• There were several live sessions (now available on-demand) for participants to learn about the Copilot and AI features of Power Platform.
• Participants followed a Learn Collection for help in getting started.
• Over 100 project submissions were received with 4 winners chosen across the different categories.

Summary of the participants and project submissions from around the world.

The categories for the hackathon were:

Grand prize winner – The best of the best! Rewards the solution that meets all judging criteria, wows judges, and has potential real-world value for Power Platform Users.

Best AI-powered solution – Rewards the solution that integrates AI in an innovative way.

Best Better Together Use Case – Rewards the solution that uses the Power Platform and other Microsoft products in an interesting way.

Best Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Use Case – Rewards the solution that helps make the Power Platform community more diverse, equitable and inclusive.

The submissions were innovative and demonstrated how AI can be helpful across numerous use cases. Be inspired this year in building AI-powered solutions with Power Platform by checking out these community submissions below:

• Education – Teaching Accelerator
• Family Support – Make Life Easy | Parents Advisor
• Healthcare – Romão’s Homecare | Medical Assistant
• Human Resources – The Relocation Game | Seeker
• Not-for-profit – Migrant Worker Case Management
• Information Technology – Prompt Wagon | CodeScribe

Education

Teaching Accelerator

Teachers spend thousands of hours each year planning the curriculum for their students. Elliot Fraser developed a Power Platform solution, known as the Teaching Accelerator, to expedite the process for teachers in creating a curriculum for their students. The solution utilizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT service where teachers can interact with it through a Copilot embedded in the model-driven app to create lessons, modify the lessons created, and create an entire curriculum of lessons for a topic.

Teachers can interact with a Copilot within the model-driven app for creating lessons and a curriculum for students.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• Model-driven app which is the primary end user interface for the teachers to plan their lessons and a curriculum for students.
• Custom pages built using Power Apps canvas apps are embedded in the model-driven app to help guide teachers to create a curriculum of lessons, create lesson plans and view, modify and assign existing lessons.
• Teachers enter their questions into a Copilot that was built using Microsoft Copilot Studio to receive AI-generated suggestions for a curriculum and lesson plans. The Copilot appears in a pane within the model-driven app through a custom page.
• Power Automate cloud flows in the background interact with OpenAI’s ChatGPT service to relay the suggestions to the teacher.
• When the teacher is satisfied with the suggestions from Copilot, they can ask Copilot to generate the curriculum and lesson plans in the model-driven app. Depending on where the teacher executes this in the app, Copilot calls a function in OpenAI to create an array of the curriculum or lesson plans as a JSON object. This output is then saved in Dataverse using a cloud flow by transforming it into rows of data which the teacher sees as the curriculum or lesson plans in the model-driven app.

What we loved

Elliot’s Teaching Accelerator solution won the Grand Prize winner category of the hackathon due to the impact it would have in the education space by reducing the hours teachers spend annually. Teachers can quickly create a curriculum and lesson plans for students in minutes with the help of generative AI and Power Platform.

Since the hack, Elliot has an updated version of the Teaching Accelerator where he’s made enhancements based on feedback from teachers who have been testing the solution. For an overview of the updated solution version, watch Elliot’s presentation from a previous The Low Code Revolution episode.

Family support

Make Life Easy

To provide everyday support for parents of autistic children, Raghav Mishra developed a Power Apps canvas app to create structured daily routines. As a parent to an autistic child, Raghav recognized their son thrived when steps of their daily routines were illustrated visually by his wife with the corresponding written text. Inspired by his wife’s dedication in helping their son, Raghav turned to the Power Platform combined with OpenAI’s services to develop a Power Apps canvas app that uses generative AI to help create the text-based steps of the tasks and design the corresponding images of the steps. The Make Life Easy app can be used by parents to establish routines the children can follow.

Parents interact with generative AI in a canvas app to create written and visual steps for tasks children follow.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• Parents use the canvas app to interact with OpenAI’s ChatGPT service to generate a list of text-based steps for tasks, such as the steps children follow to put their shoes on.
• The text-based steps for each task are saved in Dataverse, which are displayed in the gallery of the app.
• Parents can select a step from the gallery and interact with OpenAI’s DALL-E service to create the corresponding visual images for all steps, such as asking for an image of a child sitting on a chair as a step the child follows to tie their shoelaces.
• Once all images of the steps for the tasks are created, they can be added to the schedule board for children to follow. Parents can then assign the tasks to their children.
• Children see their assigned tasks in their personal daily schedule board within the app. They can follow each of the steps through the visual and written instructions generated by AI.

What we loved

Raghav’s Make Life Easy solution won the Best Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Use Case category for designing a solution that supports parents of autistic children and their daily routines. Parents can interact with generative AI in a Power Apps canvas app to define the steps of a task and create the corresponding visuals. Children can follow these AI-generated steps through written and visual comprehension in the app.

Parents Advisor

To help parents encourage and teach children every day, Richard Li created a Power Apps canvas app known as Parents Advisor, where parents can seek additional support for advice on educating their children. Several Azure OpenAI services and OpenAI services were used together with Power Platform to provide tailored recommendations based on the individual in-app user profiles. Children can also have one-on-one interaction with AI, where the AI-generated answers are verbally read to them from the app itself. The Parents Advisor app can be used daily by both parents and children for written and aural comprehension.

