Work queues in Power Automate are structured lists that let you assign, track, and manage work items across users or automations in an organized, scalable way.

We’re excited to announce powerful new enhancements to work queues in the automation center that will transform how your teams manage and monitor automated workflows. With the introduction of work queue alerts and the new aggregated operator view, we’re giving businesses unprecedented visibility and control over their automation operations.

What’s New

Work Queue Alerts for Admin in Monitoring Hub

With monitoring in the Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC), you can track the health and the performance of your automation queues. View real-time metrics on items pending action, exceptions requiring resolution, and queue status to maintain visibility across your automation operations.

Now, you can also configure proactive alerts to notify you when SLA violation counts exceed thresholds defined by your organization’s administrator. Receive timely notifications when queues require attention, ensuring you can respond before service level agreements are compromised.

With SLA violation alerts, you can stay informed and responsive with notifications about your automation queues. No more manual monitoring; the system comes to you.

Aggregated View for Operators in Automation Center

Operators now have a unified, comprehensive dashboard in the automation center that aggregates work queue data across your entire automation estate.

This consolidated view enables operators to monitor multiple queues simultaneously, prioritize work effectively, and respond to issues faster than ever before.

Top 5 benefits of using Work Queues in Power Automate

1. Increased efficiency & scalability – Work queues allow you to decouple complex processes, enabling different parts of an automation to run asynchronously and independently.
2. Better resource utilization – Because work items are stored centrally, you can optimize robot usage, balance load, and reduce the number of machines required.
3. Consistent prioritization of work – Work queues natively support priority-based execution, making sure the most important items are processed first.
4. Centralized monitoring & exception handling – Work queues provide a human‑in‑the‑loop monitoring experience, helping fusion teams track the status of items, manage exceptions, and take corrective actions.
5. Improved resiliency & fault tolerance – By decoupling work and allowing multiple robots to process items in parallel, work queues offer better fault isolation.

Transform Your Automation Operations Today

These enhancements represent our commitment to making automation not just powerful, but manageable at enterprise scale. Work queues with alerts and aggregated operator views give your teams the tools they need to run automation operations with confidence, efficiency, and complete control.

Ready to experience these capabilities? navigate to the automation center in Power Automate and discover how work queues can elevate your automation program from task execution to strategic business operations.

The post New enhancements to work queues that will transform how your teams manage and monitor automated workflows. appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Earlier this year, we announced the preview of Deployment pages for makers and admins. Today, we are excited to inform you that these experiences are now Generally Available (GA). Additionally, we’re excited to announce the new Default Pipeline Rule for Environment groups (Public Preview), enabling admins to configure pipelines once and auto-scale access to healthy ALM for all makers.

What’s New with Deployments?

Don’t worry, the act of deploying solutions with pipelines is not changing. What is changing are the useful capabilities offered on each Deployment page. Since January, we’ve baked in advisor-powered recommendations to help both admins and makers follow healthy ALM best practices along with providing the ability to retry failed deployments (in preview, rolling out by June) where action is required— which couples very well with the highlighted “failed deployments” shown on both pages.

Public Preview Release of Default Deployment Pipeline Rule for Environment Groups

The long-awaited rule for environment groups that simplifies the pipeline-environment association process is now here in Public Preview!  For customers using environment groups and rules, it’s now possible to connect an environment group to a pipeline via the new rule. This means admins can scale ALM for their various groups with less effort than ever before, associating all developer and sandbox environments with a chosen pipeline (and pipelines host) with a single click.

This further streamlines the pipeline setup process, making it scalable for multiple groups of environments in an organization. So long as all makers that wish to use the pipeline are in the default team of the pipelines host environment, all the work, including sharing the pipeline record and deployment privileges, is done for you!

What’s next?

More capabilities are currently rolling out, including the ability for makers and admins to retry failed deployments (Preview), and an enhanced view for managing approvals on the Admin deployment page. We’ll announce more shortly.

Learn More

Maker Deployment page

Admin Deployment page

Default Deployment Pipeline Rule

Pipelines in Power Platform

Introducing Maker and Admin Deployment Pages

The post Scale ALM org-wide with Deployment hub GA and the new Default Pipeline Rule appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

This release wave comes at an exciting moment, in a year marked by rapid advancements in AI. Microsoft Copilot and agents are at the heart of this release wave, promising to transform how we all work and to help elevate organizations into AI-first companies. New Copilot and agent capabilities showcased at today’s event will help you to improve business processes, enhance customer engagement, and empower your workforce to automate tasks.

