Microsoft Power Platform: 2024 Release Wave 2 Highlights

Hello, tech lovers, this blog post is about the Microsoft Power platform's wave 2 releases.
As we step into 2024, Microsoft Power Platform continues to push the boundaries of innovation and efficiency with its Release Wave 2. This wave brings an array of new features and improvements across its core applications, designed to enhance user experiences, streamline processes, and foster a more integrated approach to data management and automation. Let’s dive into the key highlights of this exciting release.

Key Highlights:

• 2024 Release Wave 2: Introduces hundreds of new features across Power Platform applications and Microsoft Dataverse, enhancing governance and administration.

• Power BI and Data Integration: Now part of Microsoft Fabric, enhancing copilot experiences and offering broader connectivity and real-time data replication through Data Factory.

These updates ensure comprehensive support for decision-making, data management, and business automation.

This blog focusing more on Microsoft powerplatform.

Overview

• Microsoft Power Apps
• Microsoft Power Pages
• Microsoft Power Automate
• Microsoft Copilot Studio
• AI Builder
• Microsoft Dataverse
• Governance and adminsitration

Microsoft Power Apps:

Power Apps will continue to transform app experiences with infused intelligence, enabling users to be more productive by using Copilot to work with data, get insights, and improve their apps. Makers will continue to benefit from AI-assisted development, enabling rich and complex applications to be built with monitoring, control, and unmatched governance for admins, ensuring organizations can adopt low-code and AI transformation at scale.

Building modern apps

Power Apps is bringing out a series of improvements that will modernize apps by default, resulting in increased developer productivity and customer satisfaction. With these upgrades, developers will be able to use modern controls, responsive designs, and offline apps by default. Users may expect a more modern interface, simplified sharing options, and improved collaborative facilities.

Copilot for Power Apps makers and users

Copilot enables both developers and users to use AI and natural language to speed up app development and integrate AI into existing apps for better data analysis. Makers can use copilots to design and change programs, manage data, and improve overall functioning. Users can utilize natural language to explore data and navigate apps, which enhances the entire user experience.

Enable enterprise scale

Power Apps continually enhances its capabilities for developers and administrators, making it easier to build low-code solutions in the company. Power projects Studio's monitoring and code management tools are being upgraded to help developers work on larger and more complicated projects. These enhancements will provide makers and administrators with greater insight and control over their solutions and environment routing.

Microsoft Power Pages:

Microsoft Power Pages enables low-code creators and professional developers to create intelligent websites that enhance interactions with employees, consumers, and partners.

Design studio

Power Pages Design Studio simplifies the process of creating and customizing websites. As a developer, you can utilize Pages, Styling, Data, and Setting up workspaces to alter many areas of your website through a single interface.

Power Pages Home

It provides a unified view of all your websites in a given environment and allows you to build  websites using the existing templates.

Learn hub

It educates users how to build websites from beginning through end using documentation, interactive guides, and videos.

Power Pages Copilot

Developers can use Copilot with Power Pages to build elements of a website using natural language instructions. These allow users to quickly build a new website or make changes to an existing one.
For example, using Copilot in Power Pages, you'll be able to:

• Create a website.
• Enable website Copilot actions for users.
• Get answers to questions while building websites.

Professional developer experiences

Professional developer experiences allow developers to create complex customizations and configurations for their sites. These experiences encompass several crucial aspects, including:

• Development assistance for tools includes Visual Studio Code for Web editor, Visual Studio Code extensions, and continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) via Azure DevOps and GitHub actions.
• Capabilities for managing the entire application lifecycle.
• Extensibility patterns allow developers to adapt websites to meet complicated business requirements.

Microsoft Power Automate:

Microsoft Power Automate will continue to make it easier to build flows by using natural language and multi-modal generative AI capabilities across cloud flows and desktop flows, troubleshooting runs, and managing your automation estate with an end-to-end view. This, along with improvements in process mining to jumpstart creation of automation through Microsoft 365 integration and ongoing improvements to scaling, means it’ll be easier than ever for new users to get started and scale.

