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Another wave of Microsoft Power Platform released in 2024, helping businesses transform their operations effectively. This new Wave 2 release focuses on simplifying business operations and boosting productivity by providing exciting new features, upgrades, and enhancements. To enable users to work more efficiently, this release helps make business solutions smarter and more effective.
In today’s blog, we’ll explore the latest features and updates from the Power Platform’s release wave 2. We’ll highlight the key enhancements that could change how you work with this platform. Whether you’re just starting or are already familiar with this platform, these updates and tips will provide you with valuable insights to help you make the most of the Power Platform and keep up with the fast-evolving world of business technology.
Key Highlights of Microsoft Power Platform New Release
This release will primarily focus on improving user productivity and streamlining operations across diverse business applications using advanced AI and Microsoft Copilot technologies. It will also include intelligent automation, AI-powered insights, and immersive user experiences that are designed to eliminate barriers between data, insights, and individuals. More updated features include predictive analytics in supply chain management and autonomous financial processes.
Also Read: The Difference Between Power Apps and Traditional App Development
Starting in October 2024, you can look forward to new features and improvements coming to the Power Platform. These updates will be rolled out gradually until March 2025. All these new capabilities will help businesses to proactively address challenges and capitalize on opportunities.
What Features Should You Expect in Microsoft Power Platform Release Wave 2?
The new Wave 2 release includes hundreds of new features for all the major products of Microsoft Power Platform: Power Apps, Power BI, Power Pages, Power Automate, and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Not only this, but there are also updated features for AI Builder and Microsoft Dataverse as well.
To enable real-time data replication for analytics in the data lake, data integration—now known as Data Factory—will focus on expanding connectivity choices and improving its transformation library. Data integration and Power BI have now moved to Microsoft Fabric. With this shift, you can see how Power BI will continue to invest in satisfying customer requests while improving copilot experiences, enabling decision-making confidence at any scale and all organizational levels.
Let us now look at some of the significant improvements that this wave 2 release of the Power Platform brings:
1) Power Apps
Microsoft Power Apps will continue changing the game with their smart features. With Copilot, users can easily work with data, gain insights, and enhance their apps, making them more productive and efficient. Here are the updates that this release will bring:
- Canvas App Coauthoring – One of the main drawbacks of using PowerApps was that only one user could change the program at a time. There are situations when multiple app developers need to work simultaneously when working on large, complex applications to finish development quickly. This new release offers the Coauthoring feature, which now allows multiple users to work on the same project at once, to get around the single-user restriction.
- Canvas App Source Code – The newly introduced features will help you store files in a code repository, automate the generation of canvas apps, enhance the models for generative canvas applications, refactor canvas apps without the need for a designer, and natively integrate Git for the Power platform.
- Enhanced Power Platform Environment Settings App – Developed to replace the advanced settings pages of Dynamics 365, delivering a modern and user-friendly way of accessing and amending the environment settings.
- Model-Driven Apps: Grid Features – New grid features in model-driven apps make it easier for users to manage and interact with data. You can now group and summarize data, rearrange columns, adjust column widths, and more, all with just a few clicks.
- Customize Column Downloads on Mobile Devices – Table columns that are downloaded to mobile devices for offline use can be chosen; the fewer columns you choose, the faster the data downloads and the less mobile data is used.
- Show Recent and Pinned Records in the Multi-session Sitemap – This feature boosts user productivity by making it easier to access recent and pinned records in multi-session apps. Users can quickly return to frequently used records when opening the app or moving between single and multi-session modes, making their workflow smoother and more efficient.
- Select Records Faster with Look-up Control – This update improves Power Apps user productivity by enabling quicker record selection in look-up controls. Users can now press Enter to instantly select the first value in the dropdown menu while searching, eliminating the need for manual navigation. This streamlined interaction makes data entry more efficient and will be available to all users by default.