Watch the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event to hear directly from product teams as they share demos and real customer stories that showcase the newest features in action. Companies like Eneco, Intralox, Apollo Travel, Murdoch’s Ranch & Home Supply, Pro Refrigeration Incorporated, and State Farm are leveraging these features to drive transformation.

Create your own autonomous agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio

In this release wave, Copilot and agents take center stage with even more functionalities to help organizations transform their operations and deliver exceptional customer experiences. At the event, we are showcasing custom agents that can autonomously conduct a range of processes across sales, service, finance and supply chain functions.

Microsoft Copilot Studio serves as the foundation for agents, making it easy to customize and build your own customer and internal facing agents using your data and workflows. In addition, upcoming pre-built agents for Dynamics 365 are ready to customize and launch, accelerating your time to value. Stay tuned for blog updates and deep dives about Copilot and agent capabilities during this release wave.     

Transform customer experiences with AI agents

AI is transforming every aspect of customer experience, from rethinking user experience and business processes to the way apps are built and maintained. The 2025 release wave 1 features Dynamics 365 customer experience apps designed to help you deliver connected and personalized experiences for customers.  

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales brings the power of AI to help sellers meet their targets while boosting seller productivity. Copilot and agents enhance performance and simplify tasks to help grow your pipeline, sharpen strategies, and accelerate deals. A re-imagined user experience ensures sellers never miss the best move to close a deal. And automated research, ongoing follow-ups, and prioritized tasks provide continuous guidance—allowing you to focus on the right actions to drive success and grow your business. 

Dynamics 365 Sales introduces new Copilot and agent capabilities to research and prioritize inbound leads, initiate sales conversations, and develop personalized sales engagements. These features help your teams to simplify tasks to help grow your pipeline, sharpen strategies, and accelerate deals.

During the launch event, we showcase how Intralox, an industry leader in complex conveyance solutions, is leveraging the sales qualification agent in Dynamics 365 Sales to help qualify leads, build stronger relationships with customers, and close deals faster.

New functionalities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center include Microsoft Teams phone integration, which helps to reduce telephony complexity, proactive conversational journeys, and three agents that work in concert to create an autonomous contact center. These agents automate intent determination, manage the case lifecycle from creation to closure, and convert cases and related conversations into knowledge articles to support your contact center operations.

Learn how Apollo Travel, a subsidiary of European travel leader Dertour Group, is using Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Copilot, and agents to automate a range of processes—from generating hotel descriptions to developing chatbots for case summarization. In addition, using Dynamics 365 Contact Center with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Apollo Travel can now leverage custom-built agents to proactively reach out to customers with personalized recommendations, adding value to the customer’s travels and opportunities for upselling additional services. This experience is enabled through new proactive engagement activities such as SMS or phone calls, helping to create personalized journeys in real-time.

Explore the release plans for:

• Dynamics 365 Customer Service
• Dynamics 365 Contact Center
• Dynamics 365 Sales

Optimize workflows with autonomous ERP

Today’s launch also showcases innovation across ERP solutions that is leading organizations into a new era of autonomous operations—where humans and agents work together to drive increased efficiency across business processes.

To support autonomous financial operations, Dynamics 365 Finance introduces the Account Reconciliation Agent, along with a new financial task workspace to help teams manage and track recurring processes like period close with greater structure and visibility.

In Dynamics 365 Project Operations, new capabilities will simplify time, expense, and approvals; accelerate scenario planning with what-if analysis; and improve planning accuracy with customizable task details. Dynamics 365 Human Resources will add AI-powered candidate assessment to help hiring teams identify top applicants faster by comparing resumes to job requirements, and a new onboarding agent that guides new hires through personalized onboarding journeys directly within Microsoft Teams.​

In Dynamics 365 Commerce and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, we’re delivering new tools to enhance pricing strategy and procurement efficiency. Unified pricing management enables organizations to centralize omnichannel pricing across segmentation, channel-specific rules, and price trees. At the launch event, we showcase how Murdoch’s Ranch & Home Supply is using the new Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to reduce manual vendor follow-ups and improve purchase order accuracy.​

We also feature how Pro Refrigeration Incorporated is using the Sales Order Agent in Dynamics 365 Business Central to process customer orders faster and improve responsiveness. Business Central also adds the integration with Dynamics 365 Field Service, new Copilot summarization capabilities and Scope 3 emissions tracking to help organizations meet sustainability goals.

