Key Benefits:

• Unified Control Styling: Virtual controls with Fluent ensure consistent styling across multiple apps and app types.
• Improved Performance: By eliminating the need for isolated React trees and smaller control bundle.
• Simplified Development: The need to include React or Fluent libraries in individual component bundles is removed, streamlining the development process.

Note that code components created earlier via preview are backward compatible and will continue to work. Please rebuild them using the latest version of PAC tooling so that they are ready for future platform library upgrades.

You can find more details about this feature including supported platform library versions in our documentation for React controls & platform libraries. Please use Power Apps Pro Dev forum for any input or questions.

The post React and Fluent based virtual code components are now generally available appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Introducing smart paste

Smart paste is the latest capability of Copilot form fill assistance for model-driven apps, designed to make the time-consuming and frustrating task of form filling easier. Imagine this: you have some text in an email, document, or note that you need to enter into a form. Instead of manually typing it all in, you can now simply copy the text to your clipboard. Without selecting any specific field, just click the smart paste button or use the standard paste shortcut (CTRL+V or CMD+V). Copilot will reason over the form and the pasted text to suggested what text could be used to fill specific fields, and provides suggestions inline in the form. You can review and accept the suggestions that work for you—as always, nothing gets saved until you confirm. Ignoring suggestions will automatically discard it, and we are also introducing a new capability to clear all suggestions in the form.

And if you prefer the traditional way, you can still paste directly into a specific field by clicking on it first and then pasting.

You can use smart paste in your model-driven apps by updating the following two settings in Power Platform admin center, under Settings > Product > Features > AI form fill assistance section:

1. In the Enable this feature for field, make sure that All users immediately is selected.
2. Set Enable smart paste (Preview) to On.

Discover the suggestion source using new citations

We are introducing a new capability that adds even more transparency to Copilot’s suggestions. With the new citations, you can now learn more about the source of the suggestions provided by Copilot. These citations clearly identify the source, for example “Records you have updated recently” or “Clipboard”, giving you more clarity and confidence in the suggestions you receive.

Form fill assistance now available in quick create forms

Form fill assistance, including the new smart paste capability, is now available in quick create forms as well. This means you can enjoy the same time-saving benefits across even more of your forms.

Expansion to 21 languages

Form fill assistance in model-driven apps is rolling out in the following 21 languages in addition to English (US):

1. Arabic
2. Chinese (Simplified)
3. Czech
4. Danish
5. Dutch
6. Finnish
7. French
8. German
9. Greek
10. Hebrew
11. Italian
12. Japanese
13. Korean
14. Norwegian (Bokmål)
15. Polish
16. Portuguese (Brazil)
17. Russian
18. Spanish
19. Swedish
20. Thai
21. Turkish

We want to hear from you

Learn more about this feature in the documentation. We look forward to you trying out these capabilities in your model-driven apps and sharing your feedback through the form fill assistance survey in your model-driven app.

The post New smart paste makes filling forms as easy as copy & paste 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.

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.

Copilot assists filling out forms

Many work apps require form input that can be lengthy, tedious, and time-consuming. Copilot can save dozens of clicks and keystrokes with AI-driven form fill assistance. Leveraging end-user usage patterns, previous input, and information in the form, Copilot generates suggestions that you simply review inline and accept. Form fill assistance is available for all Power Apps and Dynamics 365 model-driven apps in English language on the web with “New Look” enabled.

Draft text input with Copilot

Insights with Copilot

Not only can Copilot provide input assistance, but it can also help you understand the app’s output. With Copilot chat in model-driven and canvas apps, users can get insights about the app’s data and navigate the app simply using natural language. You can ask Copilot to find the highest revenue account, sites that are out of inventory, or the owner of a specific opportunity. We have made many improvements in the last few months, including dozens of quality enhancements, new prompt suggestions, and a prompt library to guide you towards useful questions that Copilot can help with. And the new record picker makes it easy to specify which contact, customer, or opportunity you’re asking about.

Get started today

These Copilot capabilities are available in public preview for Power Apps users today. Learn more about enabling form fill assistance, draft with Copilot, and Copilot chat. For Dynamics 365 users, see licensing requirements for Copilot chat and form fill assistance.

The post Microsoft Copilot and Power Apps transforming how people engage with apps appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

In 2023 Release Wave 2 we announced general availability for the modern, refreshed look for model driven apps. That rollout included an opt-in switch to allow users to turn on the modern look. We received a lot of feedback from users, and we used that feedback to ensure that the highest impacting issues were getting resolved.

Updates since 2023 Release Wave 2

• Added “Select all” checkbox in grids.
  
• Custom header colors (via maker updates using modern theme overrides)
  
• Accent colour added to the selected pill in lookups.
  
• Updated time entry to allow for easier usability.
  
• Customized checkboxes are now being rendered on forms instead of dropdowns.
• Added recommended icon back to form fields, and updated padding around labels and icons.
  

Always On

If makers and admins want to accelerate the rollout for their users by making the modern look as “always on”, they can enable an app setting in each app (or for environment / multiple apps at once via solution) which will turn on the modern look and remove the toggle.  Learn more about always on.

