In a recent conversation I had with Dion Hinchcliffe at Futurum, we spent time unpacking a shift I’m seeing consistently across enterprises experimenting with AI. It’s not just about copilots or chat interfaces. It’s about something deeper: a change in how work is designed, governed, and operated when systems can reason and act with intent.

For decades, applications have been the primary interface between people and systems. Work meant navigating menus, filling out forms, and clicking through screens carefully designed to constrain what users could do. Productivity improvements came incrementally—better layouts, faster load times, and more automation behind the scenes—but the underlying engagement model stayed the same. People adapted to software.

That model no longer holds.

As organizations race to adopt AI, a new challenge is becoming clear: translating human intent into systems that can act autonomously—without sacrificing control, security, or trust. Intent-first development addresses that gap by reshaping how agentic applications are designed, governed, and delivered at scale.

Agents as the new interaction layer

Instead of teaching people how to use systems, we can let people express intent—and allow systems to determine how that intent is carried out. This is not about replacing all apps overnight. It’s about changing their role. Apps no longer need to expose every possible action through UI. Instead, they:

• Provide trusted capabilities the agent can invoke
• Enforce business rules and permissions
• Act as systems of record, not systems of navigation

As AI systems become capable of reasoning, acting, and adapting, organizations are beginning to rethink the relationship between humans and software. In an agentic model, the agent becomes the primary interaction surface. A user may no longer need to know which system to open or which workflow to follow. They can simply state what they want to achieve: open a purchase order (PO), resolve this case, prepare a customer briefing.

Behind the scenes, agents orchestrate the necessary steps across systems, policies, and data sources. Procurement rules are applied. Approvals are routed. Records are updated. The user expresses intent once; the system coordinates the work.

Agentic solutions aren’t eliminating applications, but they are changing how people engage with them. Apps are the trusted capabilities agents rely on—serving as systems of record, sources of authority, and enforcement points for business rules and permissions. Applications shift from user destinations to services agents invoke. Agents work because structure already exists.

Rethinking enterprise complexity: Orchestration over navigation

This shift becomes clearer when you look at everyday enterprise processes.

Take something as common as opening a purchase order. Today, that often means navigating multiple tools, involving several teams, and manually coordinating approvals. The complexity isn’t the work itself—it’s knowing how to move through the systems.

With an agent‑first approach, that complexity is inverted. A user can simply say they need to open a PO for a project. The agent determines which background agents are required—vendor management, policy validation, approvals—and orchestrates the process across systems without forcing the user to navigate them.

We see the same pattern emerging in CRM. Rather than sales teams manually updating records, agents can monitor emails, calls, calendars, and systems in the background—keeping data current and surfacing relevant context proactively. The agent becomes the interface to customer intelligence, while the CRM remains the authoritative store behind it.

The value here isn’t conversational UI for its own sake. It’s reducing cognitive load while preserving control.

Agents as the business logic and decision layer 

This shift also changes where business logic lives.

Traditional enterprise systems embed logic deep inside individual applications—rules, workflows, and decision trees hardcoded into each tool. That makes change expensive and reuse difficult. When requirements evolve, logic must be rewritten repeatedly across systems.

Agentic systems invert that model. Logic moves into a shared reasoning layer that sits above systems of record. Agents evaluate intent, context, and constraints, then determine which actions are required right now. Policies, best practices, and exceptions can be defined once and applied consistently across processes instead of being repeatedly embedded in individual applications.

This is where the economics of software start to change. Improvements to reasoning or decision quality can compound across organizational functions—HR, finance, operations, and customer engagement—without rebuilding each system individually. Business value shifts from static workflows to shared enterprise intelligence.

Headless agents as a new layer of digital labor 

Not all agents interact directly with people.

Many of the most impactful agents operate quietly in the background—monitoring systems, reacting to triggers, coordinating tasks autonomously. These “headless” agents update records, flag issues, generate reports, and escalate decisions only when human judgment is required.

Together, conversational and headless agents form a new layer of digital labor. Routine work is handled automatically. Humans stay focused on oversight, judgment, and exceptions. The agent doesn’t replace enterprise logic—it coordinates it.

Operating agentic systems at scale requires a control plane

One point Dion and I kept coming back to is this: the real challenge with agentic systems isn’t building the first one. It’s operating hundreds—or thousands—of them responsibly.

As agents scale across teams and geographies, the questions shift quickly. How do you maintain visibility into what agents are doing and why? How do you enforce security, policy, and compliance consistently as agents act across systems? How do you measure impact, cost, and effectiveness as usage grows?

Without a managed platform, intent first development becomes ungovernable at scale. Logic fragments. Visibility breaks down. Early experimentation turns into operational risk. Governance must mature alongside autonomy.

This is where enterprise readiness becomes decisive.

Governance, lifecycle management, observability, and control aren’t optional add‑ons. They’re the foundation that allows agents to operate safely and reliably. Successful enterprise adoptions hide complexity behind an interface that works the way people already think.  Agents don’t eliminate the need for structure—they depend on stronger, more explicit structure than traditional automation ever required.

From pilots to an enterprise operating model

Most organizations begin with pilots—and that’s the right place to start. But pilots stall when governance, ownership, and measurement are treated as afterthoughts.

The pilots that scale share common patterns: centralized policy management, clear accountability between IT and business teams, built-in monitoring, and an explicit path from experimentation to production. Governance isn’t what slows progress; it’s what gives leaders confidence to move faster.

Over time, this becomes more than a collection of use cases. It becomes an operating model. Work shifts from task execution to outcome driven orchestration. Processes move from periodic redesign to continuous optimization. Systems adapt as business intent evolves.

Building adaptive enterprise systems for an agent-first world

This shift isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about building systems that can adapt as it arrives.

Agentic transformation isn’t just a technical change. It’s an operational one—reshaping how work is designed, governed, and continuously improved across the enterprise. Organizations that invest early in the right foundations—clear intent, strong constraints, and disciplined scale—will be positioned to turn intelligent applications into a durable advantage, not a fleeting experiment.

The most successful organizations won’t ask how to bolt agents onto existing apps. They’ll ask how to redesign systems so agents can sit confidently at the front door—turning intent into action with trust, speed, and scale.

In an agent first world, applications remain systems of authority and agents simply coordinate how and when those capabilities are invoked. Apps evolve:

• From destinations → to services
• From user driven workflows → to agent orchestrated actions
• From “where work happens” → to “how work is made possible”

If you want to hear this thinking unpacked in more detail, I explore these ideas directly with Dion Hinchcliffe at Futurum—from agents as the new interaction layer, to why governance becomes more critical, not less, as autonomy increases. Our conversation gets into real enterprise examples, the challenges of moving beyond pilots, and what it actually takes to operate agentic systems at scale.

