This update and other data workspace features are now available in 20 languages worldwide. These include English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Finnish, Greek, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Russian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

For more information about the availability of data workspace, see Create and edit tables using Power Apps.

Build data model with existing tables

You can now add existing tables to your workspace either manually or with Copilot recommendations. Copilot will suggest the most relevant tables based on the set of tables currently in your workspace. Additionally, when working within a solution, you can also filter to show only tables in current solution, promoting better ALM practices.

Manage existing tables in the enhanced ERD view

The ERD view and interaction of data workspace have also been enhanced to streamline the management of your data model. You can now review column details about your tables, as well as to show and hide columns and relationships of your tables.

Limitations

While we are working on enabling a full editing experience of existing table within data workspace, currently you can only add existing tables to data workspace in read-only mode. To edit existing table, you will need to open the table in a new tab. This also means that you will not be able to create one-to-many relationships to existing table in the data workspace.

You can find more information about limitations of data workspace in this doc: Limitations using the table visual designer

Learn more about data workspace

• Create and edit tables using Power Apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
• Data Workspace is Now Generally Available! – Microsoft Power Platform Blog
• Work with complex data models in an ERD view assisted by Copilot – Microsoft Power Platform Blog

The post Work with existing tables in data workspace appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

It just takes a few seconds to connect your Dataverse environment to Git. You can connect and use Git integration within Power Apps, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Power Automate, and Power Pages. You’ll also need access to an Azure DevOps Git repository.

Rollout is in-progress. Git integration is currently available in public geos outside the US. Your environment must be enabled for early access and accessed at https://make.preview.powerapps.com.

As the team develops, Dataverse tracks everyone’s changes. When ready, commit your changes to a branch in the connected Azure DevOps Git repository. A commit link is provided to view the changes within the repository and compare diffs. You’ll notice solutions and solution objects are now stored in human readable formats in the repo.

Professional developers can work in source control while others work in one or more environments. It’s easy to pull others’ changes into other development environments which are connected to the same source code location. This allows team members to build without others editing in their environment and share changes once they’re ready. Connect multiple development environments using the same repo, branch, and folder. Then, in each environment create or import an unmanaged solution with the same name and publisher.

When committing and pulling changes, conflicts may be detected – meaning someone else made conflicting changes to the same object. You’ll need to choose whether to keep the version that’s in your environment or bring the version from source control into your environment. You can also revert changes in the repository, then pull the prior version into your environment.

When the team is ready to deploy to test or production, you can use Pipelines in Power Platform for the release. Building and deploying using developer tools isn’t available yet for this new format.

We hope you enjoy the preview. There are many current limitations and you shouldn’t use this feature in environments or Git folders where you’re developing production solutions. Please leave your feedback below, in the community forums, on social media, or another outlet of choice. We look forward to hearing what you’d like to see prioritized next.

Learn more

Overview of Power Platform Git integration

Setup Git integration

The post Introducing Git Integration in Power Platform (preview) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Extended language and geo availability

As part of general availability, data workspace is now accessible in 9 different languages worldwide, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese. This allows more users around the world to take advantage of the enhanced data experience in their native language. We’ve also ensured that this feature complies with geo availability policies. Thus, it can be accessed reliably across regions, expanding the feature’s global reach.

Latest GPT models for enhanced Copilot assistance

To elevate your experience, we are now using the latest GPT models, GPT 4o mini and GPT 4o, in this GA release. These models bring enhanced AI-driven interactions, enabling more precise data model generation, improved natural language processing, and greater overall performance in Copilot’s ability to understand and act on your requests.

Access data workspace from within your solution

One of the major new features in this GA release is the ability to access the data workspace directly from within your solutions. This improvement streamlines how tables and apps are created and managed. It ensures they adhere to your solution-specific standards and governance from the very beginning. When you access the workspace from your custom solution, any tables and apps created using the data workspace will automatically apply the correct solution prefixes. They will also reside directly within your solution, removing the need for time-consuming adjustments and manual alignment.