Cloud flows

Cloud flows constitute a major automation tool in Power Automate that employs cutting-edge AI technology to let customers focus on what's essential while automating every aspect with natural language and low code. Cloud flow capabilities include:

• Copilot-assisted approach building and administering automations across Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and the Dynamics 365 suite.
• Integration with the rest of the Microsoft Power Platform, such as the ability to launch workflows from a Power Apps app, respond to a data alert in Power BI, or perform an action in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
• The built-in AI Builder functionality enables intelligent document processing and intelligence embedding.
• Mobile applications enable users to get messages, complete approvals, and initiate and monitor automation runs while on the go. ##### Copilot for Power Automate Power Automate makes it possible for you to not just describe a flow to create, but also improve and iterate on your flows with AI-driven conversations. This next-generation AI-based copilot in Power Automate sits inside the flow designer and helps with every flow that’s being built or changed.

Desktop flows

Desktop flows is the robotic process automation (RPA) solution within Power Automate. Desktop flows provide automation for Windows desktop applications, services, and experiences for orchestration and deployment within Power Platform.

Process mining

Power Automate Process Mining empowers organizations to unlock the full potential of their data and discover valuable insights that can accelerate their journey to operational excellence. Capabilities include:

• Use out-of-the-box templates for rapid deployment from data ingestion to pre-defined custom reports.
• Gain deep insights with powerful features including rework detector, root cause analysis, process compare, and custom metrics.
• Create views, publish them to create custom Power BI reports, and share them across the organization.
• Seamlessly integrate with Power Platform to turn insights into action.
• Discover possibilities for automation and solutions for workflows and with task mining.

Microsoft Copilot Studio:

Microsoft Copilot Studio is advancing copilot capabilities and IVR support with Customer Service and will expand geographically to the United Arab Emirates and Germany. Additionally, the team is improving software lifecycle management capabilities with topic-level import/export and role-based access control (RBAC), as well as enhancing governance and administration functionalities.

Copilot and AI innovation

Microsoft Copilot Studio leads in leveraging AI to produce eloquent, appropriate responses through its integration of generative AI technologies using GPT models.

Key Features:

• Generative Answers: AI creates conversational responses from specified internal and external sources without needing manual topic creation.

• Generative Actions: AI dynamically orchestrates conversations by finding and connecting relevant plugins in real-time, fulfilling user requests seamlessly.

These capabilities allow for intelligent, fully conversational interactions, significantly enhancing the user experience.

Copilot configuration

A copilot's configuration includes all of the settings and capabilities that a maker uses to determine what audience their copilot will address (such as which channels to publish to or which copilots to extend), how to allocate resources across makers and their environments, and how to configure system behaviors for analytics, logging, and data retention.

Core authoring

Creating a copilot in Microsoft Copilot Studio is user-friendly with its low-code authoring canvas. Here's what you can expect:

• Manage Topics: Control how topics interact and guide the flow and feel of conversations.
• Easy Testing: Test changes without full deployment.
• Guided Authoring: Access lesson topics from simple to complex scenarios and use default system topics.
• Language Options: Choose the language for your copilot.
• Enhanced Understanding: Use variables and entities to improve user understanding.
• Rich Content: Make your copilot more relatable and user-friendly with rich content.

These features make it easy to create a versatile and effective copilot.

Speech and IVR

Voice interaction, a critical medium in copilot engagements, is seamlessly supported by Copilot Studio. It allows businesses to create voice-enabled copilots that accept speech and DTMF input from telephony, providing natural text-to-speech responses.

Key Features:

• No-Code to Pro-Code Authoring: Supports barge-in control, single and multi DTMF input, silence detection, and more.
• Intelligent Voice Copilots: Capable of understanding user intent and automating transactions.
• Generative AI Capabilities: Handles long-tail inquiries without explicit dialogues, increasing coverage and reducing operational costs.

These features enable businesses to craft efficient and user-friendly voice interactions, enhancing customer experiences while minimizing costs.

AI Builder:

AI Builder is investing in Prompt Builder for creating and deploying GPT prompts with enterprise data to enhance flows, apps, data tables, and copilots. We are also enhancing Intelligent Document Processing with a new validation station in Power Automate, application lifestyle management (ALM) support, and pre-built AI models for translation, classification, and personally identifiable information (PII) detection. Lastly, we’ll improve AI governance through capacity management, data policies, and including AI Builder capacity in the Power Apps developer plan.