I encourage you to watch the full interview to hear how these concepts show up in practice and to learn how intent first development is shaping the future of enterprise AI.

The post From apps to agents: Rearchitecting enterprise work around intent appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Recent research conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by Microsoft shows a strong correlation between generative AI (gen-AI) readiness and low-code maturity, suggesting that the increased use of AI-fueled tools in development is boosting low-code adoption. 

Power Platform and agents could be your gateway to a future of accelerated development, improved efficiency, and greater overall productivity. Prior to implementation, it’s important for organizations to determine their level of readiness, or maturity index, for these AI-powered, low-code tools. 

Changing development preferences with low-code and generative AI

Low-code platforms emerged to help organizations adapt to the digital shift and manage complex software development processes. Before the introduction of AI, Power Platform already allowed business users with little or no formal coding experience to create custom applications and streamline workflows, accelerating the development process and empowering more people within an organization to participate in digital transformation. The introduction of AI and Microsoft Copilot capabilities to agents and Power Platform further enhances development by allowing even more people to create innovative solutions using natural language. 

“One of the big benefits for us of Power Platform is that it all works together so seamlessly. That’s making it even easier to leverage the benefits of AI and add it to applications that have a real impact on our business.” 

Brian Hodel, Senior Analyst, Business Systems, T-Mobile 

Forrester’s research highlights a shift in application development towards low-code platforms and AI tools. Notably, the adoption of generative AI-infused capabilities is projected to boost low-code development by 28%, signaling a major shift towards these innovative methodologies such as Power Platform and agents. 

Understanding where your organization stands can identify areas for improvement and strategic growth, helping to ensure that you maximize the benefits of these modern development methodologies. But where should you begin? 

Assigning maturity level 

To effectively prepare for AI-first development, organizations should assess their readiness to integrate AI into low-code platforms, ensure that robust governance policies are in place for AI usage, and address data security gaps. The Forrester Consulting AI and low-code readiness assessment commissioned by Microsoft provides insights and recommendations to boost development efficiency, guide investment decisions, and improve data management. 

Specifically, the assessment measures: 

• Low-code maturity—evaluating your organization’s current use (if any) of low-code tools and overall strategy for low-code development. 
• AI readiness—assessing your organization’s understanding of generative AI, governance and policies for AI usage, and ability to integrate AI capabilities.
• Data security and governance—identifying gaps in data curations, access controls, and training to manage and secure data effectively. 

This proactive approach helps organizations make informed decisions and enhances their overall readiness for AI-first development. Dive deeper into why this assessment is instrumental for businesses aiming to stay ahead. 

Evaluate your organization’s current development strategy 

Understanding your organization’s current use of low-code tools and the level of adoption is a crucial first step for staying competitive. Forrester’s research indicates that 78% of development leaders say their firms empower non-IT employees through a citizen developer strategy or plan to do so in the next 12 months, showing how crucial it is to understand the integration of these tools into workflows and their effectiveness in achieving development goals. 

Assessing your organization’s current use of low-code tools is not just about understanding where you stand; it is about strategically positioning yourself to harness the full potential of these low-code and AI technologies, driving innovation, and staying competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. 

Assess your organization’s understanding of AI

By using Power Platform and agents, organizations can automate repetitive tasks, generate code, and provide intelligent recommendations, accelerating the development lifecycle. AI-infused tools in Power Platform and agents offer transformative potential—but to harness its power effectively, it is crucial to assess your organization’s existing knowledge and readiness. According to Forrester’s research, 81% of IT leaders state that most or all developers in their organization use generative AI tools for various tasks, emphasizing the widespread adoption and necessity of understanding these tools. 

Before deploying Power Platform and agents, IT leaders should assess existing governance and security policies regarding AI usage to comprehensively understand the organization’s readiness for AI-first development. This approach helps to ensure that the integration of AI tools is innovative, secure, and strategically sound. 

Evaluate your existing security and governance standards 

The integration of AI and low-code platforms has the potential to greatly improve development efficiency and drive innovation. Additionally, it presents new opportunities for maintaining robust organizational security and governance. 

As businesses increasingly adopt low-code and AI technology, IT leaders must identify any existing gaps in their data curation, access controls, and training throughout implementation and usage. Forrester’s research highlights the importance of governance in facilitating safe and effective use of generative AI tools. Addressing these challenges is crucial to harnessing the full potential of low-code and AI technologies, driving innovation and maintaining competitiveness in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. 

In addition to incorporating a diverse development strategy, nearly 75% of IT leaders anticipate increased investments in AI-enhanced development tools over the next year, highlighting the need to address gaps in security and governance strategies. Identifying gaps in data curation, access controls, and training is crucial for secure and effective AI and low-code integration. Building and maintaining a robust plan for data security and governance practices are essential to both avoid inaccuracies that could compromise AI models and low-code applications and foster a culture of security awareness and proactive risk management. 

By identifying and addressing these key gaps, IT leaders can help to ensure that their organizations manage and secure data effectively while embracing agents and AI in Power Platform. 

Key recommendations for enhancing readiness 

Based on the findings, Forrester provides several recommendations in the study to assist organizations in improving their low-code and AI maturity¹. Power Platform and agents can provide substantial support in implementing these recommendations. 

• Establish a proactive development program. Use the core managed platform capabilities within Power Platform to enhance security, governance, and operations at scale. Use the Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) to provide structured tools, best practices, and resources, facilitating effective management and support of the platform. Aligning these activities with organizational objectives encourages innovation and improves developer efficiency to continuously benefit from AI-first development. 
• Empower developers with AI-first development platforms. Use platforms such as Power Platform and agents to expedite development processes while integrating AI-powered business insights. AI-powered agents boost developer efficiency, enhance code quality, and reduce the time needed to bring new applications to market. Tools like Microsoft Copilot Studio facilitate the incorporation of generative AI features in low-code environments. 
• Classify, secure, and expose data and endpoints. Deploy data governance frameworks through Power Platform to classify, secure, and expose data and endpoints. This involves setting up data loss prevention (DLP) policies and using managed identities for secure access. The platform helps to ensure curated, clean, and secure data sources and endpoints, offering robust security, compliance, and operational excellence. 
• Govern through pragmatic risk management. Implement automated risk management processes with Power Platform and Power Platform admin center (PPAC), tailored to application complexity and risk levels. PPAC provides continuous monitoring, real-time alerts, and adherence to compliance standards, helping to ensure managed security, governance, operations, and availability. This comprehensive approach helps mitigate risks and maintain a secure development strategy. 
• Scale AI experimentation through citizen development. Allow IT leaders to spearhead AI experiments and develop innovative solutions using Power Platform and agents. This approach fosters continuous improvement and innovation. Providing training and support for developers at all levels enhances their technical skills and process knowledge, empowering them to effectively use AI capabilities. 