Updates include Copilot-first experiences in Dynamics 365 Finance to streamline complex tax and compliance management and automate account and bank reconciliations using intelligent agents. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces integrated AI, analytics, and automation features to improve operational efficiency, enhanced supplier communication, demand planning accuracy, and intelligent manufacturing features that align production data to real-world processes.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central also adds the integration of Field Service with service management, as well as the ability to enhance purchase order line matching with Copilot.  

Explore the release plans for:

• Dynamics 365 Finance
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources
• Dynamics 365 Business Central

Redefine development: AI-first innovation in Microsoft Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform continues to empower everyone to build their own AI-powered solutions through low-code or no-code tools with new features. Microsoft Power Apps is changing how software solutions are built with plan designer, enabling makers to build an end-to-end solution plan from simply describing their business problems, generating business requirements, data tables, and suggested solution architecture. 

Microsoft Copilot Studio brings together the best AI innovations into a single low-code agent platform so that you can build amazing things. New capabilities like Agent Flows and Deep Reasoning expand the frontier of agents you can build, while new text and generative AI tools give you the ability to direct agents in specialized ways. The general availability of triggers and generative orchestration enables new categories of autonomous agents to transform business processes. We also are introducing more tools to optimize your agents including new diagnostics, testing, and performance analytics.

Explore the release plans for:

• Microsoft Power Apps
• Microsoft Power Pages
• Microsoft Power Automate
• Microsoft Copilot Studio

Watch the virtual Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Watch the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event to discover the latest in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. You’ll get access to in-depth demos of new autonomous agents and other capabilities designed to optimize your workflows and streamline operations.

Don’t forget to review the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Stay updated on the latest features and upcoming enhancements, and create your personalized release plan using the release planner to ensure you’re equipped with the knowledge needed to maximize on this new release wave.

We look forward to seeing how capabilities in this release wave enhance your business processes and bring new levels of efficiency and customer success.  

The post 2025 release wave 1 brings hundreds of updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

The Power Platform and Copilot Studio Architecture Center offers a wealth of resources covering reference architectures, real-world solution examples, and architecture concepts.

What you’ll find in the Architecture Center

The Power Platform and Copilot Studio Architecture Center brings together prescriptive guidance, design patterns, and best practices, all in one place.

Architecture key concepts are the foundational principles and recommendations that guide the design, planning, and implementation of solutions with Power Platform and Copilot Studio.

Reference architectures showcase best practices and proven patterns for building robust solutions. These architectures are contributed by experts from Microsoft and the wider community, ensuring the architectures are grounded in real-world experience.

Solution ideas document the architecture details of specific use cases and provide step-by-step guidance on how to implement similar solutions. Use the ideas for inspiration of what you can achieve with Power Platform and Copilot Studio.

We update the architecture center regularly with new guidance architecture patterns, informed by real-world experiences from customers, partners, and the Microsoft community.

Get Involved

We encourage contributions from the community. If you have developed a reference architecture or solution idea that you want to share, please let us know.

We are excited to see how you leverage the resources available in the Architecture Center to build innovative solutions. Your feedback is invaluable to us. Please let us know if you spot any issues or have suggestions for improvement.

Stay tuned for more updates and happy architecting!

The post Introducing Power Platform and Copilot Studio Architecture Center appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

What’s new since preview?

While the most impactful improvements are better reliability, performance, and usability, there’s many new and noteworthy capabilities.

• Disconnect from Git – You can easily disconnect your environment or solution from Git and reconnect to a different source code location or branch.
• Support for existing solutions and large solutions – These critical preview limitations are now addressed. Connect existing solutions in your environment and you won’t be limited by solution size when committing large solutions.
• Public API’s – Now you can interact with Git using Dataverse API’s and build automations to scale the process.
• Support for more object types – most solution components are now supported and we’re incrementally onboarding the remaining legacy components / objects.
• Delete when pulling – when an object is deleted in Git, you now have the option to delete it from your environment or remove from your solution on pull.
• Better user experiences – Git integration is available in Copilot studio (and other maker portals), with improved discoverability, usability, and columns showing who changed what and when.
• Geo availability – Git integration is GA in all public geos and coming soon to sovereign clouds.

