings” rule to enable/disable cross-geo data movement and/or Bing search. For more information on these settings, see Turn on copilots and generative AI features – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn.

Application Lifecycle Management for Virtual Tables

We’re thrilled to announce an enhancement for virtual tables—Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) capability! This new functionality enables developers to streamline the transition of virtual tables in Solutions across Power Platform environments using environment variables.

Environment variables are essential to effective ALM, allowing developers to adjust connection references as virtual tables move from one environment to another. For example, when integrating with SharePoint, developers can update the connection reference to reflect a test or production URL. Similarly, for SQL integrations, switching between test and production servers is now straightforward.

With this new feature you can add virtual tables to a solution, export the solution, and import it into other environments, complete with all virtual table settings. This enhancement simplifies deployment and management, empowering developers to build with even greater efficiency and flexibility.

Healthy ALM in Microsoft Copilot Studio: Solution Explorer in Microsoft Copilot Studio (MCS) is in Public Preview

Solution explorer in Copilot studio is now available in public preview, and the team is thrilled to announce the launch of the latest features designed to manage copilots and their components like knowledge, topics, actions and more! Whether you’re Maker or ISV or End customer, Solution explorer offers capabilities to transport & deploy copilots and components between environments, to customize and extend existing copilot with proper controls. ALM in Copilot Studio is our desire to democratize conversational AI as a part of that mission to empower. We’ve listened to our customers’ needs and worked tirelessly to bring an ALM that truly stands out.   

Feature #1 Access solutions in MCS: In addition to accessing Solutions in MCS, customers can now create a new solution, add existing copilot to the solution and view all the objects related to the copilots, all within MCS without navigating out of the current platform. 

Feature #2: Create Copilot using solution: Customers can now create copilot using a solution which is their preferred solution within MCS. This prevents us from having any orphaned customizations

Feature #3 Edit and Extend copilot and components using solutions: Customers can now edit and extend copilot and its components using a solution which is their preferred solution within MCS. This helps to seamlessly upgrade and deploy copilots. 

Feature #4 Deploy copilot and components using Pipelines with a single click: Customers can now use pipelines as a single click process to deploy Copilots to Prod environment and is a very secure way to accomplish this migration.  

Create and manage custom solutions – Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn

Export and import copilots using solutions – Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn

Export and import copilot components using solutions – Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn

Learning and Documentation Updates

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Build your first app with Power Apps and Dataverse for Teams
• Build a mobile-optimized app from Power Apps
• Work with canvas app source code
• Configure forms, charts, and dashboards in model-driven apps
• Customize a canvas app in Power Apps
• Design a Power Apps canvas app by using Figma
• Get started with Power Apps and SharePoint
• Use specialized components in a model-driven form

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: October 2024 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Summary Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share what’s new in Power Apps. A summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place. This month we’re excited to share some key announcements from Power Platform Community Conference, Explain this in GCC, the GA of Power Catalog and more!

AI-powered Development

This month on Power Apps Pulse!

This month we’re excited to share improvements to Modern Theming, a new responsive template to create a list and details screen with lightning speed, a way to choose a data source for multiple controls on a screen with one click, and a new way to open existing .msapp files. See how in this month’s Power Apps Pulse!

Start building from plans, announced at PPCC

Great solutions don’t (usually) start in code, or by immediately designing the UI. Most experienced developers and teams start with an understanding of the problem, the users involved, and their requirements, before they even write the first line of code or draft a first app screen. We’re excited to bring the ability to build a plan to the Power Apps Studio. With this ability developers will be able to start working on the business problem in an iterative discussion with Copilot in Power Apps – they will be able to better keep connection between the business requirements and the solution they are building. This iterative and outcome focused development cycle can all happen right within Power Apps Studio.

Plan designer is rolling out initially as an Early Adopters Program, you can read the blog to find out how to sign up.

Copilot Power Fx Formula Explanations now available in GCC

We are excited to share that we are bringing the Copilot experience to our Government Cloud customers! As of September 24th, you will begin to see the Formula Bar Copilot button enabled for GCC (Government Community Cloud) environments and tenants that have authorized the use of Copilot and have enabled cross-region data movement for the environment. From the Copilot button, you can select the option to Explain the Formula and receive a natural language description of what the formula is doing in the context of the app. The “Explain the Formula” feature can help you quickly diagnose problems in an app by explaining each formula in simple to understand terms.