Take the readiness assessment today 

Begin your journey toward AI-first development with our AI and low-code readiness assessment. This crucial first step will set the foundation for implementing cutting-edge development tools in Power Platform, allowing your organization to realize the full benefits of AI-first development. 

Take the assessment now and unlock the full potential of AI capabilities in the Power Platform.

AI and low-code readiness assessment

Help your organization get the most out of Microsoft Power Platform.

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Explore the Power Platform Implementation Guide to discover how Power Platform and agents can help boost your score.

By addressing gaps and boosting maturity, your organization can better prepare for the future of AI-supported development. Empower developers, secure data, and transform application development with Power Platform. 

Source:

¹ Improve Productivity And Efficiency With GenAI-Infused Low-Code Development Tools, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft, 2025. 

The post Identify your readiness for AI-first development with agents and Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

We’ve got an action-packed schedule lined up, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to dive deep into Microsoft Power Platform technical readiness and best practices. You’ll also gain hands-on experience with the technology and learn how to apply it in real-world scenarios. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting your journey with Microsoft Power Platform, this conference is designed to provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to succeed. But it’s not just about the sessions and workshops; it’s about the connections we make and the community we continue to build. 

Microsoft Power Platform

Cut costs and development time with low-code tools.

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The latest innovations in Microsoft Power Platform

In case you missed it this morning, Charles Lamanna delivered an inspiring keynote, highlighting the latest innovations and future directions for Microsoft Power Platform. His keynote was followed by Jeff Teper and Kim Manis, who brought us the latest and greatest news on Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Fabric. Here’s a quick overview of the key takeaways: 

• Microsoft Power Automate AI recording for desktop flows—public preview: AI Recorder simplifies the creation of desktop flows by reducing errors associated with recording clicks and keystrokes. It offers a “show and tell” experience, making it easy for users of all skill levels to record desktop flows.

• Power Automate generative actions with inline cloud flows—EAP: This feature enables users to create and manage cloud flows directly within their workspace in Power Automate, enhancing productivity and streamlining workflows. 

• Desktop flows from natural language—public preview: The ability for users to generate desktop flows in Power Automate using natural language is now in public preview, simplifying the automation process and making it more accessible. 

• Two-action panes in the Power Automate designer—generally available: Gain a more flexible and efficient design experience in Power Automate designer by allowing users to work with multiple action panes simultaneously. 

• Coauthoring in Microsoft Power Apps—generally available: Coauthoring enables multiple makers to work on different parts of a canvas app simultaneously, speeding up development and making collaboration seamless and efficient. 

• Generate a plan with Copilot in Power Apps—limited preview: This will now help users generate detailed plans for their Power Apps projects, facilitating better planning and execution. 

• GitHub Copilot in Power Pages—public preview: Professional developers using GitHub Copilot chat in Microsoft Visual Studio can now leverage a Microsoft Power Pages agent for page-specific coding assistance, blending pro-code with low-code and moving website development into the AI future. 
• Copilot agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio—public preview: Copilot agents boost productivity by automating tasks and retrieving information quickly. Integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot, they enhance workflows by connecting to your organization’s knowledge and data sources. Read more about our announcement on Copilot Agents in this blog, published on September 16, 2024.
• Agent builder—public preview: Agent builder is a new, lightweight Copilot Studio experience that makes it simple for users of any skill level to build Copilot agents directly within BizChat and SharePoint and publish them as Copilot extensions. Read more about our announcement. 
• Enhanced Copilot Studio capabilities: The core platform now features GPT-4o as the default model, offering more precise answers than GPT-3.5 Turbo. Copilot Studio can handle larger knowledge sources (up to 512MB) and interpret images, diagrams, and tables in PDFs, enhancing its accuracy, efficiency, and versatility for modern businesses.

Explore opportunities to connect at the Power Platform Community Conference

As mentioned, there are so many opportunities to connect with fellow Microsoft Power Platform enthusiasts so hold on to your hats! Here’s what you can look forward to: 

• Keynote presentations: Ryan Cunningham will be hosting a thrilling panel discussion on security, research, and intelligent applications with Thomas Dohmke, Vasu Jakkal, and Jamie Teevan. They’ll be talking about the future of technology in the era of AI on Friday, September 20, 2024. 

• Breakout sessions: With more than 100 breakout sessions, you’ll have the chance to dive deep into Microsoft Power Platform technical readiness and best practices. 

• Hands-on workshops: Don’t hesitate to participate in one of the 20 full-day workshops to get hands-on experience with new Microsoft Power Platform technology and learn how to apply it in real-world scenarios. 

• Ancillary activities: Enjoy 15 additional activities, including meetups, community activation events, and even talent shows. 

• Show floor: Explore more than 60 partner booths and visit the Microsoft Booth to engage one-on-one with Microsoft experts, see product demos, collect unique event stickers and pins, and attend additional theater content in our dedicated theater space.  

Continuous product innovation with Microsoft Copilot and AI 

Finally, we want to extend a huge thank you to you, the Power Platform community, for your continued support and enthusiasm. Your feedback and engagement drive our innovation and success. The Power Platform community is a vibrant and diverse group of individuals who are passionate about driving change and making a difference. The impact of the developments contributed by this group extends beyond just our immediate projects, influencing broader industry trends and setting the stage for future advancements.  

This week is a celebration of that spirit, and we’re excited to see the amazing things that will come out of this conference as the insights shared during this event are invaluable. So, let’s dive in, learn, share, and make this the best PPCC yet!  

Looking ahead, don’t forget to register for Microsoft Ignite, taking place in November 18–22, 2024, for even more exciting innovations on the horizon for Microsoft Power Platform. You can also always stay connected throughout this week and post-conference by joining the Power Platform LinkedIn Community. This is the home of all ongoing product updates and insights, but also a place to share your experiences and connect with each other.  

The post AI-powered business innovation with the Power Platform Community appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Microsoft Copilot Studio

Explore new opportunities for applying AI to your unique business needs.

Try for free today

An agent is an AI assistant designed to automate and execute business processes, working with you or for you. They can build capacity for every individual, team, and organization—from sales to marketing to customer service, and more—enabling you to scale impact like never before.