Parents and children interact with generative AI to create tailored learning experiences in the canvas app.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• Parents can select from built-in prompts in the canvas app such as how to encourage their child to sleep independently. They can also enter their own custom prompts directly in the app, where Azure OpenAI’s ChatGPT service will respond with an answer which the parent can save for future reference.
• Parents also have the option to provide their prompt verbally through the built-in microphone control of canvas apps. Their verbal prompt is then transcribed to text using OpenAI’s Whisper speech-to-text service and can also be translated to more than 50 languages.
• All responses from Azure OpenAI’s ChatGPT service can be transcribed from text-to-speech using the Speech service from Azure AI. The style of the voice can be altered using Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) such as the effect, style and multilingual voices. This means the AI advisor can “talk” to children by reading the responses to prompts through the built-in audio control of canvas apps.
• Most of the parent end-user features are also replicated for the children end-users where they too can interact with the Parent Advisor app and access the list of built-in topic prompts. Or they can enter their own custom prompts and have the app read the responses generated.
• One of the fun features of the app is using Azure OpenAI’s ChatGPT service to author bedtime stories for children based on pre-selected criteria of the character (e.g. Cinderella), language, genre, length and the requested story details. The parent or child also has an option to create their own bedtime story by adding their own prompts. Based on the prompts selected, the app will generate a bedtime story which can be read by the parent or child, or the app can read it to them through the native audio control of canvas apps.

What we loved

It was very cool to see the solution utilize the Speech service from Azure AI to transcribe the responses from text-to-speech in relation to the prompt entered by the parent or child. We also liked it was diverse and inclusive in providing multi-language support to cater for different languages of families.

Healthcare

DISCLAIMER: Applications built using Microsoft Power Platform are not designed or intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or judgment and should not be used to replace or as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or judgment.

Romão’s Homecare

To assist doctors and nurses with scheduled visits to patient’s homes, the Romão brothers – Douglas and Renato, built several apps by combining low code and pro-code techniques. A Power Apps canvas app, known as the Romão’s Homecare mobile app, is used by the doctors and nurses for visibility of daily scheduled in-home patient visits and to record details of their assessment from their devices. The information entered in the Romão Homecare app is saved in Dataverse and is accessible through a Power Apps model-driven app.

Doctors and nurses capture their assessment of patients during in-home visits with assistance from generative AI in a canvas app.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• The canvas app is the primary end user interface for doctors and nurses where they can see a list of their upcoming scheduled in-home visits. The built-in interactive map control displays the location of their patient visits.
• The native camera control of canvas apps enables them to capture photos during their assessment with the patient. These photos are uploaded into Azure Blob Storage and a sentiment score based on the images uploaded is generated using a Python web app via Azure App service.
• Audio recordings can also be captured using the native microphone control in canvas apps where the audio is transcribed to text using OpenAI Whisper’s speech-to-text service.
• A simple Yes/No checklist is used which is submitted to OpenAI to provide a score of the visit.
• On completion of the visit, the overall score calculated by OpenAI indicates the wellbeing of the patient with a high score being good and a low score requiring further attention.
• A model-driven app displays the stored patient data in Dataverse where information can be modified if needed.

What we loved

Doctors and nurses taking notes during or after a patient visit takes time and the solution reduces this administrative effort by capturing audio recordings and transcribing them to text using OpenAI Whisper’s speech-to-text service. There’s no duplicate time spent re-entering their notes by typing into the app. The data being accessible through Dataverse is also convenient for the information to be modified if additional details need to be edited.

Medical Assistant

To help the medical industry interpret computerized tomography (CT) scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, Yevhenii Dementiev, Valentin Gasenko and Surkho Salamov built an app, known as the Detect Cancer app, to support physicians with reviewal of patient scans. The aim of the solution is to help physicians to distinguish between possible tumors and other anomalies, improving the precision of diagnosis and identifying tumors at various stages.

AI technologies used in their solution identifies potential tumors and anomalies to help physicians with diagnosis.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• Physicians use a canvas app where images from the CT and MRI scans can be uploaded using the built-in attachments control of canvas apps.
• Using AI Builder Object Detection Model, the uploaded images are analyzed and highlight the detected possible cancer regions on the CT scan and MRI scan.
• A Power Automate cloud flow sends the detected information from the AI model to OpenAI’s Completions service to generate medical conclusions for the physicians to predict the recovery of the patient.
• The physician can also dive further into the regions detected for analysis and comparison from previous CT and MRI scans of the patient. Based on the historic data, OpenAI can provide a prediction of the patient’s recovery from cancer.
• Dataverse is used to store all information about the patient scans and conclusions of the detected cancer regions.

What we loved

This is an incredible solution that supports a healthcare use case by assisting detection of cancer regions and medical conclusions using AI Builder Object Detection Model combined with OpenAI services. It was also nice to see the team include feedback in their video submission from their target audience of physicians. Their solution has demonstrated how Power Platform and AI together can be of secondary help to healthcare professionals.

Human Resources

The Relocation Game

Employee relocation can be overwhelming for employees in two ways: understanding what their organization’s local policies are and adjusting to a new city – especially if the employee is unfamiliar with the local surroundings. Denisa Mihai built a Power Apps canvas app known as The Relocation Game, to help employees with their move by interacting with a Copilot to learn about the local policies and help identify the city’s landmarks through AI Builder.

