What’s new: Power Apps November 2023 Feature Update
Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share a summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place.
This month we’re excited to share updates for Cards, the release of the new Formula Bar, Named Formulas GA and major updates for Copilot!
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- Cards for Power Apps are supported for application lifecycle management (ALM) and DLP
Maker Productivity
- Improved Power Fx Formula Bar is now on by default for new apps
- Unleash seamless integration and advanced insights with Dataverse Link to Fabric
- Named Formulas is now GA
- Cards for Power Apps flow Connector is Generally Available
End User Productivity
- Extend Microsoft Copilot with Power Platform Plugins
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Cards for Power Apps are supported for application lifecycle management (ALM) and DLP
Makers can now create solution-aware cards for Power Apps for easier application lifecycle management (ALM) and manage card access via Security roles and Data loss prevention policies (DLP).
Makers can create cards for Power Apps directly in a solution or add existing cards to a solution.
Administrators can now use Security roles to control who can read, write and create cards for Power Apps in any Power Platform environment, or can disable cards for Power Apps feature for all users in a Power Platform environment.
Learn more at Cards for Power Apps are now solution-aware for easier application lifecycle management (ALM) | Microsoft Power Apps
Maker Productivity
Improved Power Fx Formula Bar is now on by default for new apps
We’re happy to announce that the improved Power Fx Formula Bar is generally available in Power Apps Studio bringing a more familiar development experience for those who have used Visual Studio Code. New apps created after the 2312.1 release of Power Apps Studio will see an improved signature help allowing you to visualize multiple overrides of Power Fx functions, an updated suggestion list viewing more suggestions to use in your formulas, and more responsive color highlighting. The Power Fx Formula Bar setting is available in the Preview feature settings, which can be change to enable the improved Power Fx Formula Bar in older apps or go back to the legacy formula bar. We are continuing to improve the experience and would love your feedback in the community forums.
Learn more at Try the new Power Fx Formula Bar in Power Apps Studio | Microsoft Power Apps
Unleash seamless integration and advanced insights with Dataverse Link to Fabric
With Dataverse Link to Fabric, you can make Dataverse tables available in OneLake, Fabric, in a single-click, no ETL! You can then access Dataverse data in Fabric to:
- Create Power BI reports on billions of rows with blazing speed in Lake Direct mode. No need to refresh your datasets or import data periodically.
- Run SQL queries over Dataverse data and join it with external data in Fabric
- Transform your Dataverse data along with external data using Spark
- Analyze your Dataverse data along with external data in Fabric, in Excel
- Access your Fabric data in Power Pages
- Create Power Apps over your data in Fabric
And this is not all – ISVs such as MECOMS, A Ferranti Company are making use of Dataverse Link to Fabric to build and offer advanced solutions that seamlessly integrate business functionalities with insights and actions, resulting in additional value.
Named Formulas is now GA
Power Fx Named Formulas are now generally available in Power Apps. Named Formulas provide an essential feature to help modularize your app, which in turn will help increase the performance and maintainability of your apps.
Learn more at Build large and complex canvas apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
Cards for Power Apps flow Connector is Generally Available
Cards for Power Apps (generally available since March 2023) are micro-apps with enterprise data and workflows and interactive, lightweight UI elements that other applications like Teams can use as content.
On November 20, 2023, we announced the General Availability of Power Automate Connector for cards for Power Apps. With this update, makers can jump-start card’s flow creation directly in the Cards Studio UX and share their card in Teams chat or channel or send it to a specific Teams user.
Use Send from a flow option on the card’s Play page in Cards Studio to launch a Power Automate flow template for sending cards in Teams. Next, modify and save this template as a new flow.
Learn more at Cards for Power Apps | Power Automate Connector is Generally Available | Microsoft Power Apps
End User Productivity
Extend Microsoft Copilot with Power Platform Plugins
At Ignite this year, we introduced the capability to expand your Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 using Microsoft Power Platform plugins. By tapping into the extensive Microsoft Power Platform connector ecosystem, boasting over 1,100 live connectors, you can now facilitate the integration of both your new and certified connectors as plugins across low-code applications, seamlessly weaving them into Microsoft Copilots’ extensibility narrative. This positions you to potentially engage with hundreds of millions of users and makers of Power Platform building apps on low-code platform. Following are some of the key takeaways –
If you are an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) or developer:
- Enable your existing certified connector as a plugin across Microsoft 365 and Power Apps Copilots.
- Extend your OpenAI plugin to Power Platform with the added benefit of converting them as connectors which can then be used to create rich Power Apps and Power Automate flows
Learn more at Accelerate Copilot extensibility and Power Apps creation with Microsoft Dataverse – Microsoft Power Platform Blog
We’ve also released new, and made updates to some of our documentation – see a summary before of some of the key updates:
Please continue sending us your feedback on features you would like to see in Power Apps. We hope that you enjoy the update!