Agents come in all shapes and sizes. They help you retrieve information from grounding data and reason over it to summarize or answer questions. More capable agents take actions when asked, replacing repetitive tasks, and the most advanced agents will be autonomous, operating independently to create plans, orchestrate other agents, and learn to know when to escalate to an employee.

With Copilot Studio, you can create and publish agents to all kinds of channels, including Microsoft Teams, your website, or your customer engagement hubs, and we’ve seen great customer momentum with more than 50,000 organizations having used Copilot Studio to date. 

We’re announcing two new capabilities for Copilot Studio:

• First, agents built in Copilot Studio can now be published directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot, surfacing right in the user’s flow of work.
• Second, we’re unveiling a new Copilot Studio experience that empowers users of any skill level to create agents right from within Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat and SharePoint.

These new features will be rolling out in general availability to all Microsoft 365 Copilot customers over the coming weeks. 

Publish Copilot agents to Microsoft 365 Copilot

Copilot agents enable you to enhance Copilot’s capabilities by connecting to your organization’s knowledge and data sources. When Copilot can draw from valuable data in SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or your line of business systems, it becomes significantly smarter about your business and its processes. You can also expand Copilot’s capabilities by equipping it with new skills, such as sending emails, updating records, or creating support tickets. And Copilot agents are capable of integrating with your existing line of business systems, enabling them to take action wherever it’s needed.

Users can find agents in a new Copilot agent store in Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat, Teams, and the Microsoft 365 app, and they can use these agents by mentioning them (@mention) or by interacting directly with them. IT admins can curate the catalog of agents available in the store from the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Empower users of any skill level to create agents

When it comes to agent creation, we’re excited to introduce a new, lightweight Copilot Studio experience that makes it simple for users of any skill level to build an agent directly within Business Chat and SharePoint. This new experience will roll out in general availability to all customers through October.

With it, you can tell Copilot Studio what you want your agent to do using natural language, and easily choose which knowledge sources you’d like to integrate from across your organization’s data, whether it’s specific documents or entire databases. When you’re ready, the agent can be used by you, shared with a select group, or deployed to an entire organization. Building an agent in SharePoint is even easier and you can create agents in SharePoint with a few clicks, no coding skills required.

You can continue to customize these or any agents in the full Copilot Studio editor, adding more advanced capabilities including autonomy. As we announced at Build 2024, we believe autonomous agents will fundamentally change business processes. We’re actively working with enterprise customers who are building autonomous agents in Copilot Studio as part of our private preview, and we look forward to sharing more later this calendar year about how users can build and use autonomous agents.

Manage agents with centralized controls

We believe organizations that embrace AI will create and use many agents. Copilot Studio provides a trusted environment that delivers confidence through comprehensive policies, access controls, and agent management, all easily managed within the admin center. This includes the ability to control agent creation, sharing, and use, which allows organizations to meet their security, compliance, and governance goals.

Furthermore, the data used to ground agents remains securely within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary, adhering to your organization’s labeling and policy guidelines. When extending your agents through Copilot Studio, your data remains in the Microsoft Azure tenant boundary with security layers to prevent invalid authentication and authorization and data loss prevention (DLP) policies for additional control. And all of this is built on Microsoft’s Responsible AI and Enterprise Data Protection standards.

Ultimately, in a world where AI is rapidly transforming how we work, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio offer new opportunities for applying AI to your unique business needs. By empowering users to create, tailor, and deploy agents of all types, Microsoft is making advanced AI accessible and valuable to everyone.

• Learn more about Microsoft Copilot Studio.
• Learn more about Microsoft Copilot Studio governance. 
• Read the Microsoft 365 blog post about Copilot Wave 2.
• Join us at the Power Platform Community Conference to see how Microsoft is transforming the developer experience. 
• Get in touch with a Microsoft representative today.

The post Unveiling agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio to supercharge your business appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

To support investment decisions, Microsoft commissioned a 2024 Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study that quantified Power Platform’s impact. The study highlights a 224% ROI, USD82 million in net-present value (NPV), and a payback period of under six months. These benefits stem from reduced development timelines and IT costs, time savings for users, and faster revenue growth from quicker solution deployment. 

The even better news: these figures don’t account yet for the transformational capabilities of generative AI. Currently, Microsoft is seeing organizations create workflow automations two times faster and developers successfully build low-code applications at a 60% higher success rate. 

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Power Platform

Explore the cost savings, efficiency gains, and revenue growth that organizations experienced using Microsoft Power Platform.

Read the report

Over time, we expect time savings for users and developers, IT costs savings, and topline revenue growth to dramatically increase as generative AI matures.  

For now, we encourage you to learn how customers are maximizing their current low-code investments below—and learn how you can do the same. 

Accelerate development timelines by 35% with low-code 

Microsoft Power Platform has enabled organizations to significantly reduce development and IT costs by significantly streamlining the creation of solutions and automations.  

By combining traditional development environments with Microsoft Power Platform’s low-code tools, companies have accelerated their development processes by 35%, allowing them to bring new solutions to market faster and with fewer resources.  

This efficiency gain, combined with the ability to replace costly legacy tech stacks, has resulted in substantial savings. For example, the Forrester study found that the composite organization was able to reduce their tech stack expenses by up to 80% within three years and cut support staff by up to nine full-time employees.

Time isn’t the only thing enterprises are saving by investing in low code tools for developers. Companies like G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers, who was not interviewed for the Forrester study, used Microsoft Power Platform to achieve over USD1.5 million in savings by streamlining development and reducing costs. Their IT team quickly built apps like a Store Audit app that saved USD100,000 in external development costs and a Parking Lot app developed in one day, saving drivers time and reducing delivery costs.

The Forrester study found that the composite organization achieved a risk-adjusted total of USD43.6 million in direct development and IT cost savings over three years, demonstrating Microsoft Power Platform’s powerful impact on operational efficiency and cost reduction. 

Complete tasks 25% faster with Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform has proven to be a transformative tool for organizations, enabling significant time savings and increased productivity across various departments. By building solutions with low-code products such as Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, and Microsoft Power Pages, organizations have streamlined processes that took weeks, now completing them in hours or minutes.

For instance, one energy customer Forrester spoke to reported savings of USD1 million, with a third of that coming directly from employee time savings. In another case, a financial services firm reduced an up-to-six-week manual HR process to just one hour, freeing up resources for more strategic initiatives.  

Additionally, while they were not interviewed for this particular TEI study, EY separately reported that they used Microsoft Power Platform to create PowerMatch, an app that increased automatic payment clearing rates in their SAP system from 30% to 80% and improved matched payments to 95%. PowerMatch is set to save EY 230,000 hours annually, illustrating the time saving capabilities of low-code solutions. 

