The Power Platform Monitor centralizes all your monitoring needs into a single unified experience that appears in both the Microsoft Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC) and the Power Apps Maker Portal (Maker Portal.) Insights are now available to both admins and makers. Makers see the metrics filtered to their specific resources.  This preview release starts with a few key metrics. New metrics and recommendations will be introduced incrementally over time. This empowers teams to:

• Gain visibility: Easily see key metrics over time such as App Open success rate, Time to interact, and Time to full load for canvas apps and metrics for model driven apps are due to appear soon. You can see the current values for these metrics and their behavior over time. These key metrics give you timely insights into the health of applications in your tenant.
• Simplify Operations: With a single consolidated view of metrics and with Monitor in in both PPAC and the Maker Portal, both admins and makers are empowered to more easily observe and diagnose problem applications.
• Act Faster: Use the Power Platform Monitor to identify apps with degraded health more quickly. Then, use intelligent recommendations that are provided with the metric to quickly explore possible solutions.

The Preview release gives you the chance to explore the core features of Monitor, provide feedback, and help shape its future.

Start using the Power Platform Monitor

We invite you to be part of this exciting journey to make it even easier to monitor all resources in your tenant. By using the preview version of Monitor, you’ll gain early access to features and metrics and have the opportunity to provide valuable feedback that will directly influence its development.

To get started, try the Monitor Tab in PPAC or the Maker portal.

Open Monitor in PPAC by choosing Monitor on the left navigation bar. (There is a similar entry point in the Maker Portal.)

Monitor will give you an overview of the health of your apps. (Maker portal experience shown here.)

Dive into any resource to see metrics over time.

The Power Platform Monitor will gain additional metrics and recommendations incrementally. Stay tuned for updates as we continue to refine and expand the capabilities.

For more information see: Monitor page (preview) – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

The post Use Monitor to maximize production health (Preview) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Previously, a SPN based connection was not shareable, which meant that if an app was created with a connection using SPN, every user working with that app would need the specific SPN credentials. While usable for services such as Power Automate where the service runs in the background, this approach does not work for Power Apps. This change streamlines the user experience and is secure.

SPN is protected by secure implicit connections, ensuring that your data remains safe and secure. This feature is now available through regions up to North America, with government regions coming online in the coming weeks. SPN connections should generally be authored by tenant admins and carefully shared with development organizations.

This update makes SPN usable for Power Apps over SQL Server. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to enhance our platform to better serve your needs.

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/sql/#service-principal-authentication for details on how to set it up for your application.

The post Use shareable Service Principal Name with Power Apps appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

SQL Server environment variables (Entra) for Power Apps will save you time moving your solutions from one environment to another. For example, from an environment used for dev or test to a different environment used for test or production. 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.

There are two environment variables to set for SQL connections: server and database. The database environment variable depends on the server environment variable. First you create an environment variable for your server. Once that is created you can create an environment variable for the database that attaches to the server environment variable.

Use an environment variable by selecting to create data source and instead of creating a new server database combo, use the ‘Advanced’ tab to select the environment variable to bind to the controls in your app.

Use SQL Server environment variables (Entra) to easily enable professional deployment patterns. See the documentation for this feature for an in-depth discussion: Use environment variables in Power Platform solutions – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

The post SQL Server environment variables available for Power Apps appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Like with SharePoint, this feature operates with any natively bound gallery where the gallery is directly populated by SharePoint and not by a collection or variable.

Using Copilot with filter

Open a running app that uses a gallery against SQL Server.  If you have a premium license (which is required for the SQL Server connector), then you will see an adorner on your gallery.

Copilot supports three kinds of queries – filter, sort, and search.  While you can type any query you might like, it suggests possible questions based on your data in your app at the time. Note that Copilot over SQL supports an additional verb “in” that SharePoint does not support. It will search for an occurrence of your search text inside of a record value.

Copilot then scopes the records to satisfy the query. It displays a “Filtered” badge in the upper right corner of the gallery.  The exact query that was executed is displayed as a tag. And you can continue to refine your query with additional details by adding more query commands.

Filter, sort, and search galleries with Copilot to filter provides five key benefits:

• Copilot makes end users more productive and saves time. If an author has not built in search and sort capabilities, Copilot enables this scenario and makes them more productive. End users save time with the ability to directly express their query in natural language.
• Copilot saves author’s development time. Authors save time developing apps because they don’t need to develop all the UI controls necessary for the app. Instead, they can rely on Copilot for this functionality.
• Copilot enables queries over the full query result – not just what you can see in the gallery. Users can filter, sort, and search on fields even if the application doesn’t provide UI controls for these tasks. For example, you can search for records even if the application doesn’t have a search bar.
• Copilot is query safe. It only generates queries that can be run on the server. Authors don’t need to worry about whether or not their queries can be delegated.
• Copilot keeps private data private. It only works with the data that is normally returned to the application. It doesn’t access fields that aren’t returned to the app in a gallery/grid or form.

Create a new app with Studio version on or after 3.24092.17 or re-publish an existing app with this version. Then access your app while it is running. (Copilot with filter only appears at runtime, it does not appear inside of Studio.) Select an item in the gallery to start using Copilot with filter.