Employees interact with a Copilot embedded in a canvas app to learn more about their work benefits, the required documentation for relocation and can be connected to the HR team.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• A Copilot is embedded in a Power Apps canvas app which uses the built-in boost conversation capabilities where natural language processing is applied to find, collate and parse relevant information from the sites and summarize the search results into plain language for the employee.
• Employees interact with the Copilot within the Relocation app where they can ask about the company benefits, documentation required for their move to a new country, and request to be connected to the HR team for additional questions.
• An AI Builder object detection custom model was developed and trained to recognize city landmarks for employees to become familiar with their city’s surroundings. The trained object detection custom model is embedded into the Relocation app.
• Using the built-in camera and image controls of canvas apps, the employee takes photos and uploads these into the object detection custom model for it to recognize and present the name of the landmark to the employee.
• Employees can also create their own collection of landmarks by taking photos and adding them to their list of landmarks in the Relocation app.

What we loved

Employees can feel supported for their relocation to another city by interacting with a Copilot with boost conversation capabilities enabled to help with HR related enquiries. We liked that there was an element of “discovery” built into the app for employees to take photos and verify a landmark of the city using the AI Builder object detection custom model.

Seeker

Recruiting new talent is often time-consuming during the phases of advertising, finding candidates and interviewing candidates. Isabelle Gaboc, Daniel Kerridge, and Jady Mulqueeney developed an end-to-end solution to reduce the administrative hours spent. A Power Pages site was built to handle the job listings and the initial interview process with candidates. Candidates can choose to have an automated interview within the Power Pages site where interviews are tailored to the candidate. Azure OpenAI’s ChatGPT capabilities in AI Builder generates open ended questions in alignment to the job description and information provided in candidate’s resumes, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT service is utilized during the interview for an ongoing conversational dialog with the candidate.

Open ended interview questions generated with the AI Builder connector in Power Automate are used in the AI-led interviews with candidates.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• An AI-generated Power Pages site was created using Copilot that enables candidates to review all available positions. They can apply by uploading their resumes and begin the automated interview process shortly after.
• Several cloud flows were built to extract text from the uploaded resume where the data is parsed and analyzed using the AI Builder text recognition prebuilt model to convert the resume to text.
• The automation continues by converting the job description to text using Azure OpenAI GPT capabilities in AI Builder to format the resume text from the previous step by removing unnecessary information and only keep the information aligned to the job description. As the last automation step, AI Builder’s OpenAI GPT capabilities are used again to generate open ended interview questions based on the refined resume text and job description.
• The candidate interviews are conducted within a webpage in the Power Pages site through a virtual call with a .NET bot integrated with Azure Communication Services. The interview questions generated by AI Builder from the cloud flow are retrieved by the .NET bot from the webpage using liquid, a markup language in Power Pages.
• Using Azure AI services text-to-speech, the .NET bot asks the candidate the interview questions generated by AI Builder.
• In return, the candidate can respond verbally to the .NET bot where the audio dialog is translated from speech-to-text using Azure AI services.
• The .NET bot will then send the translated text to OpenAI’s ChatGPT service with a prompt to respond accordingly for the interview. The output used for the response is translated once again to speech and relayed aurally back to the candidate. This enables a constant conversational AI dialog loop between the bot and the candidate.

What we loved

Their Seeker site solution won the Best AI-powered solution category of the hackathon due to the impact it would have for Human Resources in allowing candidates to use a Power Pages site to upload their resume for a job application and use OpenAI’s ChatGPT services to create a list of interview questions, followed by conducting the interview through a virtual voice call – all without any human intervention.

For a more detailed overview of the solution watch the Seeker team’s presentation from a previous Microsoft 365 & Power Platform weekly call.

Not-for-profit

Migrant Worker Case Management

Filipino citizens who work abroad sometimes face difficulties in understanding their rights in the country they work in. A case management solution was developed by Carmina Symaco, Marcos Antonio Abrematia and Jayson Espadero to support migrant workers in solving their issues by interacting with a Copilot embedded in a Power Pages site. All questions are created as a case in Dataverse where additional support personnel can review and respond to the person working abroad.

Migrant workers can paste an excerpt from their employment contract into the page in the Power Pages site to generate details that are more easily understood.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• A Copilot built using Microsoft Copilot Studio utilizes the built-in boost conversation capabilities where local websites of a country are associated to the Copilot to generate responses to questions asked by migrant workers.
• The Copilot is embedded in a Power Pages site where the user provides details of their role, the country they are working in and selects from a list of topics that resemble their issue to gain further assistance. Based on the information provided, Copilot returns the desired information extracted and collated from local websites of the country the Filipino citizen works in.
• Excerpts from their employee contract can also be parsed and analyzed using Power Automate cloud flows combined with OpenAI’s ChatGPT service to interpret the details and generate an answer that can be easily understood by them.
• All answers are captured as a case where support personnel can review them in a canvas app. An embedded Copilot in the app assists the support personnel to generate responses for the cases.
• AI Builder text recognition prebuilt model was used to classify the cases based on the description the migrant worker provided to the Copilot in Power Pages. In the app, there is a view for cases where the tag identified by AI Builder and the selected issue type by the migrant worker do not match. The administrator reviews the conversation history between the migrant worker and Copilot to correct the classification of the case.

What we loved

The solution was supportive of migrant workers by using a Copilot with boost conversation capabilities to answer queries and use OpenAI’s ChatGPT service to help them understand their employment contracts. Since it’s embedded in a Power Pages site, they’re able to access the Copilot 24/7 which is of benefit to workers across different time zones. The team also included some neat features for the support personnel and one that stood out was using AI Builder text recognition prebuilt model to verify the classification of the case was correct which will help with the long-term quality of the data.