On average, organizations have seen a 25% reduction for users in the time required to complete key processes improved using Microsoft Power Platform, translating into a risk-adjusted total of USD44.4 million in time savings over three years. This efficiency not only drives operational improvements, but also empowers teams to focus on innovation and value creation. 

Revenue increased by 7% by empowering employees 

Microsoft Power Platform has proven to be a catalyst for topline revenue growth by notably improving the time to market for new solutions, enabling organizations to better meet customer needs and capitalize on market opportunities.  

By rapidly building and iterating on prototypes, businesses have swiftly adapted to client feedback, enhancing user experience and maintaining competitive market share. For example, companies using Microsoft Power Platform have seen up to 7% of their revenue growth directly attributable to these accelerated processes, resulting in a risk-adjusted total of USD15.4 million in additional revenue over three years.  

This capacity to quickly deliver tailored solutions not only strengthens customer loyalty but also drives net new business, contributing to substantial revenue increases across impacted areas.  

For example, one head of new product at a manufacturing organization said, “By being able to deliver the right product to the customer, we’re getting additional orders from repeat customers. We avoid churn because customers are not going to competitors. We’re getting net new customers. For certain parts of our organization, our revenue increased by 18% to 20%, split between net new customers and repeat customers.”

Customers such as Lerøy Seafood Group, who was not interviewed for this TEI study, separately shared they used Microsoft Power Platform to streamline operations and drive millions in savings annually—contributing to topline revenue. Key innovations that drove savings and revenue increases included apps that optimized production schedules and improved fish weight estimation accuracy, to the tune of USD8 million annually. 

Get a custom business value assessment today

And the implementation of Microsoft Power Platform goes beyond quantifiable benefits, offering organizations a robust foundation for future growth, improved governance, and enhanced employee satisfaction.  

Organizations are reporting reduced risks of shadow IT by empowering employees to solve problems with low-code tools and governance via embedded tools such as Managed Environments. This not only strengthens compliance and security, but also leads to a more engaged and satisfied workforce. 

As businesses continue to explore new opportunities, the flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Power Platform position it as a key enabler of digital transformation, driving long-term success and sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive market. 

We invite you to read the Forrester Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Power Platform report and sign up for a custom business value assessment with your Microsoft Power Platform specialist. 

The post Reduce development times and increase ROI with Microsoft Power Platform  appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Before generative AI, Microsoft Power Platform already enabled tech-savvy business users to participate in the creation of digital business solutions. Copilot further democratizes this creation by accelerating development and assisting end users in getting the best out of their data in the applications they use most.

With Copilot in Microsoft Power Platform, organizations have the power to revolutionize the creation of apps, webpages, workflows, and custom copilots for development teams—while also greatly enhancing the experience and value for users for which these solutions were built. Let’s take a closer look into why more than 230,000 organizations have already used AI capabilities in Microsoft Power Platform.¹

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Build and customize copilot experiences with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Microsoft has been helping customers build intelligent conversational experiences since introducing Microsoft Power Virtual Agents in 2019. With the recent announcement at Microsoft Ignite 2023, Microsoft Copilot Studio ushered in the next generation of virtual agents, incorporating GPT technology into them to become AI-powered copilots.

Copilot Studio users can customize Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 using their own enterprise scenarios and business data for more control over critical topics and processes. They can also build, test, and publish their own standalone copilots and custom GPTs and manage their access, data, and analytics securely. Customers like PayPal, National Bank of Canada, An Post, and HP utilize Copilot Studio to bring about new value for customers, employees, and their businesses.

“Copilot Studio enables us to build and make quick updates to an employee-facing copilot that can reason over multiple knowledge sources and provide consistent and relevant answers. Copilot Studio has helped us reduce the workload and costs of our support team, while increasing the engagement and loyalty of our employees.”

Ramesh Murugan, Director, Employee Technology & Experiences, PayPal

Past announcements for Microsoft Copilot Studio:

• Copilot in Power Virtual Agents: Next-generation AI assists bot building with natural language
• Generative actions (public preview)
• Generative answers
• Build using natural language
• Add multiple languages to your copilot (public preview)
• Create your own plugins (public preview)
• Expanded regional availability for generative AI capabilities
• New licensing model

Learn how Copilot Studio can help customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 or build your own copilot experiences. We also invite you to check out the on-demand content from Microsoft Ignite and the implementation guide to learn more about practical deployment of Copilot Studio.

Build better, AI-embedded apps, faster with Copilot in Power Apps

Microsoft Power Apps lets you create custom apps for your business needs for makers—from low-code to professional developers—or business users with technical capabilities.

Copilot in Power Apps further accelerates the impact for makers, allowing them to work faster and be more productive. In fact, makers using Copilot in Power Apps build apps from Excel 80% faster and with a 60% higher success rate than those who don’t use Copilot. With the ability to quickly deploy Copilot in Power Apps, makers are just a few clicks away from bringing generative AI to their users.²

For users, Copilot in Power Apps provides an in-app Copilot experience that will allow them to gain insights from the data using natural language queries, making applications more flexible to meet their evolving needs.

“Building the app from scratch would have taken six to eight hours. We were able to just describe in natural language and build in a few minutes.”

Ron Colvin, Director of Innovation, CONA Services

Past announcements for Copilot in Power Apps:

• Announcing a next-generation AI Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps that will transform low-code development
• Build apps through conversation
• Create multi-screen applications with Copilot in Power Apps
• Continue editing your app with Copilot
• Ingest data and create robust structured tables with Copilot in Power Apps
• Customize copilot deployed in the apps with Microsoft Copilot Studio
• Add a predefined prompt for users to run on a click of a button
• Draft text input in canvas apps with Copilot
• Use Copilot to assist you with filling forms in model-driven apps

Learn more about building with Copilot in Power Apps and using end user copilot experiences in low-code apps.

Accelerate Hyperautomation with Copilot in Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate provides a range of tools to automate, analyze, and optimize processes within your organization to drive digital transformation. With Copilot in Power Automate, automation has become even faster for professional developers and has empowered even more non-developers to build solutions that save time and reduce costs.

With generative AI, users can work faster and automate more, whether they’re building workflows, generating custom code, seeking guidance, or analyzing performance data with the assistance of AI.

“Copilot in Power Automate takes seconds to create flows that commonly take me 10 to15 minutes to create manually. This lets me skip the busywork of creating basic flow structures and I can get right to the advanced customization that I need to focus on. This time delta is even larger for novice builders still learning the tools.”

