The Latest Innovations in Microsoft Power Platform

As we move into 2025, Microsoft continues to enhance its Power Platform with new features and improvements. The release plan for the second wave of 2024 versions, spanning from October 2024 to March 2025, includes a series of innovations that promise to increase user productivity and efficiency.

This plan includes a series of new features and improvements for the various Microsoft Power Platform products and their add-ons (Power BI, Power Apps, Power Pages, Power Automate, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and AI Builder), as well as some enhancements to the administration capabilities in Power Platform and Dataverse.

Below, we detail some of the highlights of this release for each product (some already available previously, and others that have been seen in preview).

Power Apps

Power Apps enhances productivity with built-in intelligence and AI-assisted development. Complex applications can be created more easily, leveraging Copilot‘s capabilities to work with data and gain valuable insights. Among the new features, according to their area, we can find:

Modern App Creation

Use modern controls and templates by default.
Allow multiple users to work simultaneously on canvas apps.
Use the code view to see the code, allowing copy and paste, in a canvas app.
Visual improvement in Power Apps Studio, making it more comfortable and consistent with other Microsoft product updates.

Copilot for Power Apps

Greater efficiency in filtering and sorting data using natural language in model-driven apps.
New assistance capabilities for users to enter data more comfortably when filling out forms in model-driven apps.
Fill out forms using the new smart paste option, which will suggest values to enter based on previously copied content.

Enterprise Scale

Improve delegation in UpdateIf and RemoveIf, allowing them to affect more than 2000 records without delegation issues.
Metrics linked to UX and efficiency, integrated into the Power Platform admin center.

Power Pages

Power Pages will leverage Copilot to facilitate content creation and subsequent use. Additionally, it will add some capabilities to templates.

Design studio

Use Power Fx in web template components, allowing parameters to be set and dynamic data included through formulas.
Add sections and pages using Copilot, describing them in natural language.

Copilot in Power Pages

Improve search with new AI enhancements.
Summarize website content using Copilot.

Power Automate

Power Automate will further simplify workflow creation using natural language and AI capabilities. The long-awaited “undo/redo” actions will be a welcome feature. There will also be improvements in using Copilot for both cloud and desktop flows.

Cloud Flows

Create Power Automate flows in Excel using the “Automate” tab.
Allow “undo” and “redo” steps in the cloud flow designer.
Create and edit expressions for Power Automate component inputs using Copilot, utilizing natural language.

Copilot for Power Automate

Use the AI recorder in Power Automate to interpret voice and mouse movements, greatly facilitating desktop flow creation.
Generate a more accurate description of flows using AI in Power Automate for desktop.

Desktop Flows

Progressive log that allows near real-time tracking without waiting for the process to complete.
Use certificates stored in Azure Key Vault to connect to Windows sessions on desktop flow machines.

Microsoft Copilot Studio

New functionalities include improved component reuse and integration with messaging services through Azure Communication Services. Additionally, using Azure OpenAI will avoid the manual creation of topics. Event-triggered copilots will also be a novelty.

AI and Copilot Innovation

Create automated copilots triggered by events, such as the arrival of an email or the upload of a document.
Obtain performance information on copilots to know user satisfaction and main query topics.
Use Azure OpenAI to obtain generative responses, leveraging advanced language models to avoid the need for manual topic creation.

Copilot Configuration

Create REST API Copilot connectors in Microsoft Copilot Studio, allowing no-code access to data sources without a connector.
Deploy copilots on WhatsApp and SMS channels using Azure Communication Services resources.

Basic creation

Create Copilot agents in Microsoft 365 Business Chat and Teams.
Import and export topics between copilots and environments to facilitate content reuse.

AI Builder

AI Builder introduces improvements in document processing and new AI capabilities, such as the Prompt Generator to create and deploy GPT prompts with images, websites, and documents.

Prompt generator

Process images with GPT in the prompt generator, allowing new applications such as text recognition, image understanding, graphics, etc.
Integrate data from websites and documents into AI Builder, allowing content from internet sources and company documents to be referenced in the prompt.

Microsoft Dataverse

Microsoft Dataverse improves connectivity and security, using AI for more efficient solutions. These improvements are designed to streamline both security and development phases, as well as subsequent user use.

Low-Code Hyperscale Backend

Integration with Azure DevOps source control systems, allowing changes to be reviewed before deployment to other environments.
Improve security with the risk assessment tool, which will automatically detect risks in security roles and propose privilege adjustments.

Workspace

Support for solution file sizes up to 1GB.
Solution management in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Extend your copilots with knowledge and actions

Use Dataverse table data as knowledge in Copilot agents.
Use copilots to find table and application permissions, facilitating the task of sharing the application with users.
Enable finance and operations links in copilot responses to navigate directly to a specific record within an application.

Governance and Administration

The focus on governance and administration continues to provide tools and information for administrators to easily manage their digital environment. This release focuses on providing more options for deployment and sharing tasks.

Application Lifecycle Management

Associate development environments in a default deployment pipeline.

Security and compliance

Allow or deny guest access to an environment.
Ability to limit the sharing of cloud flows in managed environments.
Ability to limit the sharing of copilots created in Copilot Studio in managed environments.

Unified Experience for Power Platform and finance and operations Apps

Deploy and manage unified sandbox environments. The finance and operations apps environment will be considered a Power Platform application, allowing Dynamics 365 apps and Power Platform apps and flows to be installed and hosted in the same environment.
Convert sandbox to production for these unified environments.

Conclusion

With the release plan for the second wave of 2024, Microsoft Power Platform promises to take another step in the ease and possibilities of using the platform. Additionally, it will continue to advance in the use of AI for automation processes.

With some improvements in key products like Power Apps, Power Automate, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and AI Builder, we can expect an increase in efficiency and productivity in both the development of processes on the platform and the subsequent use of these processes by users. While many of the improvements are simply minor details, there are others that could undoubtedly mean a significant quality leap in the Power Platform environment.

At Itequia, we have directly seen how this tool can optimize operational efficiency and improve continuous developer training. If you want to discover how Microsoft Power Platform can enhance your software projects, do not hesitate to contact us.