Data workspace is ready to create model-driven apps

In addition to its data modeling capabilities, data workspace now enables you to create not only modern canvas apps but also model-driven apps directly from the workspace, all based on the data model you build.

• Canvas apps offer a highly customizable, design-first experience where you have full control over the app’s layout, appearance, and functionality. You can use drag-and-drop controls to build your apps. You can then configure them with Power Fx, making it easier to tailor apps exactly to your business needs.
• Model-driven apps, on the other hand, provide a more structured approach to app development. The data model itself determines most of the layout and user interface. With the new functionality in the workspace, you can now create model-driven apps directly from the data model you’ve designed. Once your data relationships and entities are in place, you can automatically generate a model-driven app. The app will reflect the structure and complexity of your data, without needing to be configured from scratch.

These new capabilities streamline the app-building process significantly. Whether you want the creative freedom of canvas apps or the structured approach of model-driven apps, the workspace now supports both. This makes it easier than ever to create business apps tailored to your data model.

Learn more about data workspace

Looking Ahead: This GA release is just the beginning. We continuously meet Microsoft’s promise for Copilot availability and expand the product’s capabilities based on your needs. Stay tuned for future updates, including more language support, integrations, advanced customization options, and even smarter Copilot interactions.

Try It Now: The new data experience is now live and available to all users. We invite you to try it out, explore the possibilities, and let us know what you think. Access the documentation below to learn more.
Create new tables
Build apps through conversation

The post Data Workspace is Now Generally Available! appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Overview

Power Platform Managed Identity utilizes workload identities based on Federated Identity Credentials (FIC). You have the option to provision either a User Assigned Managed Identity (UAMI) or an Application Registration and configure Federated Identity Credentials (FIC). Application Registration enables you to apply Azure policies to Power Platform resources, such as Dataverse plug-ins.

You have two options for provisioning of managed identities:

1. User Assigned Managed Identity (UAMI): You can provision a User Assigned Managed Identity (UAMI) in Azure. Dataverse plug-ins can use this identity to connect to Azure resources that support managed identity. In this case, you cannot enforce Azure policies.
2. Application Registration: By provisioning the application in Microsoft Entra ID, you establish an application context and Identity that can connect to Azure resources supporting managed identity.  This allows you to apply Azure policies to the application, ensuring that Power Platform resources, such as Dataverse plug-ins, adhere to these policies.

You need to configure Federated Identity Credentials (FIC) in both options to enable managed identity.

Supported scenario

Currently, Power Platform Managed Identity supports Dataverse plug-ins. This means that Dataverse plug-ins can connect to Azure resources that support managed identities without the need to manage credentials. By leveraging managed identities, the connection process becomes more secure and streamlined, as it eliminates the risks associated with credential management. This feature ensures that Dataverse plug-ins can access necessary Azure resources seamlessly and securely, enhancing overall efficiency and security.

Today we support Managed Identity for Independent Software Vendor (ISV) plug-ins within the context of their environment. For example, an ISV plug-in installed in the environment, will have access to the resources within the scope of the environment. However, it will not have to access resources within the ISV tenant.

Availability

Power Platform Managed Identity support for Dataverse plug-ins is available in public preview to all our customers in public cloud.

Call to action

• Start by following the step-by-step instructions – Set up Managed Identity support for Dataverse plug-ins
• Learn more about Power Platform Managed Identity
• Share your feedback

The post Announcing public preview of Power Platform Managed Identity support for Dataverse Plug-ins appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

What’s more, Copilot will be at your service, ready to handle the tedious and repetitive tasks such as populating sample data, configuring table metadata, or updating columns, freeing you up to focus on creativity and strategy. With this new data experience, a single sentence can be transformed into a comprehensive multi-table data model, complete with a Copilot-ready business app, streamlining your workflow like never before.

