Power Platform Weekly - Issue #196
Welcome to Power Platform Weekly!
Last week Microsoft Ignite 2024 was held in Chicago and along came lots of announcements. We saw glimpses of the future in many of areas of the platform.
The new Power Platform Admin Center was introduced with lots of new features. Autonomous agents buzz was all around (now in preview) and new OOB agents were introduced into Power Apps as well as new possibilities to create your own, e.g. from an app. Knowledge in Copilot Studio have had lots of improvements. Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry integration was presented (note that Azure AI Studio was re-branded into Azure AI Foundry). Copilot Studio is going multi-modal with new voice and image features. Pro devs will have access to the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK. We also saw lots of demos of Power Apps - Start with a plan, which was announced earlier at the Power Platform Community Conference.
Read more in the Microsoft Ignite 2024 Book of News and of course in the Out Of The Blue section!
Have a great week and thanks for reading!
📰 Articles
Ignite '24 - Power Platform Governance Announcements
🦸🏻♀️🚀 EY Kalman has been fortunate enough to have been given early access to some of the new Power Platform Governance features. Read his summary in his blog.
Code to Excel: Export Like a Pro!
👩💻 Andrew Butenko got the task to export data from Dataverse to Excel from the client-side code and he was able to master the approach used by Model-Driven Apps natively.
A Canvas app for bus tickets? Possible!
🦸🏻♀️👩💻 When Guido Preite launched an app he saw a centered colored bar, switching between the time and a random word. The colored bar also tilts based on the accelerometer of the mobile phone. He asked himself: "Can I build a Canvas App with similar concepts?"
Other articles
🦸🏻♀️ Model-driven app for D365HR by Ana Inés Urrutia
🦸🏻♀️ OOB: Power Apps + D365 HR by Ana Inés Urrutia
🦸🏻♀️ Time Zone Labels for Events in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys by Amey Holden
🦸🏻♀️ Autonomous Agents are here! (preview) by Dian Taylor
🦸🏻♀️ Your first agent with Copilot Studio: A little transition helper by Pauline Kolde
🦸🏻♀️ A Little Nudge Needed? How to Send Proactive Messages by Your Agent by Pauline Kolde
🦸🏻♀️ Auto Assign Leads Without Code Using Lead Scoring & Work Assignment by Megan V. Walker
🦸🏻♀️ Filter views using Copilot by Jeroen Scheper
🦸🏻♀️ Dynamics 365 Contact Center – Manage Chat SPAM by Neil Parkhurst
🦸🏻♀️ Manage solution dependencies easily through the refreshed look by Nishant Rana
🦸🏻♀️ Three Big improvements in UML Diagram Generator for Microsoft Dataverse by Jonas Rapp
🦸🏻♀️ Autonomous Agents in D365: Case Management Agent by Sharon Smith
📺 Videos
🎙️ Podcasts
Microsoft Mechanics Podcast
🚀 Spin up SQL databases in seconds with Microsoft Fabric, seamlessly integrating your operational and analytical data across multiple clouds. Use AI to scale, tune, and secure databases, so you can focus on building powerful, data-rich applications without the manual management overhead.
Create and host API endpoints directly from your SQL database in one click, enabling seamless interaction with your data using popular frameworks like React. Integrate your database management into your CI/CD pipelines with ease, ensuring high availability and streamlined development processes.
Anna Hoffman, Principal GPM, SQL database in Microsoft Fabric, joins Jeremy Chapman, Director of Microsoft 365, to show you how to get started.
The MSDW Podcast
🧭 Microsoft MVP Kuldeep Gupta returns to the MSDW Podcast to help us understand some of the latest Copilot features coming to Dynamics 365 Project Operations. Kuldeep has a list of favorites and honorable mentions that he dives into, including an extra preview feature (they're all linked below).
He also tells us about his newly released digital course for organizations planning a move from D365 Project Service Automation (PSA) to Project Ops and the rapidly approaching deadline set by Microsoft for that transition.