Source Control your Canvas Apps

Dataverse Git Integration is the new standard, replacing the experimental Power Apps integration. If you’re still using the old setup, we recommend migrating to the new integration as soon as possible.

With Dataverse Git Integration, you get complete visibility into your source code – no conversions required. You can use pa.yaml files in your repository to manage source control and review changes made in Power Apps Studio, all without the clutter of noisy diffs.

The schema for canvas source code (pa.yaml files) is now published, and no breaking changes are anticipated moving forward.

What’s next?

General availability doesn’t indicate a feature is done – or that it’s without limitations. Rather, Microsoft is confident in the quality for production use. It’s important to evaluate whether current functionality meets your requirements.

Next up is unlocking code-first development. Soon, developer tools will support the new (YAML) format, which is easier to read, understand, and merge. Modern developers can then build and deploy solutions and code from source control with less effort and without prior domain knowledge.

For canvas apps, we will also start to enable (as preview) the capability to edit pa.yaml files directly in your repository.

We’ll be showing code-first demos at Microsoft Build next month, plus many other new and exciting Managed Operations and other capabilities.

Learn more

Setup Git Integration

FAQ

Source Code files for canvas apps

The post Git Integration is Generally Available appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Join us on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, for the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, an exclusive first look at groundbreaking innovations coming to Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft Copilot Studio. See firsthand how these new technologies empower your organization to proactively navigate changes and seize new opportunities.

Event highlights include:

• Live demonstrations of the latest updates in Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Copilot Studio.
• Insights from Microsoft leaders on transforming CRM and ERP systems with agents to drive customer experiences and operational agility.
• Real-world success stories from organizations using Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.
• Interactive Q&A session with product experts.

During the event you will gain in-depth insights into how customers are adopting what’s new in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales:

• AI-powered Microsoft Copilot and agents to boost seller productivity
• Automated research, proactive follow-ups, and prioritized actions
• Streamlined, intuitive user experiences designed to help sellers close deals faster

See Dynamics 365 Sales 2025 release wave 1 in action for more.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service:

• AI-enhanced case and knowledge management with intelligent routing
• Extended Copilot capabilities for improved productivity
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center enhancements for effortless self-service and faster issue resolution

See Dynamics 365 Contact Center 2025 release wave 1 in action for more.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance:

• Copilot-first experiences streamlining complex tax and compliance management
• Automated account and bank reconciliations using intelligent agents
• Advanced analytics and planning tools to drive smarter financial decisions

See Dynamics 365 Finance 2025 release wave 1 in action for more.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management:

• Integrated AI, analytics, and automation for improved operational efficiency
• Enhanced supplier communication and demand planning accuracy
• Intelligent manufacturing features aligning production data to real-world processes

See Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management release wave 1 2025 in action for more.

Copilot Studio:

• Create custom autonomous agents tailored to your specific business needs
• Extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with new embedded capabilities
• Connect with new conversational channels, including WhatsApp and SharePoint

See Microsoft Copilot Studio 2025 release wave 1 in action for more.

Microsoft Power Apps:

• Innovative plan designer for building software solutions from simple problem descriptions
• Out-of-the-box, extensible agents for data management, exploration, and summarization

See Power Apps 2025 release wave 1 in action for more.

Microsoft Power Automate:

• Enhanced capabilities for automating complex business processes
• New human-in-the-loop experiences, generative AI actions, and intelligent document processing
• Comprehensive governance, observability, and security controls in automation center

See Power Automate 2025 release wave 1 in action for more.

Catch the wave—Register today

The Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event streams live on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, starting at 9 AM PST and will also be available on-demand. Register now to stay updated and get helpful resources ahead of the event.

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Join us on Wednesday, April 30, 2025.

Register here

The post Preview upcoming Dynamics 365 features at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

• Smart paste now supports images – paste screenshots or handwritten content, and AI will extract relevant details for your form.
• Expanded file support – add .txt, .csv, .docx, .pdf, or image files (.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp) to get inline AI suggestions.
• New form fill toolbar – review and manage AI-generated suggestions more easily.
• More control for makers – makers can now specify fields that should always require human input, ensuring AI assistance focuses on where it’s most valuable.