Accessing the ERD data experience

The feature is currently available in English. To access it, simply enable Copilot (preview) features for your environment. Then, go to the Power Apps home page and turn on the ‘Try the new data experience’ toggle.

Once enabled, the new data experience can be accessed through various entry points. This includes the home page, tables page, app designers, and more. Essentially, it’s available anywhere you can create new tables today, offering a seamless integration into your workflow.

Multi-table in ERD view

The new data experience now enables you to interact with multiple tables in an ERD view through intuitive drag-and-drop actions. This visual ERD framework allows for a clear understanding of how your tables interconnect to form a robust data model. Moreover, it simplifies table and relationship management, empowers you to establish relationships between tables with just a few clicks.

Data drawer

In addition to the ERD view, the new data experience introduces a data drawer, which allows you to view the schema and tabular representation of your data model side by side. The data drawer enables direct editing of tables—columns, rows, table properties, and more. For an immersive experience, you can also switch to full-screen mode to concentrate solely on individual tables.

Bringing data for a unified model

You now have the power to create tables from a variety of sources, including natural language, Excel files, SharePoint lists, or from the ground up. Effortlessly establish relationships between these tables and observe as they amalgamate into a singular, comprehensive data model. This integration not only simplifies data management, but also provides a holistic view of your data ecosystem, enabling the creation of more meaningful business apps.

Describe new tables

You can create tables by simply describing them. Whether you need one table or multiple, Copilot will generate the necessary tables along with relationships based on your instructions. Specify the number of columns for each table, and whether you want relationships included when requesting a multi-table data model. Copilot takes your configurations and turns them into reality.

Import an Excel file or SharePoint list

You can also bring your own data by importing from external sources such as Excel or SharePoint lists. Copilot streamlines the setup by recommending table names, descriptions, column data types and formats, as well as column headers, tailored to the data you upload. After the import, you’ll have the opportunity to review and tweak the tables, ensuring they accurately reflect your data and serve your needs effectively.

A full Copilot experience

Copilot is ready to assist you with a wide array of tasks beyond just creating tables. It can populate your tables with sample data:

Suggest and create new columns for your table:

Or even help you establish relationships between any two tables:

These capabilities extend to tables created from all sources, ensuring a fully Copilot-powered experience for managing your data model. To get started, select ‘View prompts’ and explore the predefined Copilot prompts that can help bootstrap your data model.

Learn more about the ERD data experience

• Create new tables (preview)
• Build apps through conversation (preview)

The post Work with complex data models in an ERD view assisted by Copilot appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Improve AI generated responses by grounding prompts with your enterprise data tables, now in Public Preview

As companies are rapidly adopting Copilot and conversational AI tools, they are increasingly introducing prompts as a foundational element to integrate generative AI capabilities within Microsoft Power Platform solutions, including Power Apps, Power Automate, and Copilot Studio. With Prompt Builder, already generally available, anyone can use natural language to instruct the GPT model to behave in a certain way or to perform a specific task. Typical scenarios include the ability to generate content analysis, summarize, classify, extract or transform information data.

Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of data grounding with Dataverse tables for Prompt Builder in Microsoft Copilot Studio, a new capability that helps makers create reliable and efficient AI solutions at enterprise scale.  With data grounding, customers can add a dynamic knowledge source to their prompts, using the model of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), to enhance the underlying AI model’s capabilities from being a general-purpose model to an enterprise specific tool that operates within the business context of an enterprise customer.

Learn more about prompt builder:

• Get started with creating your own prompt to generate responses that suit your specific business need.
• Use your prompt in Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
• Use your prompt in Power Automate | Microsoft Learn

Infuse AI into your application’s business logic with AI-powered low-code plugins

Low-code plugins enable any maker to build complex AI-powered solutions in the Power Platform using the PowerFx expression language.  Capgemini New Zealand, A global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation, saw the potential of low-code plugins from their announcement at Microsoft Build 2023 and quickly began upskilling on them in their local Dynamics 365/Power Platform practice. Low-code plugins provide the ability to create real-time, secure and scalable business logic for their customers, all without the underlying cost and added infrastructure of writing traditional code. As a result, Capgemini NZ can create value for their clients, solving their business challenges faster than ever before.