Brian Hodel, Principal Developer for T-Mobile

Past announcements for Copilot in Power Automate:

• Automate smarter than ever before with AI Builder and Copilot in Power Automate
• Create and refine workflows
• Write script
• Get step-by-step guidance and information
• Assist in data ingestion for process mining
• Analyze desktop flow (robotic process automation) activity
• Surface insights from process mining and get recommendations for optimization

Explore Power Automate and learn more about streamlining processes across your organization to save time and focus on what’s important.

Quickly create secure, low-code business websites with Copilot in Power Pages

With all the exciting new generative AI features announced since March 2023, building with Microsoft Power Pages has never been easier. Makers can use Copilot in Power Pages to assist with creating a site or webpage, generating a form, or changing content tone. Professional developers can use Copilot in Visual Studio Code for the Web to quickly write and edit code, accelerating customization of their website. Furthermore, with the integration of Microsoft Copilot Studio, makers can build and embed their own generative AI-powered copilots on their websites with minimal configuration.

“We believe that AI-infused automation with [Microsoft] Power Platform will be critical for us to meet our goals to grow our internship program three times in two years with the same size team.”

Tim Herron, Chief Innovation Officer, Degrees of Change

Past announcements for Copilot in Power Pages:

• Revolutionize business websites with Copilot in Power Pages
• Create an AI-generated site using Copilot
• Create an AI-generated webpage using Copilot
• Add an AI-generated form using Copilot
• Add an AI-generated multistep form using Copilot
• Add AI-generated text using Copilot
• Add an AI-powered chatbot
• Add AI-generated code using Copilot

Learn about Power Pages and how you can enable all your teams to create professional websites faster and at a lower cost.

Manage and govern low-code solutions at scale in the era of AI

Over the past year, Copilot has enabled organizations to create new and innovative applications for their employees and customers, and it’s essential to have a governance strategy in place and that can be enforced. Microsoft provides new governance features for organizations to manage their Microsoft Power Platform suite and transition between personal productivity and enterprise mode to further ensure that you are in control of your data.

“[Microsoft] Power Platform enables us to carefully control the data that feeds our AI models and, through active directory and dataverse, also control who can access which data through those models.”

Thomas Bilbo, Principal Product Owner for Microsoft Power Platform, PG&E

Past announcements for Microsoft Power Platform governance and AI:

• Let AI generate app descriptions for faster and easier administration
• Tenant isolation
• Automated application lifecycle management integrated in Microsoft Power Platform
• Use environment routing to direct new makers into dedicated dev environments
• Advisor in Managed Environments uses AI to help you optimize Microsoft Power Platform tenant

Watch the Microsoft Ignite 2023 session on operating Microsoft Power Platform at enterprise scale, and if you’re interested in diving deeper into Copilot and governance, we invite you to tune into the Low Code Approach Podcast episode with Sid Gundavarapu.

Bringing Copilot to Microsoft Power Platform can transform your business

Generative AI is transforming the way we all work, and the speed of these transformations is increasing with each improvement. Microsoft sets the standard by creating a strong framework for how organizations can use AI, including a comprehensive approach to integrating AI responsibly. By integrating Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Power Platform, organizations can decrease time to market by allowing Copilot to handle certain tasks for them.  

We’re proud of what Copilot has already helped Microsoft Power Platform users accomplish in the past year, and we’re excited to assist further in accelerating innovation with these AI-powered, low-code tools.

Explore further Copilot can help your organization deploy impactful solutions with Microsoft Power Platform. If you’re curious to dive deeper into how Copilot works across Microsoft Power Platform products, tune into Episode 27 of the Low-code Approach Podcast.

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Sources:

1 Microsoft Fiscal Year 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call

2 Build better apps, faster: Copilot in Power Apps is now generally available | Microsoft Power Apps

The post A year of Microsoft Copilot: Accelerating innovation with AI-powered low-code appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

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 Microsoft 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 the new Copilot and core platform capabilities in 2024 release wave 1. 
• Leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development with Microsoft Power Platform. Sangya Singh, Vice President, Microsoft Power Automate, will talk about the way Microsoft Power Platform is reinventing software development with AI-powered no-code development and how Copilot is making development more accessible by enabling people to create innovative solutions through natural language.
• Redefine how business is done in the new era of generative AI. Hear Julie Strauss, Vice President, Generative AI Experiences – Business Applications,discusshow next-generation business application experiences powered by generative AI will help businesses solve strategic, cross-domain business problems by bringing together business domain insights and business process data. See how new capabilities combine with existing task-based Copilot experiences to allow any business user to explore business optimizations powered by a completely new way to discover, visualize, and interact with business data.  

And 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 and low-code solutions and get timely tips on how to use these new technologies to take on your business’s 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 Microsoft Power Platform

The 2024 release wave 1 contains hundreds of new features across Microsoft Power Platform applications—here are just a few of them:   

• Microsoft Power Apps now includes Copilot features to accelerate app development with AI and natural language, allowing customers to create enterprise grade apps and use their data and systems of record faster. Microsoft Power Pages now includes Copilot experiences that support building intelligent websites, including design, page layouts, content editing, data binding, learning, chatbot, accessibility checking, and securing the site faster.
• Power Automate will now have Copilot capabilities across cloud flows, desktop flows, and process mining. Customers can use natural language to discover optimization opportunities, build automations, and quickly troubleshoot issues.
• Microsoft Copilot Studio is introducing rich capabilities to integrate with OpenAI GPTs, along with new channels such as WhatsApp and software lifecycle capabilities, such as topic level import/export and role-based access control.

See what AI can do for you

Microsoft customers are already doing amazing things with the new AI features in Microsoft Power Platform, and we can’t wait to inspire you with key customer 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)  

Business Applications Launch Event

See key presentations from Microsoft leaders.

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The post Join us to see what’s new with AI in Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

That’s why industry leaders are turning to AI-powered, low-code and no-code solutions as a way to help their people do their jobs more efficiently and help their business stand out among competitors. The potential for AI at work is practically endless. Understanding how your teams can accomplish more with AI is key for any business in the digital space.

Business Applications Launch Event

Experience the new era of AI-powered business

Register for the event

Explore the future of AI

Join us for a first look at the latest innovations for Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 at the tenth Microsoft Business Applications Launch event on October 25. Hundreds of new features, plus tons of AI updates—it all adds up to one great opportunity to find out more about AI and what it can do for your organization.