Let’s explore how these updates can help you work smarter.

Paste images and extract insights

Have a handwritten note, a scanned document, or a screenshot with key data? Now, smart paste can extract text and tables from images and suggest relevant field values—no retyping needed.

Where this helps:

• Extract invoice details from a receipt image to log expenses effortlessly.
• Update inventory records by pasting images of handwritten stock counts or delivery receipts.
• Convert maintenance logs or inspection checklists from images into structured form data.
• Digitize whiteboard notes from a sales planning session to update an opportunity record.
• Capture contact details by pasting a scanned business card into a CRM form.

Smart paste can be enabled using the Smart paste setting in Power Platform admin center by going to Environments > [select an environment] > Settings > Product > Features.

Add files to fill forms

Adding a document makes data entry even easier. Simply select or drag and drop a supported file type—.txt, .csv, .docx, .pdf, or image files (.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp)—and AI will intelligently extract key details to populate your form, reducing manual effort.

Files is only available when the new form fill toolbar experience is enabled, see how to enable both in the section below.

New form fill toolbar: manage suggestions with ease

We’ve made it easier than ever to see where AI-generated suggestions come from and manage them effortlessly. The new form fill toolbar provides:

• A clear view of all AI suggestions in the form.
• Sources of suggestions, helping you understand where the data is coming from.
• A real-time count of open suggestions, allowing you to track pending reviews at a glance.

The new form fill toolbar and files capabilities can be enabled using the Form fill assist toolbar setting in Power Apps app designer when editing a model-driven app.

More control for makers: define where AI assists

While AI form fill assistance speeds up data entry, some fields should always require human input. Based on your feedback, we’ve introduced a way for makers to opt specific fields out of AI suggestions by configuring the Allow form fill assistance setting in column properties.

Try it out and share your feedback!

These enhancements are available in production today—so try pasting images, uploading files, and using the new toolbar to streamline your workflow. And as always, we’d love to hear how these updates help you—share your feedback and help shape what’s next for AI data entry!

Learn more at Use Copilot’s form fill assistance feature in model-driven apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

¹ Internal Microsoft testing conducted in November 2024 on sample of 22 subjects.

The post Paste images and add files to quickly fill forms with AI appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Microsoft Copilot Studio enables the integration of various enterprise systems into your agents, with built-in security, governance, and unified validation experiences. It supports productivity data from Office applications, line-of-business data from sources such as Dataverse (Microsoft 365 Dynamics), Salesforce, ServiceNow, and local files. For a more detailed overview of supported knowledge sources and configuration, read the overview of different knowledge sources supported by Copilot Studio.

Enterprise data is used to ground your agents in your organization’s knowledge, ensuring accurate and relevant information. This process is known as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This document provides an in-depth look at how your data from enterprise systems is transformed into knowledge through RAG on the data sources mentioned below: 

• Files – Using built-in semantic index of Copilot Studio 
• Enterprise Systems – Dataverse Tables and Azure SQL, Azure AI Search index, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and more) through 1,400+ Power Platform connectors or leveraging Microsoft 365 semantic index created by Microsoft Graph connections. 

Files

Uploading files as knowledge helps makers enrich their agents with additional data, augmenting the LLM’s knowledge and grounding the agent in specific information provided by the maker. Makers can upload a variety of files (see types and limits in the knowledge sources summary) which are semantically indexed as vector embeddings and then used as knowledge for agents. This knowledge used in agents can then be shared with authenticated and unauthenticated users of the agent.  

To improve agent’s responses, uploaded files are chunked into smaller pieces for faster processing and vector-indexed to provide semantic match with the user query. They are stored automatically in a built-in store for the agent. Indexing time depends on the file size. When a user queries through an agent, the Copilot Studio orchestrator uses the relevant chunks that match the query, and then the LLM summarizes the top chunks. 

Enterprise Systems

Ensuring secure access to knowledge sources is critical for managing and harnessing enterprise data effectively. The data in the enterprise systems are accessed in the context of the end user and the end user always get to view the current data in the tables, based on the security roles assigned to them. Also, when a modification is made to the underlying data in these tables, by any application, user or the agent, these changes are reflected in real time to the next query from the agent! 