I’m particularly excited by the integration potential with Copilot Studio. Our clients are asking us to help them apply generative AI to their business challenges. Low-code plugins fill a crucial gap of automating business logic between the large language model in Copilot and the client’s underlying data. As such we’ve been showcasing our learnings from low-code tools such as low-code plugins in our regular internal Communities of Practice so that we’re ready to hit the ground running when this feature is generally available.
-Richard Anness, Power Platform Practice Lead, Capgemini NZ 
With low-code plugins now available in Microsoft Copilot Studio, customers can embed advanced business logic into their Copilots and AI-powered applications including triggering workflows & data updates within business processes modeled within Microsoft Dataverse. In addition to the existing set of supported Power Fx operators, variables and formulas, we are also excited to introduce low-code plugin support for 5 new Power Fx AI functions:

• AIReply: Drafts replies to messages (e.g., customer reviews of a product).
• AISummarize: Summarizes text (e.g., email messages or document content).
• AISentiment: Detects sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) in text (e.g., customer reviews).
• AIClassify: Classifies text into predefined categories (e.g., Problem, Billing, How To, Licensing).
• AITranslate: Translates text from one language to another (source language is automatically detected).

After the development of low-code solutions using low-code plugins, monitoring their execution becomes an integral part of maintaining a high-quality, reliable, and performant solution. It empowers developers and administrators with the insights needed to ensure the best possible experience for end-users. We are delighted to announce that we are now enabling the preview of the new plugin monitoring report  inside Dataverse Accelerator with two key capabilities:

• Centralized log viewer: Access and view trace logs from Dataverse Custom APIs, low-code plugins, and pro-code plugin executions in an environment from one central location.
• Filtering capabilities: Conveniently filter log history to quickly find logs relevant to debugging needs.

For more information on how to try out low-code plugins:

• In Power Apps: Use a prebuilt prompt in a Dataverse low-code plug-in in Power Apps (preview) | Microsoft Learn
• In Copilot Studio: Create Dataverse low-code plug-ins to use with a copilot (preview) – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

The post Infuse any AI solution with your enterprise data, prompts and plugins appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

This feature will ensure that solution deployments are predictable and consistent and enforces that all changes to production environments go through ALM processes. With this feature, the system administrators will be able to block unmanaged customizations by not allowing direct changes in the environment and by not allowing import of unmanaged solutions in Microsoft Dataverse environments. Unmanaged customizations become the top layer, which blocks managed solutions from being effective. These direct changes in the environment bypass formal ALM processes like testing and approvals.

This feature can be enabled or disabled from the Features area of the environment settings page in the Power Platform admin center. By default, this setting is disabled. The feature cannot be enabled in the default environment. Before enabling the feature, please review the known limitations as some application experiences may be limited.

Once the setting is enabled these restrictions will be imposed for the environment:

• Import of unmanaged solutions into the environment are blocked.
• Creation of new solution objects like apps, tables, and forms are blocked.
• Customizing existing solution objects are blocked.
• Any attempt to make unmanaged customizations will result in an error returned to the user, such as: “This environment doesn’t allow unmanaged customizations. This was a choice made by your admin, and certain actions won’t be available or will be view only.”

The following operations are not blocked by this feature:

• Change of environment variable values.
• Enabling or disabling of solution objects. For example, turning Power Automate flows on or off.
• Assigning of ownership or sharing of table records.
• Solutions operations like remove active customizations.
• Creation and export of unmanaged solutions.