Turn off the modern look

If makers and admins need to do some more work and delay the modern look, they can do so also via an app setting in each app (or for environment / multiple apps at once via solution) which will turn off the modern look and remove the toggle. Learn more about turning off the modern look.

As always if you have feedback for us, please let us know via the survey or reach out to us.

To learn more about the Modern, refreshed look for model-driven apps including rollout, app settings, and FAQs, please see our documentation.

The post Modern, refreshed look and feel for model-driven apps on by default appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

• Open and inspect the object.
• Delete the object.
• Remove dependency between the objects.
• Open documentation to learn more about the dependencies for that object type.
• Delete the solution taking dependency on the solution object.

The post Working with solution dependencies for objects made easier appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Introduction

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 end protected resources within your VNet to 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 custom 3rd party Dataverse plug-ins and connectors 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 Copilot Studio in Power Platform

In today’s interconnected world, secure data integration is crucial for organizations. Copilot Studio offers robust solutions for fetching and processing data securely. Let’s explore two scenarios 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. 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.

Scenario #2: Securely Accessing Azure SQL Database

Suppose you want to access enriched customer data stored in an Azure SQL database. Copilot Studio simplifies this process:

1. Copilot Studio Initiates a Power Automate Flow: Copilot Studio triggers a Power Automate flow through a command.
2. Power Automate Uses a SQL Connector: The Power Automate flow securely retrieves data from the private endpoint-protected Azure SQL Database using the SQL connector.

In both scenarios, Copilot Studio empowers you to handle data seamlessly while maintaining the highest level of security. Whether it’s APIs or databases, Copilot Studio keeps your organizational data safe and protected.

Securely Managing Customer Data with Virtual Tables and Power Apps

In a world where data security is paramount, Virtual Tables and Power Apps provide robust solutions. Let’s explore a scenario where you can securely manage customer data stored in an Azure SQL database:

Scenario: Leveraging Virtual Tables for Secure Connectivity

Suppose you need to securely manage customer data using Power Apps:

1. Virtual Tables: Power Apps uses virtual table.
2. Virtual Network-Supported SQL Connector: By leveraging the virtual network-supported SQL connector within Virtual Table, you can securely connect to your Azure SQL database.
3. Power Apps in Action: Power Apps interacts seamlessly with the virtual tables and Azure SQL Database, allowing you to manage customer data securely.

In summary, with Virtual network support, you can securely manage customer data stored in an SQL database through Power Apps using Virtual Tables.

Availability and Licensing

Virtual network support for Dataverse plug-ins and Power Platform Connectors is available for public preview in public cloud. We will be announcing licensing requirements near general availability.

Call to action.

• Try out Public Preview
• Learn more about supported services within Power Platform Virtual Network support for Power Platform overview (preview) – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
• Get started – Step by step instructions Set up Virtual Network support for Power Platform (preview) – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
• Protect enterprise solutions with new Microsoft Power Platform security features  – Microsoft Power Platform Blog

The post Announcing public preview of virtual network support for Power Platform Dataverse plug-ins and Connectors appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

We’re excited to let you know that the IP firewall feature is now generally available for the Power Platform environments across all regions. This feature allows you to control access to Dataverse, enabling you to implement stricter security measures. With IP Firewall, Power Platform administrators can configure IP restrictions on each of the Power Platform environments, allowing access to Dataverse only from allowed IP ranges. This helps mitigate risks of insider exfiltrating the data and prevents token replay attack from restricted IP ranges. We hope this feature will help you keep your organizational data secure and protected.

When you configure the IP firewall on the Power Platform environment, it will only allow the requests from the configured IP ranges and reject all other requests, thereby allowing you to restrict the access to Dataverse.

Get Started

Power Platform admins can enable IP restrictions on Power Platform environments (available per licensing requirement) individually via Power Platform admin Center, by default this feature is turned off.

To enable the IP firewall on a Power Platform environment, you can pursue the configuration steps outlined in this article. You can also refer to this demo on IP firewall.

Finally, your environment IP firewall settings will look like below.

Call to Action:

1. Enable IP firewall in Audit-Only Mode: If you haven’t already, enable the IP firewall feature to protect your organizational data by limiting user access to Dataverse from only allowed IP ranges. You can learn more about how to enable this feature by visiting the following link: IP firewall in Power Platform environments – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
2. Review firewall audit logs: You can review the audit logs and It’s helpful when you’re configuring restrictions on a Power Platform environment. We recommend that you enable audit-only mode for at least a week and disable it only after careful review of the audit logs. IP firewall in Power Platform environments – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
3. Enable IP firewall in enforcement mode: Once you have tested the IP firewall in audit-only mode and reviewed the audit logs, you can go ahead and enable the IP firewall in enforcement mode.

Learn More:

• IP firewall in Power Platform environments – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
• (451) IP Firewall in Dataverse – YouTube
• Protect enterprise solutions with new Microsoft Power Platform security features – Microsoft Power Platform Blog

The post Control Access to Dataverse with IP Firewall: Secure Your Data with Ease appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.