Enterprise sources such as Dataverse tables contain data from Dynamics 365 business applications (i.e. Sales, Marketing, Finance) and custom business data useful for LOB agents. Makers can use existing Dataverse tables or create new tables via Data Workspace to provide knowledge for agents. Such new tables can be populated from Excel files, SharePoint lists and external systems using Dataflows built on Power Query. 

When Dataverse is used as Knowledge, the user’s query is translated into runtime query against Dataverse. The data and metadata in these tables are semantically indexed and vector embeddings help with linking the objects in the user query to schema elements and annotation of values. These annotations, along with synonyms and glossaries provided by the maker, determine the relevant columns to be used while generating a PowerFX query from the natural language. Synonyms and Glossaries are provided by the maker, inside Microsoft Copilot Studio while adding Dataverse tables to provide more business and organizational context to the models being used to fetch relevant knowledge. Thus, you can see why synonyms and glossaries play a big role in getting quality responses for queries from agent. At runtime, the rich Dataverse security model is enforced including table, row and column security. This means that the end-user will only be seeing the records which they have access to. The entire end to end process is illustrated below.

Other Enterprise sources

For other enterprise systems such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, and Azure SQL Server, the real-time RAG approach is implemented. In this approach, data from these enterprise sources are never ingested or indexed, but instead we leverage the metadata to generate a real-time query based on table and column names. Also in this model, customers do not have to worry about adding any additional layer of security within Copilot Studio. Copilot Studio uses only metadata, such as table and column names, when sources are selected, to create an index. The connectivity is established using the low code Power Platform connectors. When end-users use the agent, they are prompted to sign-in to establish a connection to the external system ensuring that they have the appropriate permissions to access the data, thereby establishing a secure link to access the knowledge needed, in real-time, for providing answers.

Security

When developing agents that are grounded on diverse knowledge sources, data security becomes a shared responsibility among the makers and administrators alike. 

When utilizing Copilot Studio to build agents, makers have the tooling available to implement robust security measures and adhere to best practices, creating intelligent solutions that are both powerful and secure while meeting the highest compliance standards. Adopting secure-by-default practices is essential; makers should ensure that agents are authenticated to restrict access exclusively to authorized users. Additionally, minimizing data exposure by connecting agents only to the necessary knowledge sources helps reduce risks and limits the overall attack surface. Implementing role-based access controls ensures that users receive only the permissions they require, preventing inadvertent overprivileged access to sensitive data. Continuous monitoring of access and usage aids in the prompt detection of any unusual or unauthorized activities, and regular security audits are vital to gain insight into discrepancies and anomalies that could indicate business concerns or suspected security violations. Before deploying to production environment, makers must conduct comprehensive compliance checks to ensure alignment with organizational policies and regulatory standards. 

Administrators play an equally crucial role in governing knowledge sources by leveraging managed security capabilities. These controls help protect data from threats, regulate access, prevent data exfiltration, and support custom encryption policies that reflect the organization’s requirements. By applying tailored data policies to systems such as SharePoint, public websites, or document repositories, administrators can ensure that connectors and API endpoints are used securely by developers building agents. Monitoring and analytics in the Power Platform admin center provide detailed insights into how resources—such as Dataverse—are accessed and utilized. Features like IP firewalls, IP cookie binding, and managed identities for Dataverse plug-ins further guarantee that only authorized users can access critical organizational resources. Moreover, robust compliance measures, including functionalities like Customer Lockbox and comprehensive auditing support for activities performed by makers, users, and administrators—further ensure that you get insights into organizational data events and streamline implementing industry regulations. 

We are continuously raising the bar on security and governance around data and knowledge that is being used by agents. To learn more about these features, see IT Governance Controls for Your Copilot agents – Microsoft Power Platform Blog 

Conclusion

Copilot Studio provides a robust and secure platform for building custom agents, using various RAG techniques for your enterprise systems. If you have not yet created an agent using Microsoft Copilot Studio, why wait? Start building your agents using Copilot Studio today, and experience how your enterprise data can be converted to knowledge for agents securely with a no-code seamless experience. Your data security is our top priority, allowing you to focus on creating exceptional, intelligent agents that meet your enterprise needs. 