Learn more

• Block unmanaged customizations: Block unmanaged customizations
• Solution layers and unmanaged customizations here: Solution layers
• Blog post from public preview: Announcing preview for blocking unmanaged customizations | Microsoft Power Apps

The post Announcing General Availability of Block unmanaged customizations appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

We are excited to announce that the virtual network support for Dataverse plug-ins within Microsoft Power Platform is now generally available for all our customers in public cloud! This feature allows you to protect your outbound connections from Power Platform Dataverse plug-ins to resources within your private network. Virtual network support for Power Platform is based on Azure subnet delegation. With Azure subnet delegation, you can delegate your subnets to the Power Platform and configure it to run the services within your delegated subnet. This way, you can securely manage your egress traffic from the Power Platform according to your network policy.

Power Platform Approach to securing outbound connectivity.

Virtual network support for Power Platform is optimized to handle API (Application Programming Interface)-centric workloads, and hence is the recommended approach for outbound connectivity from Power Platform services to resources within your network when using Dataverse plug-ins and Power Platform Connectors. For Power BI and Power Platform Dataflows (PPDF), the recommended approach is to use virtual network data gateway, which is optimized to handle ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) workloads.

Overview of the feature

This feature is particularly useful for customers who have security and compliance requirements to secure their data by protecting outbound traffic from Power Platform.

With virtual network support, you will be able to solve following key problems.

• You don’t have to expose private endpoint protected resources within your VNet to the internet to allow Power Platform services to connect to these protected resources, thereby protecting your data.
• You don’t have to allow-list sets of Power Platform IP’s ranges or service tags to allow Power Platform services to connect to resources within your VNet, thereby protecting the resources from unauthorized access.

Currently, you can use secured private outbound connectivity from Dataverse plug-ins to enhance the security of data integration with external data sources within your secured private network from your Power Apps, Power Automate, and Dynamics 365 apps.

Unlocking Secure Data Integration with Microsoft Copilot Studio in Power Platform

In today’s interconnected world, secure data integration is crucial for organizations. Microsoft Copilot Studio offers robust solutions for fetching and processing data securely. Let’s explore scenario where Copilot Studio demonstrates the network security capability of Power Platform:

Scenario #1: Fetching Customer Data from a Web API Hosted in Azure

Imagine you need to retrieve customer data securely from your Web API hosted in Azure. Copilot Studio seamlessly orchestrates the process:

1. Microsoft Copilot Studio Initiates a Power Automate Flow: Copilot Studio triggers Power Automate flows through a command that include Dataverse unbound plug-in action.
2. Dataverse Plug-in Calls a Web API: The Power Automate flow makes a secure call using Dataverse Plug-in to a private endpoint-protected Web API. This ensures that customer data retrieval remains secure.

Learn more about this scenario through this video, please note the SQL connector VNet support is in preview.

Availability and Licensing

Virtual network support for Dataverse plug-ins is generally available to all our customers in public cloud and licensing information is available in this article Virtual Network support for Power Platform overview – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
Call to action.

• Enable Virtual Network support for Dataverse plug-ins.
• Learn more about supported services within Power Platform Virtual Network support for Power Platform overview – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
• Get started – Step by step instructions Set up Virtual Network support for Power Platform – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
• Watch these demos.
  • Set up virtual network support for Power Platform (youtube.com)
  • Copilot Studio: Secure Data Access via Dataverse Plug-in & SQL Connector​ (youtube.com)
  • Power Apps accessing the SQL database using SQL connector (youtube.com)

The post Next-Level Connectivity Security: Dataverse Plug-ins Embrace Virtual Networks! appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

With these updates, we’re excited to announce the general availability of delegated deployments for pipelines in Power Platform!

Additionally, admins can now enable pipelines for multi-geo support, making it easy to centrally administer global deployments within a single management plane.

Build

As makers develop, customizations are automatically saved to their preferred solution (no need to understand or navigate to solutions). This avoids downstream deployment issues, painful debugging steps, and other common mishaps.

