Power Platform Weekly - Issue #259
Welcome to Power Platform Weekly!
Last week the general availability of Power Platform Monitor Alerts was announced, the Power Platform April 2026 feature update was presented, and recent updates to Agent Academy were highlighted.
Have a great week and thanks for reading!
📰 Articles
What to Put in Place Before You Deploy Copilot Studio Agents to Production
🦸🏻♀️ In this article, Hamish Shield shares why AI agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio need to be treated as ongoing systems rather than one-time projects, requiring clear ownership, continuous monitoring, and regular updates to stay accurate and valuable.
Make your Power App available directly in a chat with M365 Copilot
🦸🏻♀️ Arild Aarnes explored the new public preview feature that lets you use model-driven Power Apps directly inside Microsoft 365 Copilot chats, so you can view, create, and update records conversationally without switching apps.
“Can I Bring Someone?” - Solving Plus-One Waitlisting in Customer Insights Journeys (Part 2)
🦸🏻♀️ Waitlists can be a powerful tool, but they can become difficult to manage, especially when manual processes are involved. Martin P. López shows an approach to automating event waitlists with companions in Customer Insights Journeys.
Other articles
🦸🏻♀️ I built an AI companion for conference attendees. It's called BRIEF by Ana Inés Urrutia
👩💻 PCF: Theme and missing border radius tokens by Andrew Butenko
🦸🏻♀️ Copilot Studio: Publish To Website With Single Sign-On by Matthew Devaney
🦸🏻♀️ Finding Configuration diffs in Dynamics 365 F&O with AI by Ted Ohlsson
🦸🏻♀️ Under the Hood: How Dataverse Skills Work and How to Write Your Own by Zsolt Zombik
🦸🏻♀️ Dataverse Skills for Enterprise Architects: Governance, ALM, MCP Billing, and Production Readiness by Zsolt Zombik
📺 Videos
🎙️ Podcasts
Microsoft Mechanics Podcast
🦸🏻♀️ Access Anthropic and OpenAI models directly from Microsoft 365 Copilot. Generate briefing documents, presentations, and Excel files from a single prompt with Copilot Cowork, pulling from your emails, calendar, and SharePoint through Work IQ — and fold in new tasks mid-run without stopping. Using Copilot Cowork, you can use the same platform that powers Claude Cowork. It’s designed for long-running, multi-step task automation.
Use Critique in Researcher to pair a generation model with a dedicated review model, applying source reliability and evidence grounding before the report lands. Run model Council to submit one prompt to GPT and Claude simultaneously and compare their full reasoning side-by-side.
Ctrl+Alt+Azure Podcast
🧭 In this episode, we reflect on Microsoft certifications and what value they provide. It's been a while since we last looked at these, and plenty has happened - what's new, what's retired, and what's useful in 2026? We also reflect on the usefulness of certifications for juniors and seniors.
MS Cloud IT Pro Podcast
🤵🏻 In this audio and video episode recorded live at Microsoft headquarters during the MVP Summit, Ben welcomes a return guest, Joy Apple, to the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast and discuss her 20-year career in the Microsoft collaboration space, from financial services to SharePoint training, consulting, and her current role at Orchestry Software. Joy explains Orchestry as a Microsoft 365 governance automation layer covering templated provisioning for SharePoint and Teams, archiving policies (including Microsoft 365 Archive), guest management, and OneDrive governance. They emphasize that AI and Copilot amplify existing information architecture, permissions, and data hygiene issues, making governance more critical. They describe the MVP Summit as a “family reunion” where MVPs attend sessions and reconnect with peers. Joy and Ben also spend some time describing paths becoming an MVP and how much they just enjoy the community around the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and connecting with people both at MVP Summit as well as various conferences throughout the year.
📅 Events & Webinars
ColorCloud
(📅 April 15-17, 2026)
The most colorful Microsoft Business Applications conference is coming back to Hamburg in April 2026 for its third edition! Like artists working with broad color palettes, ColorCloud covers all Business Applications from Microsoft with German and English content.
Update Days Power Platform
(📅 April 27-28, 2026)
Curious about diving deeper into Power Platform? Encountering challenges while using it on advanced projects? You’re not alone. Join a conference that goes beyond the basics, offering practical insights into enterprise-level challenges like governance, professional development, and scalable solutions. Come learn from experts who work in the field every day, and connect with peers who, just like you, want to use Power Platform efficiently and strategically.
European BizApps Summit
(📅 May 5-7, 2026)
With 3000 attendees, the European BizApps Summit is the largest European conference focused on Power Platform, Dataverse, Microsoft Fabric, and Business Applications in general.
DynamicsCon
(📅 May 12-16, 2026)
Join thousands of other Microsoft Dynamics 365, Dynamics GP, and Power Platform users and professionals for more than 300 sessions, exhibitors, and endless community networking.
DynamicsMinds
(📅 May 25-27, 2026)
DynamicsMinds 2026 brings the global Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform community together for three inspiring days of real‑world insights, learning, and connection. Join industry experts and peers to explore what’s next and elevate the way you build, automate, and innovate.
Build
(📅 June 2-3, 2026)
At Microsoft Build, you’ll go deep on real code, real systems, and real workflows with the teams building and scaling AI. Two days. Hands-on sessions. No fluff.
European Power Platform Conference
(📅 June 29-July 2, 2026)
The European Power Platform Conference 2026 in Copenhagen brings together the Power Platform community to learn, connect, and share real‑world experiences. Through expert-led sessions and customer stories, attendees will explore how to build impactful solutions with Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot in a strong, collaborative community setting.
💙 Out of the Blue
Power Platform monitor alerts are now generally available
🚀👩💻 Arjun Mayur announces general availability of Power Platform Monitor alerts, introducing predefined alerts that surface degraded high-use apps, flows, and agents with zero configuration, plus a redesigned overview page, code app alert support, and work queue alerts in public preview.
Agent Academy spring drop: Special Ops, Cowork Collective, and a whole new look
🦸🏻♀️👩💻 April Dunnam announces a major update to Agent Academy, adding a Special Ops section with targeted MCP and YAML labs, a Cowork Collective section with hands-on Copilot Cowork missions, and a redesigned site with live search and a recent changes page.
What’s new in Power Platform: April 2026 feature update
🦸🏻♀️👩💻🚀 Tiffany Treacy rounds up the April 2026 Power Platform feature update, covering GA custom theming for model-driven apps, public preview of canvas app authoring with AI coding agents via MCP, GA external tool support for generative pages in all public clouds, and new code app alerting in Power Platform Monitor.
From DEV to PROD: auto-install and pinning for Copilot Studio agents
👩💻🚀 Henry Jammes walks through three deployment paths for Copilot Studio agents in Teams, showing how to customize manifests for DEV/TEST environments and use Setup Policies in Teams Admin Center for automated production rollouts with auto-install and pinning.
Deploying Copilot Studio agents in Teams (because test chat was too easy)
👩💻 Henry Jammes presents eight production patterns for Copilot Studio agents in Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot, covering reinstall handling, inactivity-based context clearing, global context variables, self-service troubleshooting with diagnostic cards, and suggested prompts.
💡 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!
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🦸🏻♀️ Maker
🧭 Decision Maker
👩💻 Developer / Architect
🚀 Admin / Center of Excellence
🛠️ Tools
📅 Events & Webinars