Information Technology

Prompt Wagon

Artem Chernevskiy, Katerina Chernevskaya, and Nikita Chernevskiy recognized that prompt engineering is a growing new skill for organizations of all industries to utilize. Prompt engineering is natural language inputs or queries users provide to Large Language Models (LLMs) to produce the desired outputs or responses. To help organizations become skilled in prompt engineering, a Power Apps canvas app known as Prompt Wagon, was developed where users can select from a list of more than 100 pre-defined prompts and practice their knowledge of prompts by interacting with Azure OpenAI’s ChatGPT service within the app. The aim of the app is to help end users of all levels – beginners or advanced to learn how to construct their prompts and grow their prompt engineering skills.

Users can practice prompt engineering with the canvas app and gain more confidence in using generative AI.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• Users can select from 100+ pre-defined prompts across three categories of Business, Data and Education in the canvas app to help them exercise prompt engineering with the Azure OpenAI ChatGPT service. It also includes multi-language support in English, German and French.
• A custom connector was built to query the Azure OpenAI ChatGPT service from the canvas app. This enables users to interact with the services from within the app.
• Dataverse is used to store the text, images, prompts and translations of the German and French languages. All of these are surfaced onto the canvas app from Dataverse.
• Built-in app settings are available to modify the prompts and query parameters directly within the app. The updated settings are adhered to when end users next enter their prompts into the app.

What we loved

The app will help organizations be better equipped with prompt engineering through interacting with generative AI in the app. It was great to see the team build a custom connector to make the actions reusable across their solution that query the Azure OpenAI ChatGPT service from the canvas app. The use of Dataverse for the high volume of text, images, prompts and translations of several languages will support the solution to scale as the library of prompts grow over time with use.

CodeScribe

Developers often review code authored by others, with a common scenario being legacy code, where there can be little documentation or comments in the source code. To help automate code reviews, Robert Perillo built a Power Apps canvas app known as CodeScribe for developers to copy and paste code snippets into the app. A summary of the code is provided using Azure OpenAI’s Completions service to assist developers with understanding the code.

Developers can perform code reviews instantly by entering code snippets into a Power Apps canvas app and Azure OpenAI will summarize the code.

The solution consists of the following main features:

• Developers can paste code snippets into the canvas app and when they submit the code for review within the app, a Power Automate cloud flow executes to call the Azure OpenAI Completions service which analyzes the code snippet.
• Azure OpenAI then formats the code into two outputs, the first being a code summary that provides an overview of what the code does, and the second is a commented code block that explains each step of the code in detail for documentation purposes.
• The Power Automate cloud flow sends the formatted code to the canvas app for developers to review the summarized code and view a running commentary on the lines of code.

What we loved

Robert’s CodeScribe app won the Best Better Together Use Case category to help developers with the task of reviewing and documenting code by combining Power Platform and Azure OpenAI Completions service. We liked that the summaries are produced within minutes, reducing the time spent on code reviews. The solution breaks down what the code does by first summarizing it in a short paragraph, followed by a detailed explanation for each of the steps in the code.

Share your story with us!

Do you have a story or experience to share? We are excited to learn more about how individuals and organizations are using Power Platform with generative AI and Copilot capabilities! Submit your story at https://aka.ms/ShareAIStory

Learn more about Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot

• Understanding prompt engineering
• Create an app using AI Copilot
• Get started with Copilot in cloud flows
• AI-powered and Copilot features in Power Pages
• Build an AI-based Copilot with Microsoft Copilot Studio
• Quickstarts with Azure OpenAI Services

The post How Power Platform Global AI #HackTogether inspired AI-powered solutions for real-world use cases appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Celebrating Successes

The Power Up Program’s vision was simple yet powerful: to equip individuals worldwide with the tools and knowledge needed to thrive in the era of digital transformation. And the response was nothing short of phenomenal. Participants, hailing from diverse backgrounds, united under the common goal of mastering low-code skills, bridging the gap between ambition and proficiency.

• 25,000+ Participants: From every corner of the globe, individuals took the plunge into the world of low-code development, driven by a shared enthusiasm for learning and growth.
• 180+ Countries Represented: The program transcended borders, cultures, and languages, fostering a truly global community of learners united by their eagerness to empower themselves.
• 12-Week Upskilling Journey: The self-serve curriculum guided participants through a transformative 12-week experience, honing their Power Platform skills and unleashing their potential.

One of the most inspiring aspects of the Power Up Program’s inaugural year was witnessing the success stories that emerged from the community. From career transitions to groundbreaking projects, the impact of newfound skills reverberated globally, validating the program’s mission to empower individuals to create their paths in the digital landscape. Watch some Power Up Program graduates share their success stories.

Paving the Way Forward

As the Power Up Program embarks on its second year, the excitement continues to build. We’re thrilled to introduce a groundbreaking feature that amplifies the learning experience – Group Learning! The program continues to evolve for learners and volunteers.

In year two, we will offer more interactive and visual learning including the opportunity to attend Microsoft partner-led App in a Day workshops. In addition, participants can now join as teams, fostering a sense of camaraderie and collaboration.

Introducing Group Learning

Colleagues, friends and family now can challenge each other on a learning journey to become low-code app makers. To get started, a group leader applies and creates a team name. Once accepted, the group leader will select their preferred start date and send invitations to group members.

Throughout the learning journey, group members can monitor each other’s advancement on the leaderboard, fostering healthy competition and collective growth.

Recognizing our volunteers

We are pleased to recognize 13 Power Up champs as our first recipients of the Star Champ badge who displayed exemplary commitment and dedication in our first year. Let’s give a shoutout to the first round of Star Champs: Ahmed Salih, Akah Mandela Munab, Asia Platt, Barend Buizer, Christina Wheeler, Davy De Roeck, Drew Poggeman, Neil Hambly, Pavel Vecer, Remi Dyon, Rishona Elijah, Sheryl Netley, and Zeeshan Saeed.