XrmToolCast Podcast
👩💻 Daryl and Scott talk to Microsoft MVP David Rivard about his newest tool, Plugin Identity Manager which is an XrmToolBox tool to create, update and assign managed identity records to Dataverse plugin assemblies. If you're unsure what managed plugin identities are, why you need them, or how they're used, this episode is a must-listen! And if you've already created one yourself, tune in to learn how the tool can simplify your workflow and make your life easier.
📅 Events & Webinars
ESPC 2024
(📅 December 2-5, 2024)
ESPC 2024 is coming to Stockholm, Sweden this year. Learn all about Microsoft 365, Azure and Power Platform at this great 3-day conference with over 100 speakers!
Cloud Technology Townhall Tallinn 2025
(📅 January 30-31, 2025)
Cloud Technology Townhall Tallinn 2025, set for January 30-31, will bring together top experts to share updates on Microsoft Cloud technology, including AI, machine learning, and scalable infrastructure.
Update Days: Power Platform
(📅 February 4-5, 2025)
Update Days is a conference for professional developers building enterprise grade solutions. It will be hosted in Prague, Czech Republic on the 4th and 5th of February 2025!
ColorCloud Hamburg 2025
(📅 April 24, 2025)
ColorCloud is back in 2025! After the highly successful first edition, the new edition is happening in April 2025. Again, it will be a great event for everyone who likes Power Platform, Dynamics 365, Azure & Power BI.
💙 Out of the Blue
Copilot Studio is enhancing its platform with knowledge improvements, Azure AI integration, and more
🤵🏻🦸🏻♀️🧭👩💻🚀 Omar Aftab summarizes the updates to Copilot Studio at Ignite: improved knowledge and tuning capabilities, Copilot Studio and Azure AI integrations, Autonomous agents, multi-modal capabilities that now also work for voice solutions, the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK, and a lot more! Read the blog for all the details!
Boost productivity: Automate emails, documents, and images with Microsoft AI Builder
🤵🏻🦸🏻♀️🧭👩💻🚀 A lot of goodness comes from the AI Builder team (written by Gwenael Bego): you can now use multi-modal content processing in the AI Builder Prompt Builder and structured JSON outputs & Dataverse grounding are now GA! For the Dataverse grounding you now can use multiple tables and include tables with large numbers of records. The models got updated to GPT-4o and GPT-4o Mini and you can now use a prompt library to get started!
The next frontier in enterprise intelligent automations with Microsoft Power Automate
🤵🏻🦸🏻♀️🧭👩💻🚀 Sangya Singh writes about a lot of new features for Power Automate. The general availability of Automation Center, create and editing expressions with Copilot, generative actions, and repair with Copilot are just some of the new announcements.
Microsoft Power Pages: Enhancing business websites with AI-powered features and experiences
🤵🏻🦸🏻♀️🧭👩💻🚀 Justin Graham highlights the new improvements to Microsoft Power Pages in his blog. The introduction of agents in Power Pages portals marks a new step for autonomous agents. Enhanced list AI insights for Power Pages got added as well. Portal creation with natural language is introduced as well and of course the Power Pages part of Power Platform Admin Center got a big update as well.
Power Pages Dashboards Now Available in the New Power Platform Admin Center (Preview)
🚀 Pramitha Udupa announces that there are a lot of Power Pages Dashboards now available in the new Power Platform Admin Center! Make sure to check the blog out to learn what’s available!
Empowering Administrators: New Performance and Security Recommendations for Power Pages in Power Advisor
🚀 Pramitha was busy this week, because she also blogged about Power Advisor that includes a lot of recommendations for Power Pages now!
Introducing the Power Pages Data Summarization API
👩💻🚀 Nagesh Bhat introduces the Power Pages Data Summarization API—that uses Generative AI to deliver concise, insightful summaries of page content.
💡 Suggest content
Do you have a blog, YouTube channel or podcast that you want us to track or do you know someone creating great content or community tools you think we should be aware of? Let us know about it!
We usually include links to content or tools updates announcements from the past week. If you see a really great blog post or video, let us know one way or another!
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🕺 About the “Persona icons”
🤵🏻 Business User
🦸🏻♀️ Maker
🧭 Decision Maker
👩💻 Developer / Architect
🚀 Admin / Center of Excellence
🛠️ Tools
📅 Events & Webinars