Register now to hear from thought leaders and Microsoft Power Platform experts about the future of AI, and be first to catch a glimpse of the latest AI capabilities helping businesses work more effectively, including:

• New copilot features in Power Apps that boost developer productivity, give every user access to natural language assistants, and generate admin insights.
• Improved copilot experience in Power Pages that makes building websites, connecting to your data, and managing it all easy.
• The latest AI in Power Automate that makes automating and authoring faster by helping you build new cloud and desktop flows with improved process mining.
• New AI features in Power Virtual Agents like multilingual bots, generative answers and actions, and interactive voice response (IVR) integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

You’ll also get updates on Power BI, Microsoft Dataverse, governance and administration, solution extensibility, and ISV experiences to help you analyze, act on, and automate the data that fuels your business.

Hear from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Platforms, about how our customers are innovating every day with Microsoft Power Platform, then catch the latest AI capabilities in action, with real-world demos and guidance on how to:

• Develop stronger insights, reduce costs, and enhance creativity with intuitive, AI-powered solutions.
• Help employees and teams focus on revenue-generating work by creating automation solutions that let them avoid repetitive tasks.
• Elevate collaboration by connecting people, data, and processes across your organization with the newest AI-powered tools.

Insights on how AI can empower your employees

To understand what’s ahead in AI-assisted low-code and no-code solutions—and what your employees can do with them—you’ll hear directly from Microsoft leaders about their vision for AI, customer service, and operations. Get timely tips on how to use these brand-new technologies to take on your business’ toughest challenges, and if you have questions about new AI features, how Copilot experiences work, or what’s new in low-code, stay for the live Q&A chat to get them answered by experts.

10 events’ worth of innovation

It’s hard to believe this will already be our tenth Business Applications Launch Event—a perfect moment to look ahead and reaffirm our commitment to business app innovation. But the best is yet to come. I’m looking forward to celebrating this milestone with our customers and partners, along with all the new features our team has been cooking up. I can’t wait to see what your business does with them next.

Register now. And join us to experience the new era of AI-powered business.

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 

9:00 AM–10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)

The post See new AI for Microsoft Power Platform at our tenth launch event appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Under current economic pressures, organizations are being squeezed at all levels, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects slowed global growth in 2023, down to 2.9 percent from 6 percent in 2021.¹ IT departments are no exception as they look for creative ways to cut costs.

Concurrently, IT departments are facing a growing application backlog. There are simply not enough developers and technical specialists to meet stakeholder demands. In 2021, IDC predicted that 750 million new apps need to be built by 2025.² Simply put, the demand for technical solutions is growing at an almost exponential rate, and there are not enough professional developers to meet that demand.

The way forward? Low-code. Edelman Assembly, on behalf of Microsoft, surveyed more than 2,000 IT CIOs and IT pros to understand the benefits they derive from low-code platforms. The research is clear: low-code empowers IT departments to rapidly build technical solutions and streamline data insights all while lowering costs.

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Accelerate application development

Low-code platforms help drive efficiency gains by accelerating legacy application modernization and expediting development efforts via prebuilt components. In fact, 89 percent of CIOs and IT pros surveyed say low-code is effective in increasing efficiency.

To close the app gap generated by developer shortages and traditional development timelines, low-code helps organizations reduce time to value by extending existing legacy core capabilities, streamlining migration projects, and replacing legacy applications with low-code solutions. These solutions are an incredible boost to application modernization endeavors, as 87 percent of CIOs and IT pros say low-code is very useful in helping their organizations modernize legacy applications.

According to a 2021 Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study of Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Azure for Corporate IT, professional developer efficiency with low-code platforms significantly increases over time, averaging 62 percent over three years. These efficiency gains are necessary as 45 percent of IT pros say they first adopted low-code platforms to make up for staff shortages.

Additionally, IT pros can expect increasing efficiency gains due to recent announcements of embedded AI in low-code platforms. Features like Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents will further streamline solution development with natural language authoring and the ability to converse with an AI assistant. Similar features become increasingly important to organizations adopting low-code platforms, as 87 percent of CIOs and IT pros say increased AI and automation embedded into low-code platforms would help them better use the full set of capabilities, a trend we are seeing across low-code tools.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is embracing low-code to accelerate development after building its Cyber Technology Rationalizer solution in six weeks. PwC needed to migrate from its legacy system to improve maintainability, scalability, and versatility with a professional grade solution built for internal and external users.

PwC created a multitenant enterprise decision support website with Microsoft Power Platform. Using the Power Pages Web API management layer, the team found that they could use Microsoft Dataverse with C# plugins to reuse existing work and quickly create a new, low-code solution. Not only did this only take six weeks, but PwC has also achieved 85 percent cost savings and 30 percent time savings since its implementation.

Drive organization-wide cost savings

Reducing costs and building more technical solutions at the same time can sound paradoxical. Application development and maintenance is a costly endeavor, to do more of it should clearly increase costs. So why do 87 percent of CIO and IT pros surveyed say low-code is effective in helping reduce costs?

Power Platform and Azure helped reduce costs by 24 percent due to increased developer efficiency, increased DevOps efficiency, and reduced spending on third-party solutions according to a 2021 Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study of Microsoft Power Platform and Azure for Corporate IT. 

In addition to reducing direct IT costs, low-code platforms help reduce costs across organizations by building solutions that otherwise would sit in an organization’s application backlog. These solutions drive cost reductions by eliminating manual processes, increasing user productivity, and increasing data-backed decision making.

A great example of the cost savings derived by IT and business departments is EY’s PowerPost app. The company used Microsoft Power Platform to automate the high-frequency, semi-manual General Ledger (GL) posting process used internally by the EY Global Finance team that integrates with its SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

The GL document posting process was prone to errors due to the data transfer steps between different applications. Sometimes successful posting in SAP could take longer than a day or two. Built in weeks, not months, by EY’s in-house development team with low-code, the PowerPost app reduced document processing lead time by 95 percent, is forecasted to reduce existing costs by 30 percent, and eliminated emails and Excel requirements by 100 percent with the new process.

Streamline data insights to actions

As technology becomes more prevalent in every business process, the volume of data grows at a rampant pace. That mounting data is often duplicated across databases and not properly formatted, making the data inaccessible for decision making. Low-code platforms help break down data siloes by centralizing that data and putting easy to consume data visualizations in users’ hands for cleaner, more actionable data.

Many low-code solutions are built to lift and shift legacy applications and automate manual time-consuming processes. These solutions help break down data siloes, reducing data duplication and centralizing data in a single source of truth. This centralized repository created by low-code platforms is why 86 percent of CIOs and IT pros say low-code helps their organizations generate more accurate insights from their data.