This badge will be awarded to champs who have contributed more than 15 hours over the last 6 months across various volunteering categories such as supporting Power Up learners during live Q&A sessions, responding to learner questions on discussions boards and grading final app challenge submissions. We are excited for champs to have the opportunity to earn this badge that recognizes their commitment and support for the Power Up learners and to inspire many others to volunteer.

As you make your New Year’s resolutions, add building an application with Microsoft Power Platform to the list and join the Power Up Program as an individual, a group or as a volunteer!

The post Reflecting on a year of empowerment: Microsoft Power Up Program’s first-year recap appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Build and apply filters in your App using your preferred method.

The modernized apps page experience provides a variety of options for you to get started with creating an app. You can select one of the main create tile options or the +New app on the command bar, which will load the corresponding wizard experience for you to proceed with app creation.

With the simple pills, quickly access apps that you created or own via my apps and apps that have been shared with you.

The component libraries and wrap projects features have been relocated to the Discover page enabling you to conveniently pin them to the left navigation pane for ease of accessibility, be sure to visit the Discover page.

Use the search box on the top right corner or the filter and sort options on the column header to find the apps. Select an app and perform various actions such as edit, view app details, and access app settings using the command bar or the contextual app command actions.

You can also switch your app view from list to grid for a full-blown experience including viewing your app description.

You can also switch your app view from list to grid for a full-blown experience including viewing your app description.

To Learn more:

Get started with Power Apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

The post Unlock the potential of Copilot and other app creation options with the modernized Apps page. appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

We are excited to announce the public preview of Default Environment Routing, a new Managed Environments feature that allows Power Platform admins to automatically direct new makers into their own personal developer environment when they visit make.powerapps.com for the first time. Default environment routing offers new makers a personal, safe space to build with Microsoft Dataverse, without the fear of others accessing their apps or data.

Default Environment Routing will allow admins to place their makers in a healthy Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) state from day one by directing them into their own personal developer environment instead of the default environment. With Power Platform pipelines, admins can also create a release pipeline from the created personal developer environment to production. This feature will help customers streamline their environment strategy and offer administrators more control over their makers.

For new makers up until now, the default environment serves as their home environment, which offers a seamless experience and accelerates innovation with the Power Platform. Establishing the same governance guardrails for all the makers in a single shared environment, however, gets more challenging as the maker base of any business grows. Administrators also have a challenge monitoring and managing all the assets in the default environment at scale.

Default Environment Routing is an essential tool for tenant administrators, providing them with the ability to manage their makers’ environment according to their specific governance requirements. This feature will help them to optimize their environment strategy, making it more efficient and secure for both makers and the organization. Admins can customize the governance rules and policies for each individual maker or business unit in their own developer environment as per their needs.

Prerequisites

Default environment routing is a tenant-level, admin setting that:

• Is enabled by Power Platform admins only.
• Requires that the Developer environment assignment setting is enabled for Everyone

• Requires the use of Managed Environment, since all of the newly created environments will be managed. Users in a managed developer environment will require premium licenses to run Power Platform assets.

Enable the Default environment routing setting

The Default environment routing setting is disabled by default and must be enabled using Power Platform admin center or PowerShell.

Enable the feature in Power Platform admin center

1. In the Power Platform admin center, in navigation pane, select Settings.
2. On the Tenant settings page, select Environment routing (preview).
3. In the Environment routing pane, turn on the Create personal developer environments for new makers option.

This feature enables the automatic creation of a personal, developer environment for all of your Power Apps new makers when they first launch make.powerapps.com. The definition of a new maker is limited to the makers who visit make.powerapps.com for the first time. Returning makers who have visited the site before aren’t impacted. The created developer environment will be managed by default and the new makers are assigned the admin role in their newly created developer environments.

IMPORTANT

• Any maker can build apps in the managed developer environments created through default environment routing without requiring a premium license. Nevertheless, since Managed Environments is not included as an entitlement in the Developer Plan, every user who runs assets in these environments will require a premium license. More information on the Managed environments and the Developer plan can be found here
• Non-managed Developer environments are unaffected by the above stated premium license requirements. You can learn more about the developer environment and developer plan here.

Looking forward

Our roadmap includes configuring user roles as well as the automatic configuration of Managed Environments and DLP settings for all new Development environments created through environment routing. Keep an eye out for our release notes where we announce Power Platform new features. We are committed to providing our customers with the best possible experience on the Power Platform, and we are excited to see how our customers will use Default Environment Routing to optimize their environment strategy. To learn more, please check out our updated documentation for the Default environment routing here

See related

Managed Environments Overview

Overview of pipelines in Power Platform

About the Power Apps Developer Plan

The post Streamline your governance and environment strategy using Default Environment Routing (preview) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

You can register for the Microsoft Power Platform Conference 2023 for more inspiration from Microsoft senior thought leaders, software engineers, and community experts.

Build apps and games with Microsoft Power Apps

In addition to building apps for work, Matthew likes to build apps for fun and partnered with his wife Marie to build their first low-code game (and Marie’s first low-code app), Pipe Dream—a puzzle game with an objective to build the longest path of connected pipes you can. Pipe fragments in different shapes (such as straight, corner, cross) are offered at random and must be used in the order in which they’re presented—think Tetris with pipes. Pieces can be placed anywhere on the board, and water begins to flow from the starting point 15 seconds after the round begins. Build your path as long as possible to gain points, but don’t let any water escape or it’s game over. It’s lots of fun—we’ve played it—and you can play Pipe Dream too.