See the documentation for this feature for more details. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/user/smartgrid

The post Use Copilot to quickly filter, sort, and search canvas app galleries with SQL Server appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Using Copilot with filter

Open a running app that uses a gallery against SharePoint.  If you have a premium license, then you will see an adorner on your gallery.

Copilot supports three kinds of queries – filter, sort, and search.  While you can type any query you might like, it suggests possible questions based on your data in your app at the time.

Copilot then scopes the records to satisfy the query. It displays a “Filtered” badge in the upper right corner of the gallery.  The exact query that was executed is displayed as a tag. And you can continue to refine your query with additional details by adding more query commands.

Filter, sort, and search galleries with Copilot to filter provides five key benefits:

• Copilot makes end users more productive and saves time. If an author has not built in search and sort capabilities, Copilot enables this scenario and makes them more productive. End users save time with the ability to directly express their query in natural language.
• Copilot saves author’s development time. Authors save time developing apps because they don’t need to develop all the UI controls necessary for the app. Instead, they can rely on Copilot for this functionality.
• Copilot enables queries over the full query result – not just what you can see in the gallery. Users can filter, sort, and search on fields even if the application doesn’t provide UI controls for these tasks. For example, you can search for records even if the application doesn’t have a search bar.
• Copilot is query safe. It only generates queries that can be run on the server. Authors don’t need to worry about whether or not their queries can be delegated.
• Copilot keeps private data private. It only works with the data that is normally returned to the application. It doesn’t access fields that aren’t returned to the app in a gallery/grid or form.

Getting started

Choose a build after 7.4 (expected on 7/29) and make sure you’ve also re-published your app on 7.4 or later. Then access your app while it is running. (Copilot with filter only appears at runtime, it does not appear inside of studio.) Select an item in the gallery to start using Copilot with filter.

See the documentation for this feature for more details. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/user/smartgrid

The post Use Copilot to quickly filter, sort, and search canvas app galleries with SharePoint lists appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Getting started

To use this feature, you need to either create a new SQL connection to your app or already have one in your app. In the table selector, choose the ‘Stored Procedure’ tab and select all of the stored procedures you want to access in your app. Then you can directly access the stored procedure in your app by referring to the data source name and then ‘dot’ into the specific stored procedure in a Power Fx formula.

This feature is an extension to the tabular model. We allow the ability to execute stored procedures, but we do not allow the ability to run arbitrary SQL. This helps provides an additional level of security. Additionally, you can bind a stored procedure directly to a gallery or table by checking the ‘Safe to use for galleries and tables’ checkbox.   

See the article Connect to SQL Server from Power Apps for a discussion of how and when to select this option and other details on how to use this feature.

The post Call SQL Server procedures directly in Power Fx (GA) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Initially these changes are limited to the web – mobile and native will get these updates later. The updated dialog includes the previous improvement of showing only specific actions used by the app – rather than listing all the actions possible by the connector.  Additionally, now the permissions are shown in-line. Tabular connector actions (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) are listed in-line. Action connection capabilities are listed line by line.

The consent dialog performs two tasks. First it gets all of the connections ready for the app. Once all the connections are ready, it then asks for consent.  If all the connections are ready to begin with, then the consent dialog simply lists the actions necessary for the app and asks the user to allow them.

However, if there are sign in issues, they must first be resolved before consent can be given.  For instance, if the user has never logged in to a site, the consent dialog will first ask the user to sign in.

The post Power Apps streamlined consent dialog begins rollout this week. appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Getting started

To use this feature, open a Power App and enable the preview switch in ‘Settings / Upcoming features / Preview’.  Then, create a new SQL connection to your app. You can add to the existing connector already present in the app. In the table selector, choose the ‘Stored Procedure’ tab and select all of the stored procedures you want to access in your app. Then you can directly access the stored procedure in your app.

This feature is an extension to the tabular model. We allow the ability to execute stored procedures, but we do not allow the ability to run arbitrary SQL. This helps provides an additional level of security. Additionally, you can bind a stored procedure directly to a gallery or table by choose the ‘Safe to use for galleries and tables’ checkbox.   See the article Connect to SQL Server from Power Apps for a discussion of how and when to select this option and other details on how to use this feature.

The post Call SQL Server stored procedures directly in Power Fx (Preview) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

This highly anticipated feature provides a secure layer of protection for fixed credential connections such as SQL Server basic auth (i.e., connection string username and password.)  All new apps now use this feature.  Older apps must be converted to use this feature (if not already converted) and previously shared connections unshared.

With this new feature, connections are no longer shared with other makers. Instead, the app now interacts with a connection proxy object that only allows queries from the app and also only allows the types of queries that are in the app.  The most prominent use of implicitly shared connections is for SQL Server. Admins can use a report available in the COE toolkit to find apps that do not use this feature.      

For more information, see the article on Secure Implicit Connections. 

The post General availability of Secure Implicit Connections appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Since releasing Preview, the ability to rename, refresh, and add actions from other environments has been added. The alternative to calling a Dataverse action directly is to embed a Power Automate flow which slows performance. Power App will now show a warning banner if app calls Power Automate to invoke a Dataverse action.

For documentation details on how to use this feature, please see the Power Apps documentation on how to Work with Dataverse actions in Canvas Apps. See also the formula language features that enable working with Untyped objects.

The post Direct Power Fx Dataverse action invocation GA appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.