These more accurate insights enable IT pros to build more comprehensive and effective solutions for users. This means reduced re-work and greater adoption of solutions reducing costs and time to market, resulting in decreasing application backlogs for IT departments. The impact of these solutions is evident as 89 percent and 88 percent of CIOs and IT pros respectively say low-code has been effective in generating data-driven insights that they use to better service customers and internal stakeholders.

ÖBB, the Austrian rail operator, saw the benefits of low-code platforms in centralizing data with low-code platforms and is able to offer better service to customers with this data. ÖBB services 477 million passengers annually across Europe. ÖBB needed a way to provide quick, intelligent, automated responses to millions of customer queries—with the ability to hand off to a human agent when necessary.

Using the out-of-the-box AI capabilities in Power Virtual Agents, integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, Power BI, and Power Automate, the company built a chatbot to answer basic customer questions, freeing human agents to concentrate on more complex and high-value interactions.

Moreover, producing detailed internal reports through Microsoft Power BI based on clean, centralized data from Power Virtual Agents bots helped the project team gain unique insights into how customers interact with the bot, including how it transitions them to a live agent. ÖBB used these insights to further refine its bot for improved customer experiences.

How can low-code help your IT department?

For IT departments and organizations looking to reduce costs, reduce their application backlog, and rapidly turn data insights into actions in 2023, low-code should be a key part of your development strategy. To learn how your organization can start, grow, and develop an expert level low-code practice, take the Microsoft Power Platform Adoption Assessment.

This assessment is designed to help you get started quickly by identifying opportunities to optimize and streamline efforts, and sharing best practices on how organizations can better use Microsoft Power Platform to achieve their business objectives.

End notes

¹International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook.

²IDC, 750 Million New Logical Applications: More Background.

The post Low-code signals 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

We recognize the significance of both AI and low-code for organizations, and the benefits these technologies in union can have for all developers: a more intuitive, iterative experience for citizen developers and accelerated development for professional developers.

Today, we’re taking another big step forward in this journey with the launch of next-generation AI features for Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder, enabled by Azure OpenAI Service.

Next-generation AI features for Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder

New! Conversation booster in Microsoft Power Virtual Agents: Simply point your bot to your company-specific resources, like your website or an internal knowledge base, and watch it start to answer questions in minutes, right out-of-box, with no additional authoring. Learn more here.

New! Create text with GPT model in AI Builder: AI Builder now brings Azure OpenAI Service to its user-friendly interface, enabling makers to use a new low-code generative AI model and templates with Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Power Apps. Learn more here.

We announced AI Builder four years ago as the first AI capability in Microsoft Power Platform, followed by Power Apps Ideas 18 months ago, which was the first infusion of generative AI in a commercially available product. And we have continued to invest with the addition of express design in Power Apps and description to flow in Power Automate late last year. And we have much more to come.

Conversation boosters in Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents is the low-code approach to building chatbots with an intuitive visual drag-and-drop approach that vastly simplifies bot creation, all backed with a code experience, if needed (preview). And like most industry bot tools, it has relied on the maker to create conversation topics and configure dialog flows. 

But that’s about to change with the new conversation booster capability in Power Virtual Agents.

Normally, when a bot encounters a question or response that it hasn’t been trained on, it can only respond in one of two ways: ask the user to rephrase, or offer to connect to a human agent, something we are all very likely familiar with.

Now, using the power of next-generation AI, you can connect your bot to your most current and useful data sources, like internal and external company websites, and the bot can immediately start to use that data to construct a response.

This means that out of the box, the bot is ready to answer user questions based on the information on your site—all without authoring a single topic or spending additional development cycles. This gives developers more time to focus on building complex conversation flows and delivering increased resolution rates and improved customer outcomes.

With the conversation booster feature, you can use the data source that holds your single source of truth across many channels through the chat experience, and the bot responses are filtered and moderated to adhere to Microsoft’s responsible AI principles.

This also unlocks new use cases for bots which may have been difficult to justify due to the expected build time and cost. With the bot now able to search, summarize, and moderate answers at speed, with just a URL and no additional development, you can quickly create bots to help resolve repetitive queries for your customers and internal functions like human resources, IT, operations, and more.

Here are some examples of how organizations can put the conversation booster to work. And check out the videos to see it in action. 

• A retail company builds a bot to answer questions for seasonal job postings, pulling from existing content on the recruitment process and company values.
• A technology company can quickly connect a bot to disparate product support knowledge bases and FAQs and provide support to customers without writing any code.
• A media company can build an employee bot to resolve common HR queries about performance reviews, bonuses, and policies based on existing policy documentation.

Watch how to build customer-facing bots:

Watch how to build departmental bots:

Create text with GPT model in AI Builder

AI Builder has democratized access to complex AI models for use in Power Apps and Power Automate and includes models for category classification, object detection, prediction, sentiment analysis, and many more.

And today we’re excited to announce the addition of a new Azure OpenAI Service model that unlocks new ways for organizations to embed intelligent text generation features into their Power Automate and Power Apps solutions with a few clicks.

Makers can use the prebuilt templates to interact with the model and build the right prompts for their workflow, reducing development time for both citizen and pro developers.

It’s easy to get started and use the new model in your app or flow, some examples could include:

• A researcher can use the model to summarize text from weekly released reports and send it to their email inbox, all with Power Automate. This helps inform their analysis and identify themes/trends at speed.
• A marketing manager can create targeted generated content ideas by entering specific keywords or topics and use the generated text for emails or social media posts, all within their marketing team’s app.
• A customer service agent can build a flow within Power Automate to summarize, classify, and route customer queries for quick responses to complaints or feedback.

The sky really is the limit, and that’s why AI Builder is an invaluable tool and key ingredient within Microsoft Power Platform. It’s helping everyone—regardless of their background or level of AI expertise—to quickly and easily use next-generation AI in the solutions they build.

Take a look at it in action in the video below.

You can find all the information regarding Microsoft’s recent announcements on the AI Hub.

Responsible AI at Microsoft

Microsoft is committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We are helping our customers use our AI products responsibly, sharing our learnings, and building trust-based partnerships. For these new services, we provide our customers with information about the intended uses, capabilities, and limitations of our AI platform service, so they have the knowledge necessary to make responsible deployment choices.

Availability

The conversation booster feature in Power Virtual Agents is experimental, and its accuracy and relevance cannot be guaranteed. It is not currently possible to publish your bot while this feature is enabled, but you can easily disable it in the settings at any time.

Create text with GPT model in AI Builder will be available via a limited preview, which you can learn more about here.

Both features will be available in the United States and in the English language only.

The post Build solutions faster with Microsoft Power Platform and next-generation AI appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.