In this article we explain and discuss some of the new features coming to the Power Platform this release. Microsoft commits to updating the Microsoft Power Platform twice a year, once in April and once in October. During these updates’ users get a host of usability and performance updates as well as new features. All these updates are free for users and will become generally available over the coming months.
This year the updates are generally available on the 2nd of October.
Power Platform updates
Microsoft Power Platform enables users and organizations to analyse, act, and automate on the data to digitally transform their businesses. Microsoft Power Platform today comprises four products: Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. It also has two add-ons: AI Builder and Power Apps portals.
Some of the major updates include:
- Power BI is more powerful and intelligent than ever. Power BI Desktop has a host of new authoring and permissioning features that help enterprises manage access and content. New Power BI mobile capability for the iPad experience. Power BI Service integrates with Azure Synapse to automatically create and manage materialized views on larger Power BI models as well as enhanced integration with SharePoint lists to build additional custom reports.
- Power Apps continues to focus development on making app creation more accessible than ever, while also adding more advanced capability for developers. A new feature coming in this release is the ability to create Power Apps within Microsoft Teams. Microsoft has also improved the AI builder and is seeing high usage of Power Apps portals as they continue to build out the newer features. Users will also be able to create, edit, send, and reply to emails using the Power Apps mobile app for both canvas and model-driven apps.
- Power Automate is seeing more connectivity and strong ability to update and automate a wide range of applications. This new version of Power Automate will offer customers a way to automate everything from Office apps to legacy terminal applications that haven’t been updated in decades. In addition, there are further enhancements coming to automated flows running in the cloud, including richer automation and approval experiences.
- With the Microsoft Teams integration also comes Amazon Alexa integration. Power Virtual agent chatbots can now be integrated with Amazon Alexa, allowing voice interactions via any Amazon Alexa powered devices.
For full documentation on all of the updates made, please see the Power Platform release notes here
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