What’s new in Power Apps: January 2025 Feature Update
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AI-powered Development
Check out what’s new in this edition of Power Apps Pulse!
Your productivity is sure to get a boost from these updates! We’re excited to share the new powerful and personalizable Power Platform Admin Center, experience added efficiency and expanded capabilities in the data workspace, and get hands on with the brand new Plan Designer!
Plan designer is now available in Public Preview
The Power Apps team is excited to announce the plan designer is now in public preview and available for makers worldwide! With the plan designer, it is now easier than ever to transform a simple business requirement into a complete, end-to-end low-code solution in minutes. It enables makers with Copilot and a team of agents, with rich domain skills across solution architecture, data modeling, and user experience generation. Designed to revolutionize the way you build business solutions, the plan designer empowers you to build intelligent, impactful solutions efficiently and effectively.
Work with existing tables in data workspace
You can now visualize and manage existing tables in the ERD table designer, data workspace. Instead of starting from scratch, you can use your existing tables to build more robust data models. Once you’ve assembled your tables, the enhanced ERD view will allow you to review your existing and new tables side-by-side more easily.
User defined functions, user defined types, and enhanced component properties
Power Fx formula updates to make reuse and maintenance easier than ever:
Enhanced component properties (ECPs) have moved to preview. With any remaining feedback, we plan to take them to general availability in the next few months. ECPs enable the ability to share logic across apps through a component library.
User defined functions (UDFs) can now include behavior functions with side effects, such as Set, Collect, Reset, and Notify. Declarative is always best, so use this facility only when you must. When you do, wrap the formula in { } and you can then use the ; (or ;;) chaining operator.
User defined types (UDTs) enable tables and records to be passed in and out of UDFs. UDTs also enable bulk conversion of JSON untyped objects to typed objects, particularly useful with web APIs. Welcome the new Type and RecordOf functions, an expanded role for the AsType and IsType functions, and a new parameter for ParseJSON.
Enterprise-Grade Governance
SQL Server environment variables are now available for Power Apps
Support for Entra SQL Server environment variables is now available. They save you time moving your solutions from one environment to another. For example, moving your solution from an environment used for dev or test to a different environment used for test or production.
You can either manually create environment variables in your solution or set a switch in your app to auto-create them for you when you add a data source to your app while in your solution. Note that this feature is specifically for Entra. Power Apps with shared connections (e.g., SQL Auth) continue with connection references.
Unlock Seamless Data Integration with PostgreSQL as a Virtual Connector Provider
In today’s fast-evolving data landscape, seamlessly integrating and relating data across multiple sources is more crucial than ever. We are excited to announce the General Availability of PostgreSQL as a Virtual Connector Provider in Dataverse!
With this capability, you can now access real-time data from PostgreSQL without duplicating it within Dataverse. Makers can virtualize PostgreSQL data, enabling a unified data experience that combines native Dataverse and PostgreSQL data. This feature empowers users to make informed business decisions with a comprehensive, connected data view.
This is particularly beneficial for organizations managing large volumes of critical data in PostgreSQL while wanting to leverage Dataverse’s advanced data relationship and visualization capabilities. Experience the power of a seamless, integrated data environment—without the complexity of data duplication!
Manage system views with security role Public preview
We are announcing the Manage system views with security role preview.
Previously, the list of system views shown on each table form list is fixed for all users who have access to the table. The list of system views can be long for some of your tables, and they might not be applicable to users based on their role. Now Administrators can manage which system views to show on the table form list based on the user’s security role assignment.
Prevent data exfiltration with client app access control Public preview
We are announcing the Public preview of the prevent data exfiltration by securing app access feature.
How does this affect me?
This feature will allow admins and makers to protect against data exfiltration by controlling what apps can be run in your Dataverse Environment. This feature will help to prevent malicious users from creating or using unapproved apps to export sensitive data from your environment.
Admins and makers will be able to utilize the following features from the Power Platform admin portal:
- Create a list of approved applications that can access an environment.
- Utilize enforcement mode to ensure that only the approved applications can access your environment.
- Utilize audit mode to review the current applications that are approved or denied access to your environment.
Intelligent Apps
React and Fluent based virtual code components are now generally available
React and Fluent-based virtual code components were announced to be generally available for Model-driven and canvas apps . This feature allows customers and partners to leverage the Microsoft Power Apps platform libraries for React and Fluent, enabling the creation of a diverse set of code components without the need to package these libraries. Key benefits include unified consistent Fluent styling across multiple apps, improved performance by eliminating the need for isolated React trees and smaller control bundles, and simplified development by removing the need to include React or Fluent libraries in individual component bundles, streamlining the development process.
Unlock new possibilities by customizing Copilot chat in your apps with Copilot Studio (Preview)
Customization is crucial for organizations implementing AI solutions at scale. With Microsoft Power Apps and Copilot Studio, businesses can design tailored experiences for each app, boosting productivity and user satisfaction. We are excited to announce the public preview of Copilot chat extensibility for model-driven apps, allowing partners and customers to make in-app chat more context-aware and aligned with their unique needs. By leveraging Copilot Studio, you can enrich your Copilot chat experience with additional topics, knowledge sources, connectors, and custom prompts, ensuring a tailored and scalable AI assistant for each model-driven app.
Learning and Documentation Updates
Training Paths and Labs
Updated Training
- Extend a Pipeline in Microsoft Power Platform – Training | Microsoft Learn
- Set Up Pipeline Environments in Microsoft Power Platform – Training | Microsoft Learn
- Build a Power Apps canvas app for a real estate solution with data from Excel – Training | Microsoft Learn
- Create a machine ordering app with Power Apps – Online Workshop – Training | Microsoft Learn (Learning Path)
- Get started with Microsoft Dataverse for Teams – Training | Microsoft Learn