Creating Modern Apps
Build apps that are not only responsive and user-friendly, but also incorporate modern controls and work seamlessly offline.
| Feature | Enabled For | Public Preview | Early Access* | General Availability |
| Utilize the Environment Settings app for Power Platform. | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | Aug 2024 | Oct 2024 | |
| Make effective use of your data with the new grid features. | Users, automatically | Oct 2024 | ||
| Choose columns downloaded on mobile devices | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | – | Oct 2024 | |
| Create canvas apps by working together in real time | Users by admins, makers, or analysts | Jun 23, 2024 | Dec 2024 | |
| Hide the legacy app for admins | Users, automatically | Aug 12, 2024 | Oct 2024 | |
| Utilize model-driven apps’ updated, modern look | Users, automatically | Aug 12, 2024 | Oct 2024 | |
| Show recent and pinned records in the multi-session sitemap | Users, automatically | Aug 12, 2024 | Oct 2024 | |
| Allow users to resize side panes | Users, automatically | Aug 12, 2024 | Oct 2024 | |
| Update existing model-driven apps monthly | Users, automatically | Aug 12, 2024 | Oct 2024 | |
| Modern chart dialogs can be used instead of classic dialogs. | Users, automatically | Aug 12, 2024 | Oct 2024 | |
| Select records quickly with look-up control | Users, automatically | Aug 12, 2024 | Oct 2024 |
2) Power Automate
Power Automate continues to simplify the process of building flows using natural language and multi-modal generative AI capabilities across desktop and cloud flows, troubleshooting runs, and end-to-end estate management. Here are the other updates that this release will bring:
- AI Flows – Instead of creating a flow using traditional Cloud or Desktop Flow methods, an AI Flow is generated by simply describing what you want to accomplish. The AI then automatically creates an action plan, which you can review, adjust, and refine before putting it into action. When the plan is executed, the large language model (LLM) analyzes the available resources and selects the best steps to achieve your goal.
- Create Cloud Flows Right from Excel – Ready-built Cloud Flow templates will be made available from the Excel Automate tab, allowing users to easily develop automation without leaving Excel.
- Governance – You can mask sensitive data fields. Different organizations and other non-profit industries have sensitive data that you don’t necessarily want everyone who has access to those records to be able to see sensitive information especially if you have a high profile and sensitive data.
- Extend Cloud Flows Beyond the 30-Day Limit – A Cloud Flow used to be able to operate for up to 30 days before timing out. It was earlier possible to get around this by segmenting a process into several parts, but it will now be simpler to extend a procedure past the 30-day mark.
Also Read: Machine Learning with Power BI: Unlocking the Potential
3) Power Pages
For a low-code creator or professional developer, Power Pages will speed up the process of creating intelligent websites that revolutionize how you communicate with your partners, employees, and clients. The other updates are:
- File Upload Enhancements – This update allows for larger file uploads in SharePoint, making it easier to store and manage bigger files. You can now drag and drop files, scan them for malware, and customize the file upload process—all with a smoother and more user-friendly experience.
- Use Power Fx in Web Template Components – This update simplifies the process for teams to create and manage web templates within Power Pages Design Studio. With the use of low-code Power Fx, users can configure data easily, improving productivity and collaboration. Developers can create reusable components that work independently of data sources, while makers can link these components to data using Power Fx to tailor them to their needs. By separating development tasks, the process becomes faster and more efficient. Additionally, makers can assign dynamic parameters to web templates directly in the Design Studio using Power Fx.
- Use Contextual Copilot to add a Page to your Power Pages Site – With this update, makers can quickly create webpages by simply describing their requirements in everyday language. Copilot generates the page, significantly cutting down on time and effort. Built into Power Pages Design Studio, makers can review, modify, or discard the generated page, and easily customize it further using canvas controls. This feature streamlines the webpage creation process, making it more efficient and boosting overall productivity.
- Set up Microsoft Entra External ID with Wizard – The Entra External ID setup is now simpler and more efficient with an easy-to-use wizard built directly into Power Pages. This update removes the hassle of navigating through different interfaces, improving productivity and reducing mistakes. It offers customizable sign-in and registration pages, supports multi-factor authentication (MFA), and integrates with social identity providers like Google and Facebook, enhancing both security and user experience.
4) Microsoft Copilot Studio
Microsoft Copilot Studio enhancing Copilot features and IVR compatibility with Dynamics Customer Service and is expanding geographically to the UAE and Germany. The team is furthermore boosting governance and administration functionality and strengthening software lifecycle management capabilities with topic-level import/export and RBAC. The other updates that this release will bring are:
- Custom Copilot Insights – Makers can track their copilots’ performance using Copilot Studio’s analytics feature. Recognize the recurring topics in the queries that their users ask. Obtain a thorough understanding of user satisfaction. Watch the progress of your results and the most popular inquiries that produced no results. Learn how Microsoft controls and prohibits harmful searches to ensure the compliance of their copilots.
