Microsoft have just announced their plans for Wave 2’s updates to The Power Platform.
Almost all of these are background updates and additional features, meaning the only thing you need to do is kick back and read this article to understand all the new and exciting features that will soon be available at your fingertips…
We’ll be covering all the updates that are in the pipeline, as well as touching on a few points that have been added already that you may have missed.
These updates are designed to extend the existing functionality of your environment, save you time and make working within The Power Platform even easier than before.
Wave 2 isn’t just for the Power Platform though, Dynamics 365 is getting its own set of updates too.
As the Wave 2 updates are released slowly over a six month period, below we’ve categorized the updates so that you can see what’s currently available (try now) what is in the pipeline to be released in the near future (coming soon) and what’s scheduled for a little later on in the year (planned) so that you can get a grasp on what updates you will be seeing first, and what you will have to wait a little longer to get your hands on.
Try Now
Power Automate has the most live updates currently for Wave 2 with topics ranging from Desktop Flows, to Cloud Flows and everyone’s favourite subject at the moment… Copilot.
In Desktop Flows you can now via a Microsoft hosted machine. This means a VM can be spun up at the time of running the flow and you can monitor all runs in a new PAD dashboard. You also can group hosted machines and configure work queues so that said machines don’t trip over themselves.
In Cloud flows, you can monitor performance using a centralised consolidated view for cloud and desktop flow activities to understand the executions across cloud and desktop flows.
Coming Soon
You’ll soon be able to act on your data much more efficiently with new grid features in model-driven apps, meaning you’ll be able to complete other tasks with ease!
Admins will be able to hide the legacy app. The maker experience is being tweaked by modernizing security settings, you’ll be able to select records faster with look-up control and work cooperatively in real time to create a canvas app.
Finally, you’ll be able to select columns to download on mobile devices.
We all know Copilot is here to stay by now and that’s becoming very apparent in Power Apps as you’ll soon be able to use it to filter and search data in gallery.
Planned
Power Apps
- Use The Power Platform Environment Settings App to provide a more modern, accessible and secure settings management experience. This app is designed to provide a unified experience for your application developers.
- Act On Your Data Efficiently With New Grid features allowing you to group and aggregate data, reorder columns and complete other tasks with ease.
- Hide Legacy Apps For Admins ensuring that admins have the full product experience
- Select Columns Downloaded On Mobile Devices to allow you to access the columns whilst offline.
- Select Records Faster With Look-Up Controls giving you the power to quickly and easily accomplish tasks to make users more productive when entering data into their systems.
- Colab Together In Real Time To Create Canvas Apps: Historically you couldn’t edit an app at the same time as another user, however with co-authoring, makers can author and edit the app in real-time.
- Enhanced Delegation For to ensure that apps are more efficient and execute actions that affect more than 500 to 2,000 records correctly.
- Manage Your Source Code For Canvas Apps to give you the ability to maintain and work collaboratively your apps with full backups.
Power Pages
- Disable External Authentication Providers In Power Pages will give admins the ability to block certain external authentication providers in Power Pages websites in their tenants.
- Generate And Explain Power Fx Formulas Using Copilot to increase productivity for makers and developers authoring business logic and their Power Pages sites.
- Use Power Fx In Web Template Components To empower fusion teams in creating web templates as modular components. Pro-developers can create reusable components, while the makers can craft these components together to tailor specific needs.
- Experience Enhanced File Upload For Power Pages which has been implemented due to regular long-standing customer feedback. Files can now easily be dragged and dropped.
- Set Up Microsoft Entra External ID With Wizard which integrates directly within Power Pages, eliminating the need for navigating multiple interfaces.
- Understand, Protect, And Improve Website Security With Copilot by using a quick security posture summary providing users with suggested actions & configuring security stings.
- Use AI Moderator For Community template to enhance moderator efficiency whilst improving the user experience. The AI moderator reduces manual moderation requirements, allowing you to see user engagement and retention increases.
- Use AI Search In the Community Template to allow users to quickly find the information they need saving time and effort.
- Use AI Thread summarisation In The Community Template to navigate through multiple pages of responses. This is designed to boost user engagement and user retention.
Power Automate
- Run A cloud Flow For More Than 30 Days Per Invocation
- Be More Productive with Power Automate and Excel Desktop by using the new automate work button in Excel online. Automate repetitive tasks and reduce errors in just a few clicks!
- Create Power Automate Flows In Excel using the automate tab in Excel. Power Automate simplifies the automation of tasks and processes from Excel, an addition that will help millions of people.
- Connect Your Own Virtual Network With Hosted Machine Groups in order to execute RPA jobs with computing power that scales with your demand.
- Monitor And Manage Automations And Related Assets will provide in depth monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities for both experienced makers and citizen developers
- Use Copilot To Analyse Cloud Flows by asking question in natural language to determine a deeper understanding of your cloud flow trends.
- Use Copilot To Analyse Desktop Flow Runs by using this comprehensive automation monitoring you can maximise high-impact desktop flow automations
- Use Copilot To Analyse Work Queue Data to enhance processing, resiliency and understand and prevent SLA breaches.
- Use Copilot To Ask Power Automate Product Questions like conditions, approvals and flow recovery.
- Use Copilot To analyse Automation Activity reducing the need to build and deploy custom reports with a predefined set of queries. You’ll be able to use Copilot to unlock the insights you may not have seen otherwise.
- Scale Faster with Power Automate a lightweight version of the original Process Mining app, this allows users to discover inefficiencies in processes and improve their effectiveness
So What Does All Of This Mean For My Organisation?
Well, it means that there are going to be some minor tweaks to the abilities that sit within the Power Platform that will change the scope of what’s possible in a given time frame.
You’ve obviously seen a heavy focus on Copilot, which is being brought to the forefront of organizations so that processes are made more efficient, and issues are resolved in a more timely manner.
However, all of these updates will mean different things depending on how you approach them. To take onboard Copilot, and work with it and evolve the way you work, time saving could be only the tip of the iceberg. But… obviously if you don’t use some of the new features, not much will change except a few extra buttons on your screen.
If you’ve any questions on how this will impact your organization, or perhaps would like a demonstration on how to best use some of the new features, then please feel free to get in touch below.