More exciting Copilot features for GCC are on the way! We can’t wait for you to try it out! Please share your thoughts and any feedback you may have by clicking the Thumb Up/Down icon in the explanation window.

Intelligent Application workload guidance as part of Power Platform Well-Architected

We are excited to announce the release of new documentation on Intelligent Application Workloads in Power Platform, as part of Power Platform Well-Architected. This comprehensive guide provides actionable insights for planning, developing, and maintaining intelligent application workloads, leveraging the Power Platform Well-Architected design principles. Key areas covered include responsible AI, security and compliance, performance optimization, deployment and testing, and integration options. Whether you’re a workload owner, technical stakeholder, or business stakeholder, this guide is designed to help you build robust, secure, and efficient intelligent applications.

Enterprise-Grade Governance

Announcing Public preview for mask sensitive data with column-level security

All enterprise and financial customers are required to protect their customers’ personal data and sensitive information from data leaks.

Highly privileged users who have access to customers’ personal data and sensitive fields can see these fields in their entirety. There is a risk when these employees can download sensitive information using bulk export operations. With this feature, the admin can mask sensitive fields and eliminate the risk of sensitive data being bulk exported.

Column-level security – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

Create and manage masking rules (preview) – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

General availability for cross-tenant license recognition Power Apps using Dataverse

To reduce administrative overhead for multi-tenant organizations using Power Apps, we are super excited to announce the general availability of cross tenant license recognition for canvas and model driven apps using Dataverse! When end-users access an app outside of their home tenant, Power Apps recognizes use rights the user has in both their home tenant or in the resource tenant (where the app is hosted). This is an enhancement to the cross tenant license recognition that already existed for canvas apps not using Dataverse.

Power catalog is Generally Available

The catalog enables makers to share and install re-usable components and templates that are customized for their orgs, by their orgs. This provides much more useful starting points than generic templates. 

Because the Catalog is built on top of our Solutions framework, you can also easily install Catalog items from any environment in a tenant, update items so that makers use the most recent, authoritative version, and have Catalog components accessible from authoring experiences, like Canvas Studio.

The Catalog also comes with Enterprise level security. By default, Catalog items must be approved by a delegated approver before they can be officially published and accessible by your org. There are also access controls for users to be able to submit, acquire, approve, or administer the Catalog. In order to resubmit new versions, a maker needs to belong to the original publishing group. The Catalog now enables you to manage your re-usable assets across your tenant in a secure way.

Virtual table to Dataverse native table relationship

Unlocking the power of Virtual Tables 

In the fast-paced world of data management, the ability to seamlessly integrate and relate data across various sources is essential. One of Dataverse’s features is its support for virtual tables, which enables real-time data access from external systems without the need to duplicate data within Dataverse. We are announcing General Availability of new capability which allows Makers the ability to create N:1 relationships between Dataverse virtual tables and Dataverse native tables.  

Enhancement Enables Business Value 

Unified Data View: With this feature users can take business decisions with a more cohesive data view that spans across native and external data sources. This is especially useful for organizations that maintain critical data in external systems but want to leverage the powerful data view and relationship capabilities of Dataverse.  

Streamlined User Experience: For end-users, this means a more seamless experience. They can work with data from various sources without needing to know or care where the data is physically stored. Whether it’s a customer record in Dataverse or an order history stored in an external SQL database, the user interaction remains consistent. 

By relating virtual and native tables, you can unlock new possibilities in reporting and analytics. Imagine creating a report that combines data from an external ERP system with native Dataverse data, all within the same environment. 

Content: Setting up relationships with virtual tables with Power Apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn​​​

Learning and Documentation Updates

Training Paths and Labs

Updated Training

• Create formulas that use tables, records, and collections in a canvas app in Power Apps – Training
• Create formulas to change properties in a Power Apps canvas app – Training
• Set up low-code plug-ins – Training
• Get started with Power Apps canvas apps – Training
• Create tables in Microsoft Dataverse – Training
• How to build the User Interface in a canvas app in Power Apps – Training
• Make your app like a pro – Training
• Use Power Query to load data in Dataverse – Training
• Work with external data in a Power Apps canvas app – Training

Documentation Updates

The post What’s new in Power Apps: September 2024 Feature Update appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.