How did Matthew get to a place where he could easily build such cool apps for fun? Matthew was once an accountant spending a lot of time in Excel. When his organization was looking for help to do some dev work for them, and Matthew stumbled upon Power Apps, and he realized that building apps for his company himself, using his Excel formula knowledge, was not just a dream.

“I’m not a programmer, but I do know some concepts from working in Excel. It turned out to be an excellent starting point because the Power Apps coding language is based upon Excel functions. I started off small and worked my way up to larger and more difficult apps from there.”

Matthew Devaney

Matthew left the world of accounting and built his way up to become a consultant at Microsoft partner Hitachi Solutions using the Power Apps platform, and he now develops digital solutions for a multitude of clients. 

Matthew, now a Microsoft Power Platform MVP, helps others achieve their dreams. He’s active in the Microsoft Power Apps Community and writes a blog where you’ll find “No Ads, No Fluff, Just Power Apps Stuff,” hosting information about Power Apps, including tips and tricks, learning experiences, and other useful information. The blog is loaded with free videos, tutorials, tools, and consolidated lists of features, icons, cheat sheets, and even a “cookbook” where you’ll find simplified and code versions of how to add simple functions to your applications, outlining the “recipe” for you to follow.

Make a career switch with Microsoft Power Platform

Matthew’s story is an excellent example of how anyone can make a career switch with the right tools and determination. If you’re interested in exploring Microsoft Power Platform and starting your journey as an app maker, check out the free templates and learning resources available online. It could be the start of a brand new career for you, too.

Learn more about Matthew’s career-switching story and the Microsoft Power Up Program.

Join us at this year’s Microsoft Power Platform Conference in October and discover how Power Apps can help you achieve your dreams. Just like Matthew, you could be the next winner in the demo contest!

The post High five Matthew Devaney—Microsoft Power Platform Conference 2022 demo contest winner appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Microsoft is a leader in enterprise low-code application platforms. We’re excited to announce that our first 18 learners have successfully graduated from the Microsoft Power Up Program, a 12-week skilling program designed to enable non-technical professionals to successfully advance their careers with low-code application development using Microsoft Power Platform technologies. Congratulations, graduates!

Power Up Program popularity

When we announced the Power Up Program in September 2022, we were amazed by the huge response—within months, we had 87,000+ applicants from 193 countries across the world. We are delighted by the strong support from several subject matter experts in the Power Platform user community who have signed up to volunteer their time and expertise as Power Up Champs. These volunteers are helping nurture the next generation of Power Platform developers. Here’s the excitement shared by one of our current learners:

Pilot cohort outcomes

Only six weeks after we announced the Power Up Program, we launched a pilot cohort in three regions (Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe-Middle East-Africa) on October 31, 2022. After lots of hard work by dedicated learners and Power Up Champs, 18 learners successfully graduated from the program. Each of these graduates has completed the required learning modules, attended required virtual sessions, and successfully developed an application that passed an assessment by a Power Up Champ. The graduates have been awarded a free voucher to earn a Power Platform certification and a Power Up badge that can be added to their LinkedIn profile. Here’s what a few graduates have to say about the program:

We’re grateful to all the participants in the pilot cohort who provided valuable insights about the content, delivery, and scheduling of the program. We poured those learnings into our design thinking for future cohorts, and we onboarded a new learning management system to deliver the content, track outcomes, and provide community discussion boards.

Gearing up to train thousands

Currently, we have a substantial backlog of applicants due to the high demand experienced during the initial months. We are thrilled to announce that we launched our first large cohort in February 2023, covering the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe-Middle East-Africa regions. And we plan to kick off multiple large cohorts with thousands of learners in the coming months.  

Start learning to create low-code solutions today

We encourage you to consider starting your Power Platform learning journey on Microsoft Learn and stay engaged by joining the Power Platform Community. We are always looking for more volunteer Power Up Champs, and you can apply to volunteer or join the learner waitlist at the program home page.  

The post Celebrating the first graduates of the Microsoft Power Up Program appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Firstly, we have a new icon for the Power Platform CLI and the Power Platform Developers tools in general, and it looks like this.

A lot of you folks had asked for something more meaningful to represent the developer tooling capabilities of power platform. Well, we finally delivered, and we are happy for it. Thank you all for your support. You will start seeing the icon updates happen shortly in all the relevant web tooling properties like the Visual Studio Code activity panel, Azure DevOps, Visual Studio Marketplace etc. just to name a few.

Less noisy solution.xml

Now let us get into the meat of things. We did not put a blog out in January, but one of the features that we included, and we did not talk about was that solution.xml is less noisy when diffing in source control repositories. Here is an example of the same solution files unpacked with an older version versus the new version of Power platform CLI. The new output is on the left-hand side of the picture below

New command!! (Preview) The fetch command

We knew a lot of folks in the community used the fetchxml capability to query dataverse, and our team’s internal build had a similar command that is used by our development team everyday. We have decided to make this command available in preview capacity for you all to use in the innerloop context. For those you who may not be aware of the fetch capability. Developers building applications for Power Platform usually need to query the dataverse instance to get various properties of the Dataverse entities in question. We now have the ability to do the same thing in the Power Platform CLI. When using the -x parameter remember to have all the XML nodes in a single line and not multiple lines or you can use the -xf and read it from the XML file

New Command !! pac admin status

When using the Admin commands, which operate in async mode, most of you had asked us, ” how do I really know if the async job request is done?”. Now we have a command that shows you the status of the async job with pac admin status

More details of the all the features are captured in the release notes at this link

Please try out these capabilities and give us feedback at the following location ISVFeedback@Microsoft.com or The PowerUsers community. Raise the issue and bugs at the following location in GitHub https://aka.ms/powerplatform-vscode.