- Image Analysis – By providing more intelligent responses and extending the use cases of your unique copilots, image analysis empowers users and enhances the quality of their interactions. Copilot’s capacity to respond to visuals in addition to text. Upload the picture, let the copilot understand it, and get a receipt analysis.
- Suggested Prompts – One common problem with conversational AI solutions is that the copilot extension isn’t appreciated by end users. Suggested prompts will improve the Copilot Studio’s value proposition discovery right away. A Copilot maker can include suggested prompts that the copilot will support when they author their extension.
Transforming App Creation: Copilot for Power Apps Makers and Users
Makers and users can now leverage AI to create apps and add natural language to their app, increasing user productivity.
| Feature | Enabled For | Public Preview | Early Access* | General Availability |
| Use Copilot to create and modify apps in Power Apps Studio | Users by admins, makers, or analysts | Oct 15, 2023 | Oct 2024 | |
| Utilize Copilot to search and filter data in gallery | Users, automatically | Jul 29, 2024 | ||
| Use Copilot easily in canvas apps | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | Nov 2024 |
5) AI Builder
AI Builder is putting a lot of effort into improving Prompt Builder, which helps you create and use GPT prompts with your company’s data to make your flows, apps, data tables, and Copilots even better. It’s also introducing a new validation station for Intelligent Document Processing in Power Automate, along with ALM support and pre-built AI models for tasks like translation, classification, and detecting sensitive information. On top of that, AI governance is getting a boost with better capacity management, updated data policies, and the inclusion of AI Builder capacity in the Power Apps developer plan. Here are the additional updates that this release will bring:
- Better Access Control – Through the Power Platform Admin Center, administrators will now be able to manage who has access to AI capabilities across their tenants.
- Enhance GPT Prompts with Unstructured Data Knowledge – The new data grounding function in AI Builder prompts makes websites and documents much more effective when integrated with them. This feature enhances the AI’s capacity to deliver precise, pertinent, and knowledgeable responses, judgments, and content by enabling it to access a broader range of current and comprehensive company data.
- Incorporate Enterprise Knowledge into GPT Prompts with Dataverse – Companies can now integrate their specialized business data with GPT requests, allowing makers to customize GPT responses for their specific needs. This means you can use GPT to effectively summarize and classify data based on your unique business requirements.
- Use AI Builder within Developer Environments – Before committing to AI capacity, test out the features of AI Builder on development environments. Every month, 20,000 credits can be utilized in the developer environment.
6) Microsoft Dataverse
Microsoft Dataverse is improving the app-building experience by increasing productivity with Copilot, facilitating smooth connectivity with external data and knowledge sources, and incorporating Enterprise Copilot within Microsoft 365. These enhancements are designed to simplify development and make creating smarter, more efficient solutions easier. Here are the other updates that this release will bring:
- Power Platform Catalog enhancements – In addition to Power Apps and Power Automate, organizations can create and obtain additional specialized and helpful templates from the catalogue, which includes embedded experiences in Copilot Studio and Power Pages.
- Bypass business logic on data imports – Now, new configuration options on API headers are available to avoid workflow execution. This is for organizations that are looking to import data in bulk without triggering plugins.
7) Governance and Administration
Governance and administration continue to evolve with new tools and insights designed to simplify the work for Power Platform admins. This wave 2 release emphasizes better management of Copilot adoption and securing low-code assets. This makes it easier for organizations to adopt Power Platform solutions while ensuring their digital environment remains safe and secure.
Summary
The 2024 Wave 2 release focuses on fine-tuning existing features rather than introducing major new ones, with a strong emphasis on AI-driven technologies. We’re eager to explore and test these updates once they’re available. Here are the key dates to keep in mind: Early Access starts on July 29, 2024, and the general release will be on October 1, 2024.
We, at Cynoteck, are transforming business operations with Microsoft Power Platform products, driving innovation and automation across different industries. The latest updates in the Power Platform release wave will improve our ability to deliver top-notch services and solutions. These new features will enable us to boost your business’s efficiency and productivity, highlighting the Power Platform’s impact in driving your business success. If you want to discuss these updates or need help with the Wave 2 preview, feel free to reach out to us.
Microsoft Power Platform Consulting
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