AI governance and administration

Governance and administration in AI focus on key themes that enable administrators to effectively deploy and monitor AI activities:

• Capacity Management: Ensuring efficient allocation and management of resources for AI workloads.
• Usage Monitoring: Tracking AI usage to optimize performance and resource utilization.
• Application Lifecycle Management: Managing the development, deployment, and maintenance of AI applications.
• Access Control: Securing AI environments by controlling access and permissions.
• Sharing and Deploying AI Models and Prompts: Facilitating the sharing and deployment of AI models and prompt configurations.
• Building Intelligent Solutions with AI Capabilities: This area encompasses new AI model capabilities for creating more intelligent solutions, expanding the range of AI functionalities and integration points available through Microsoft, particularly with AI Builder.

These themes ensure a structured, secure, and efficient approach to managing AI activities and leveraging AI capabilities for intelligent solutions.

Extend copilot capabilities with AI

Copilots significantly boost productivity and satisfaction for business users by functioning within the specific context of each enterprise.

Key Features:

• Natural Language Authoring: Users can describe desired actions using natural language, simplifying topic creation.
• Conversational Responses: Built-in responses serve as a foundation for further development.
• Integration with Dataverse: Makers can enhance GPT prompts with Dataverse data records for deeper insights.
• Document Interaction: Directly interact with documents to extract key points and generate new templates, enhancing productivity.

These capabilities enable copilots to revolutionize workplace efficiency and user satisfaction by providing context-aware and intelligent solutions.

Intelligent document and email processing

AI Builder empowers organizations to automate document processing, handling both structured (e.g., invoices) and unstructured (e.g., resumes) documents. This automation speeds up tedious, error-prone tasks by using AI models for content extraction, including defining specific fields and incorporating feedback loops and human validation.

Key Features:

• Automation: Streamlines data extraction, reducing manual effort.
• Customizable AI Models: Easier customization with advanced AI capabilities.
• Intelligent Pipelines: Simplifies setup with the latest Azure AI models.
• Generative AI: Limits the need for extensive model training.

These capabilities make AI Builder a powerful tool for enhancing productivity and accuracy in document processing.

Prompt builder

Prompt Builder is AI Builder's interface for creating, testing, and deploying generative AI prompts for large language models. These prompts are instructions for AI to perform tasks like content generation, classification, insight generation, or information extraction.
Key Features:

• Wide Range of Scenarios: Applicable for various tasks across multiple Power Platform products.
• Reuse and Deploy: Prompts can be used in copilots, apps, flows, and Dataverse tables.
• Solution-Aware Components: Prompts are triggered with Power Fx expressions, enabling easy reuse and deployment across low-code components.

These capabilities streamline the integration of generative AI into business solutions, enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Microsoft Dataverse:

Microsoft Dataverse is enhancing the maker experience by boosting app building productivity with Copilot, ensuring seamless connectivity to external data and knowledge sources, and integrating AI-powered Enterprise Copilot in Microsoft 365. These investments aim to streamline development and use AI for more efficient and intelligent solutions.

Build your low code hyperscale backend on Dataverse

This time around, the acceleration of low-code experiences for Dataverse apps will take a significant leap. Makers can now create reusable low-code business logic cataloged in Dataverse, making it discoverable and usable by other makers within the organization. These reusable actions can be integrated by copying Power Fx logic from canvas apps into Dataverse actions or by calling connector actions to execute external business logic. This innovation boosts the value of maker investments and ensures these actions are available across the entire Power Platform, enhancing collaboration and efficiency.

Data workspace

Enterprise data plays a crucial role in the adoption of copilot-enabled applications. Key features include:

• AI-Assisted Mapping: Simplifies integration of external data into Dataverse tables, enhancing data management.
• Seamless Data Migration: Includes standard dataflows and the ability to bypass business logic for faster migration.
• Simplified Data Import/Export: Integrates Fabric One Lake as a data source with a no ETL-no copy approach.
• Security and Compliance: Offers upgrades to Export to Data Lake, security role privileges, column-level security, and virus/malware scanning.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Modernizes app and data sharing, allowing system views to be shared with security roles.

These features streamline data integration, improve security, and facilitate collaboration, making the copilot journey smoother and more efficient.

Extend your copilots with knowledge and actions

Microsoft Dataverse enhances Copilot for Microsoft 365 and custom copilots from Microsoft Copilot Studio by using plugins for actions and grounding responses in enterprise knowledge sources.