Learn more about Microsoft Copilot Studio + Microsoft Dataverse:

• Breakout session recording: Get the most of your enterprise knowledge with Copilot Studio
• Breakout session recording: What’s new with Copilot Studio and agents 
• Documentation: Overview – Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Learn
• Documentation: What is Microsoft Dataverse? – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn  
• Podcast: Low Code Approach | Microsoft  
• Webpage: Customize Copilot and Create Agents | Microsoft Copilot Studio
• Webpage: Microsoft Dataverse | Microsoft Power Platform 
• Read about the latest news: Introducing deep reasoning and agent flows in Copilot Studio

The post Knowledge in Microsoft Copilot Studio appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

How can I strive towards enterprise-grade security for my agents?

Microsoft’s suite of business application security capabilities provides turn-key solutions to ensure that your organization is AI-ready, taking the guess work out of achieving agent adoption with enterprise-grade security. Managed security for Microsoft Power Platform brings together capabilities needed to secure your apps, flows, MCS agents, and the business data backing them. From security posture management, enhanced identity and access management tools, data protection and privacy capabilities, and more, managed security enables admins to safeguard agents at scale.

How can I ensure that agents can only be built and used by authorized individuals?

MCS, as part of Microsoft Power Platform, comes with numerous, rich identity and access controls. In Power Platform, environments are individual containers used to store, manage, and share business data, apps, flows, and agents built with MCS for easy management of distinct business use cases or disparate audiences. Admins can navigate to the Power Platform admin center, where they can manage the environments where agents reside easily with security groups. This ensures streamlined allocation of resources like agents across functional units like business groups or regions.

For more granular controls, visit the security hub to configure data policies. These policies set a myriad of access controls including requiring end user authentication and restricting maker privileges.

You can also leverage granular sharing for MCS agent scenarios. Initially, you are equipped with the ability to prevent owners and editor from sharing further editor or viewer permissions. Moreover, you can limit the ability to share an agent with additional viewers to a finite number of individuals, to security groups, or to no one else.

Further, agents have a secure connection to Azure at the authentication layer. With Managed Identity support for MCS, you have seamless access to Azure resources without needing to manage credentials like secrets and certificates, ensuring strict access controls.

How can I ensure that the data leveraged by my agents remains within the boundaries of my organization?

Microsoft Power Platform has a rich ecosystem of connectors, many of which can be leveraged as agentic knowledge sources or actions in MCS. To mitigate risk of data exfiltration to any external sources via those connectors, admins are equipped with data policies to allow or block connectors on a per environment basis.

Network controls can be leveraged to ensure that your organization’s data remains safe from exfiltration. With network isolation support for MCS, connectivity with your agents remains secure as over-exposure of Azure resources is prevented with the private preview of Azure Virtual Network support for MCS. Additionally, with the new private preview enhancements of IP firewall, user access to both Dataverse and MCS can be easily restricted to only a secure allowlist of IP locations.

MCS also supports connections to Azure Application Insights over private endpoint, ensuring utmost privacy while leveraging the valuable visibility into agentic performance that’s crucial for managing custom agents.

How can I stay aware of any misuse of or attacks upon my agents?

Intelligent threat protection and robust data protection mechanisms are crucial in safely leveraging agents. Microsoft Purview offers cohesive solutions for managing agents via Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI, a central management location for proactively monitoring agents that empowers you with data protection policies and compliance support. With data assessments, you can easily identify potential risks such as unprotected sensitive assets as knowledge sources, a surplus in user count interacting with sensitive information, or exfiltration risks like file migration. Built in recommendations are provided to guide you on how to quickly create sensitivity labels to protect your SharePoint-grounded agents or adopt default policies for an easy default security stance.

How can I stay compliant with new regulations?

Managed security capabilities also take into consideration regional, industry-specific, and organizational compliance requirements for AI-adoption. Copilot audit logging to Microsoft Purview captures interactions and activities within the environment, including user commands, responses, and any administrative actions taken. These logs are securely accessible through the Microsoft Purview compliance portal, ensuring thorough auditing and compliance checks.

Further, a feature called customer lockbox ensures protection of your business data by restricting the access that Microsoft support engineers have during support requests. With lockbox enabled, restricted “just-in-time” temporary access is granted only upon admin approval.

On top of the tools you can leverage to remain compliant, MCS abides by the numerous Azure-wide compliance certifications adhering to required legal and regulatory standards.

Security is a shared responsibility. How do I empower makers to maintain security best practices, too?