The post Releasing the February Update for the Developer Tools (Power Platform CLI) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Lumen Technologies, formerly known as CenturyLink, is a technology company that provides network, cloud, and security services to enterprise customers globally. The company’s offerings include network and data center services, managed hosting, and cloud infrastructure services, as well as a range of security and application management solutions.  

They have cultivated an active community of “Lumen Makers” – over 800 professional and citizen developers across the company building Power Platform solutions, some of which have increased efficiency of their business processes by over 90%.  

They used the recently announced Managed Environments and Pipelines capabilities in Power Platform, in conjunction with the CoE kit, to establish robust governance, administration, and application lifecycle management (ALM). This has enabled their IT team to effectively manage low-code innovation at scale – currently spanning 800+ apps, 11k+ cloud flows, 450k+ desktop flow actions – while experiencing a rapid growth in numbers of new makers and new digital solutions. 

Using automation to reduce discount processing time by 90% 

With the introduction of the Emergency Broadband benefit launched in the United States during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, customers could request discounts from internet service providers. Program administrators needed to process requests, such as verifying customer accounts, checking for qualification criteria, downloading subscriber data, and many more processes for each request.  

During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBBP), which provided qualifying customers with discounts on their internet service. For both EBBP and the successor, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), administrators needed to quickly process consumer requests—such as verifying customer accounts, checking for qualification criteria, and downloading subscriber data—before the discounts could be applied to the customer’s account. By developing a solution leveraging over 57 Power Automate cloud flows, Lumen Technologies was able to automate this entire process end-to-end, reducing the processing time for each EBBP or ACP request by 90%. 

App developed by field supervisor slashes 80 days from claims wait time 

When copper or fiber optic cables maintained by Lumen are damaged, field staff need to capture details and submit claims. This used to be a cumbersome manual process that involved sending text messages along with emails and photo attachments to their field supervisors. The overall process from the time of incident to the claim being billed took 90 days.

As a field supervisor, Robert Autry regularly dealt with the challenge of manually collating claims information from multiple locations. He discovered Power Apps and as a self-taught citizen developer created a mobile solution to streamline the process. Field technicians now use a mobile app at the job site to capture all damage data and in just a few minutes can create and submit a claim for review by field supervisors.

The revised process has been used to process approximately $30 million in damages and has considerably reduced the overall time for claims to be billed out – down from 90 days to 10 days.

“It saved the company money. My company did not have to go and buy something off the shelf to replicate what I created.”

— Robert Autry – Lumen Technologies

Managed environments unleashes the power of citizen makers with easy ALM 

All of the innovations were possible due to how Lumen had set up their environment strategy. Lumen manages over 120 production environments and around 3000 developer environments.  One of the struggles Lumen had was to enable citizen developers to be able to follow an ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) strategy. This required code-first knowledge about CLI (Command Line Interfaces), Azure DevOps, and other development concepts, making it a steep learning curve for those without ALM experience or coding backgrounds. In order to trust important business processes in the hands of citizen makers, Lumen needed them to use mature ALM practices to manage and deploy their solutions. 

Lumen has started using pipelines in Power Platform – a feature within Managed Environments that enables people to easily set up ALM without prior knowledge – making it more friendly for those from a low-code background to have the same standard of ALM as code-first developers. 

“Training a user or a maker on ALM was easily a couple of hours, and most of the time, people weren’t coming back because they didn’t understand most of what was there. Now, all I have to do is just add the users as Pipeline admins and then just say “Hey, you see that little rocket down there? Just press that!”

— Andrew Gaskins, Global Power Platform Lead, Lumen Technologies

Developing the internal community 

Today, over 800 app makers and 1,400 flow makers are part of the Lumen Makers community, sharing best-practices and reviewing new features of Power Platform. For all its success today, the Lumen Makers Community began as a simple Teams channel in late 2019. Lumen partnered with the internal Change Leadership team at Lumen with an external vendor to formally launch the Lumen Makers network in Fall 2021. The Change Leadership team provided support by developing network launch communications and templates for success story spotlights and leadership updates, while the vendor’s Power Platform Practice initiated a citizen developer program to provide coordinated Power Platform training and use case development sessions to the first wave of Lumen Makers. 

“We recently licensed the whole company for premium features and Dataverse. It’s opened the doors for so many things we couldn’t do before.”

— Andrew Gaskins, Global Power Platform Lead, Lumen Technologies

Next steps 

• Learn how Lumen Technologies lights the way for citizen development
• Listen to the podcast about how Andrew Gaskins has developed the Lumen Makers community 
• Learn more about Managed Environments and Pipelines in Power Platform 
• Join the Global Power Platform Admins User Group led by Andrew Gaskins 

Read other “do more with less” stories

• Kao uses Power Apps to boost frontline worker efficiency by 480 hours every month
• T-Mobile saves thousands of hours and achieves 12x gains in process efficiency
• Equinor embraces Power Platform to increase process efficiency while cutting costs
• Coca-Cola United automates over 50,000 orders in complex SAP invoicing process
• Leading US hospice care provider VITAS Healthcare processes 2 million patient visits to date
• Rabobank streamlines complex process from three weeks to three minutes
• Johnson Controls simplifies their infrastructure, saving 3,610 hours on training enablement

Additional links

• Check all other “Do More With Less” stories
• 100+ Power Platform customer stories
• 70+ Power Platform customer story videos

The post Lumen optimizes processes by 90% and scales innovation across the organization with Managed Environments appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Founded in 1887 as a domestic soap manufacturer, Kao Corporation is now a Japanese multinational consumer goods company that specializes in personal care, household cleaning, and beauty products.