 When authoring solution cloud flows, drafts and versioning provides a history for each published version of the flow. Makers can view the version history, restore prior versions, and save draft changes without publishing them live – even if the flow has errors! Then, the flow can be published when they are ready to run the flow. Please leave your drafts and versioning comments and feedback here.

Test

Admins can improve quality by ensuring solution checker runs on every deployment, and configure issue tolerance levels for different environments. Pipelines can be extended to run additional code and security scanning tools, or automated tests by integrating your source control systems. Functional user acceptance testing is also recommended after deployment to test environments.

We recommend starting with pipelines in Power Platform and using extensions if you need to integrate more advanced workloads running in Azure DevOps, GitHub, etc. Similarly, if taking dependencies on test automation, we recommend Test Engine.

Release

Makers are guided to deploy at the right time. For example, when manually exporting and importing solutions or blocked by sharing limits.

Instead, sharing is requested during deployment to target environments, like production, where it’s appropriate to share broadly. Admins simply need to approve the combined deployment and sharing request, and the rest happens automatically. Sharing is rolling out for canvas apps and soon for cloud flows and security roles.

Makers can also update existing environment variables and connection references in pipelines and solution import. Combined, these capabilities protect production assets with least privileged access, reduce admin burden, and train makers to submit all updates via your organization’s change management process. If admins haven’t configured pipelines and governance policies, makers are empowered to create their own pipeline to environments (they must already have access to manually import solutions. Pipelines doesn’t escalate permissions). Admins can apply additional governance controls and manage security within the default host and custom hosts. There’s a new entry point within the solution experience to Manage pipelines and a Security Teams section in the app to manage pipelines access. Note: we currently recommend using a custom pipelines host when more advanced control is desired.

 

Why pipelines vs manual export/import? Unlike manual export/import, pipelines stores backups for every version of every solution deployed, and admin accessible audit logs describing who, what, when, where, and why (AI provided). Pipelines deployments enjoy higher success rates by pre-validating solutions against target environments and sequencing multiple deployments to avoid conflicts. 

 

Solution simplification remains an ongoing effort. Recent improvements include streamlined dependency management and automatic conversion of unmanaged to managed solution objects (see moving from unmanaged to managed solutions).

 

What if breaking changes are inadvertently deployed? Now makers and admins can now re-deploy prior solution versions using pipelines or developer tooling.

 

Documentation

• ALM Guide
• Pipelines in Power Platform
• Managed environments
• Power Platform Developer tools
   

The post April 2024 ALM blog: What’s new and what it means for you appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

How does the new experience work?

Simply navigate to the home page, select Start with data, then Create with SharePoint List. Choose an existing SharePoint connection or establish a new connection to your desired SharePoint account. Next, enter your desired SharePoint URL or pick one of your recent sites and select a list.  You will then see a preview of your table, where you can review and edit your table schema before selecting Create app to create a Dataverse table and responsive canvas app.

Once you select Create app, we will create a Dataverse table based on your table configuration from the previous step, and then generate a responsive canvas app using that table. Depending on the size of your data, you might not see all of your data in the canvas app right away. This is because we want to unblock the creation of your app by uploading the top 20 rows of your data first. The remaining data will be uploaded in the background, and you can always proceed to the table hub or table designer to review the progress.

Import your data more easily with Copilot

When Copilot is enabled, it will assist with your table creation by selecting appropriate column data types. Copilot is able to detect different formats within text data types as well such as phone number and email. It will also auto-populate choices in the column metadata when bring over choice columns from SharePoint Lists.

When a table is generated leveraging Copilot, a card will show up to the left, indicating AI has assisted with the creation of this table. You can also give us feedback on how Copilot is doing so we can further improve our modeling in the future.

What’s next?

You can learn more about the experience here.

This is just the first step of the new import from SharePoint List experience. We are actively working on supporting more scenarios at scale towards general availability, and we’d love your feedback!

The post Easier than ever experience to import data from SharePoint List appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.