Key Features:

• Plugins: Connect external systems, create specific instructions, and set up references. Use available plugins or create new ones with specific descriptions for Copilot.
• Prompts: Modify interactions by creating prompts that ground Dataverse data into Copilot.
• Knowledge Center: Centralize data sources across Dataverse, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Fabric, and integrate other sources like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk.

This setup improves response reliability, quality, and unlocks more value from enterprise data, making the copilot experience more comprehensive and tailored.

Improved enterprise experiences in Power Platform

Enhancing the experiences for creating apps, flows, and solutions through the use of templates and standard components, along with refining the methods for connecting, mapping, and utilizing data, will enable enterprise organizations to enjoy more enhanced interactions across Power Platform and Microsoft Dataverse.

Governance and administration:

Governance and administration continues to advance via tools and insights that empower Microsoft Power Platform admin to easily get their job done. This wave focuses on governing Copilot adoption and easily securing low-code assets, helping enterprises boost adoption of Microsoft Power Platform solutions in their organization while keeping their digital environment safe.

Application lifecycle management

IT administrators can utilize Power Platform's cohesive features for deploying solutions, managing versions, and orchestrating environments, which are vital for successful application lifecycle management. The platform enhances team collaboration, simplifies solution discovery and development, and supports a continuous improvement feedback loop, ensuring efficient and effective management of IT projects.

Enterprise scale administration

IT administrators can leverage a suite of tools to efficiently manage high volumes of Power Platform and Dynamics 365 assets. This approach streamlines environment management, supports systematic bulk governance, and provides built-in best practice recommendations for an optimized, secure, and compliant operational framework. Advanced automation tools, including API, PowerShell, Microsoft Power Platform CLI, and connectors, allow administrators to fully automate tasks, ensuring efficient manipulation and maintenance of extensive assets across the infrastructure.

Licensing and capacity

IT administrators benefit from detailed, transparent views of license and capacity usage, complete with clear monitoring and comprehensive insights. This includes visibility into Dynamics 365 and Power Platform licenses, their benefits, and effectiveness. Detailed reporting, easy navigation, and AI-powered analytics support informed decisions on resource allocation, policy setting, and cost-saving strategies. With granular control and proactive management capabilities, administrators can efficiently manage licenses across various business units, ensuring optimized utilization and preventing overuse.

Monitoring operational health

IT administrators can access a broad range of insights for effective governance across Power Platform and Dynamics 365. These insights include usage statistics, resource inventory, audit logs, performance, reliability, and other key indicators. With out-of-box reports and options to export data to alternate sources, administrators can robustly monitor and resolve issues. These capabilities empower IT administrators to proactively enhance operational health, ensuring optimal performance and alignment with business productivity goals.

Security and compliance

• Enterprise-Grade Protection: Admin tools for managing security at scale for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 assets.
• Data Protection: Secure guardrails and integrated solutions for safeguarding deployments.
• Interoperability: Enhanced security posture through integration with Microsoft solutions.
• Continuous Governance: Compliance with up-to-date regulations.
• Proactive Measures: Policies and guidelines for secure development.
• Security by Default: Scaled visibility and comprehensive auditing for end-to-end compliance. ###### Unified experience for Power Platform and finance and operations apps As part of the unification process, the environment for finance and operations apps is now integrated into Power Platform, allowing multiple Dynamics 365 applications (e.g., Sales, Marketing, finance and operations, apps, flows, and websites) to be installed and hosted within the same Power Platform environment using a Dataverse database.

Key Features:

• Consistent Lifecycle Operations: Provides a unified set of operations across all artifacts.
• Integrated Admin Experience: Combines user, administrative, and developer experiences for Power Platform and finance and operations apps.
• End-to-End Business Applications: Facilitates complete business application experiences for users, admins, and developers.

The 2024 release wave 2 for Microsoft Power Platform brings a multitude of new features and enhancements across its core applications, including Power BI, Power Apps, Power Pages, Power Automate, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and AI Builder. This wave focuses on improving user experiences, boosting productivity, and streamlining data integration and management through Microsoft Fabric. These updates ensure that users and organizations can leverage powerful tools for digital transformation, efficient decision-making, and seamless automation, positioning Microsoft Power Platform as a cornerstone for business innovation and operational excellence.

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[Kaaliyaan]

Usefull