Reducing paper-based process by 480 hours monthly

Because the company has been in operation for more than a century, it has a long history of analog processes. There was a paper form for everything, from inspection records to raw material management to hazardous chemical storage. Trying to find the right paper for the right procedure was both challenging and time-consuming. In the Wakayama factory, Kao was managing over 300 types of paper cards that contained the type, location, quantity, and quality of raw materials. In some cases, the paper cards were difficult to understand because they were hand-written. If a card was lost or damaged, it slowed production as employees tried to address the problem.

“It was difficult to handle the information,” said Ryo Shibuya, a production worker in the chemicals department at Wakayama factory.

Ryo and his co-worker Nahoki Fujita decided to try a better way to manage raw materials. Using Power Apps, they created an app to digitize the process. The primary creation of the app fell to Ryo, a chemistry major with no previous IT experience. Once the app was launched, inventory management of the raw materials fully shifted to the app, which resulted in an efficiency improvement of approximately 480 work hours every month. Additionally, the production facility was able to add new functions to the app to manage the type and quantity of dangerous materials, which was not possible with the previous process.

“This project was successful because of the cooperation we received,” Nahoki said. “When we introduced the solution, we had to have time for learning. We had to stop some of our daily work to explain the purpose and meaning of the app. And all the people around us understood why that was important.”
“In my department, people are using this app and the members are saying that it is indispensable,” Ryo said.

Ryo and Nahoki are working on another app named Moon Chart, a production schedule management tool that allows employees to see what other people are working on in real time.

Building a development community for digital transformation across the organization

The paper-based process above was just the tip of the iceberg. As the senior manager of Kao’s technology development center, Shigeki Takemoto was eager to bring digital transformation to the shop floor. He learned about app development with Power Apps and thought the low-code development platform would be an ideal way for onsite personnel and engineers to easily improve operational efficiency in a short period of time.

“Within the manufacturing group at Wakayama, we have tried to nurture the citizen developers. We have trained a key user in each plant, who will serve as a promoter for this initiative and educate others who want to do the same. Additionally, we have established a support website to share our development story and it has been a great vehicle. Digital transformation is ongoing on the shop floor,” said Shigeki.

Kao’s citizen developers have created more than 260 apps across the company’s 10 plants in Japan since it introduced Power Platform in 2021. At the Wakayama facility alone, they’ve created over 50 apps.

“The person working on the production line often has an idea for improvement, so with this solution and tools, they now have the means to realize the improvement by themselves.”

— Tatsushi Okumoto, Fine Chemical Department, Kao

A digital future for Kao

Moving forward, Kao continues to pursue opportunities for further digital transformation and expand use of Power Platform to its operations in over 70 countries. Takemoto would like to utilize Power BI to visualize the massive amounts of data produced by the company.

“The popularity of Power Apps has prepared an environment for a layman like me to learn from scratch. That is really appreciated, and I think it will be an essential skill. I would recommend Power Platform to everyone. I didn’t know anything about making an app, but I still could complete it.”

— Nahoki Fujita, Chemicals department, Wakayama factory, Kao

Read more about how Kao continues to innovate with Power Platform to save money and realize process efficiencies with ease.

Read other “do more with less” stories

• T-Mobile saves thousands of hours and achieves 12x gains in process efficiency
• Equinor embraces Power Platform to increase process efficiency while cutting costs
• Coca-Cola United automates over 50,000 orders in complex SAP invoicing process
• Leading US hospice care provider VITAS Healthcare processes 2 million patient visits to date
• Rabobank streamlines complex process from three weeks to three minutes
• Johnson Controls simplifies their infrastructure, saving 3,610 hours on training enablement

Additional links

• Check all other “Do More With Less” stories
• 100+ Power Platform customer stories
• 70+ Power Platform customer story videos

The post Kao uses Power Apps to boost frontline worker efficiency by 480 hours every month appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

The step-by-step guided wizard can “wrap” any existing canvas app(s) into a native mobile app shell and produce an Android or iOS mobile package that is ready to be digitally signed and distributed.

Get started with wrap for Power Apps wizard (Preview)

1. Sign in to Power Apps.
2. Select Apps, from the left navigation pane.
3. Select the app that you want to wrap, and then select Wrap on the tool bar.

4. On the Wrap pane, select Get started to use the wizard.

Distribute your native mobile apps

The resulting wrapped native mobile apps can be distributed to the end users via:

• Microsoft Intune
• Microsoft App Center
• Google Play Store 
• Apple Business Manager

Manage mobile updates on Power Apps maker portal

All changes published to the canvas app(s) that are included in a wrapped mobile package will be automatically downloaded by your distributed native mobile apps.

Learn more

Learn more about wrap’s native mobile capabilities in Overview of wrap – Power Apps and Frequently asked questions for wrap!

We are looking forward to having you try wrap for Power Apps wizard (Preview) to build your native mobile apps for Android and iOS!

Join our Power Apps community to share your feedback and provide your comments.

For more information on mobile capabilities in Power Apps, visit the documentation on Power Apps mobile.

The post Create native mobile apps with wrap for Power Apps wizard (Public Preview) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.