The weight of security should not rest on admins alone. So, MCS equips makers with ample tools to ensure they are building safe solutions while abiding by and aligning with the guardrails that admins set for them. Directly from MCS, makers have the flexibility to adjust settings in accordance with the business needs, without introducing risk. At publishing time, MCS performs security assessments of the solution and makers are alerted about any security concerns they can address before moving forward. These can include crucial security considerations like end user authentication requirements and sharing controls.

With all of this to be considered, how do I know if I am successful as an IT admin?

With managed security, you are empowered with a seamless security posture management experience. With the Power Platform admin center’s security score, you can quantitatively determine the efficacy of the security guardrails in place. To improve your security score, you are equipped with the opinionated recommendations of advisor natively in the Power Platform admin center, guiding you on the next steps for dynamically managing and protecting agents as your organization’s adoption scales.

How can I scale my agentic governance strategy?

Managed governance ensures scalable management of agents, empowering admins with efficient controls based on valuable insights, proactive guidance, and tooling to mitigate risk with enforceable environment strategies.

What visibility do I have into agentic usage and management?

Comprehensive visibility is key to scaling AI adoption. The Copilot hub in the Power Platform admin center brings unrivaled visibility into agentic activity across the suite of business applications. Copilot hub equips you with insights not only into MCS usage, but also Copilot usage across Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Pages. This view provides incredible insights into adoption patterns, allowing you to drive adoption strategies to maximize Copilot value for your organization

Given those insights, what should I consider for agentic environment strategy?

Efficiency and environment cleanliness is critical in an AI-ready environment strategy. With environment routing for MCS, makers are automatically routed to a safe, personal developer environment. This ensures stress-free management knowing that makers’ agentic solutions will not conflict with others in the default environment.

Do I have guidance on growing my governance strategy at enterprise scale?

Proactive and reactive governance is made simple with advisor paving the way, providing pointed guidance on measures to both attain and maintain smooth management of your agents.

Many of the settings that advisor may recommend are available at your fingertips as scalable governance rules, with the addition of Copilot-specific guardrails that can be easily applied across your environment groups. One crucial example is the enablement or disablement of AI prompts rule, empowering you to decide if custom or prebuilt prompts can be leveraged across various scenarios within your environment groups.

How can I manage licensing and capacity for agentic usage?

With managed governance, a seamless and flexible Pay-as-You-Go (PayGo) experience for Microsoft MCS is available directly in the Power Platform admin center ensuring simple and frictionless capacity management. With the new experience, you have the flexibility of setting PayGo metering by product type, ensuring only specified workloads are impacting the PayGo budget. Further, with granular allocation, you can divvy capacity between specific environments ensuring smooth operation across all business units while maintaining independence between disparate workloads.

Enable enterprise-grade security and governance for Microsoft Copilot Studio agents

Organizations can accelerate the integration of AI agents into their workforce by leveraging the robust governance and security features provided by Microsoft Power Platform. With managed security, you can ensure that your agents are protected against threats and comply with industry standards. Managed governance offers comprehensive visibility and capacity management, enabling you to scale AI adoption efficiently. By harnessing these advanced capabilities, your organization can confidently embrace AI-driven innovation. Stay ahead of the curve and empower your workforce with the transformative potential of AI agents, backed by the unparalleled management of Microsoft Power Platform.

The post Confidently adopt and administer Microsoft Copilot Studio with managed security and governance appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Why Environment Variables?

Managing site settings across environments often required manual updates, adding complexity to deployments. Power Pages ALM with the Enhanced Data Model previously lacked a way to define different site setting values across environments when deploying via solutions. Environment variables solve this by enabling dynamic updates, ensuring seamless transitions across environments without manual intervention.

Key Benefits

✅ Simplifies ALM by avoiding hard-coded values in site settings.
✅ Supports multi-environment deployments with environment-specific configurations.
✅ Allows dynamic updates without redeploying solutions.

The Solution

By using environment variables for site settings, users can flexibly manage configurations across environments while ensuring a smoother ALM process. This improves governance, automation, and operational efficiency.

Try out Environment Variables for Site Settings in Power Pages and simplify your website deployments! Learn more about the feature by visiting the documentation.

We’d love to hear your feedback—let us know how this feature helps in your workflows!

The post Streamlining ALM in Power Pages with Environment Variables for Site Settings appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.