Microsoft Power Platform: 2022 Release Wave 2 top capabilities
Communications Pangea | September 13, 2022 | Power Platform | Release wave | 7min read
The second release wave of the year is coming! Microsoft has released its new plans with several improved updates available from October 2022 through March 2023 for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and industry clouds. In this news, you’ll find the most crucial highlights for Microsoft Power Platform solutions:
Understanding the robotic process automation increased usage, Power Automate adds new capabilities to ease the machine management in Azure and your users’ and accounts’ credentials. Therefore, Microsoft simplifies the Power Automate deployments automation while enhancing:
Application lifecycle management (ALM)
Cloud and desktop flow for users of every skill level
Productivity by automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks.
Power Automate essential highlights
Cloud flows:
Quickly send flows with a shareable link or in Teams with personalized messages to ease flow usage for team members
Improved data privacy and data protection with each customer’s encryption keys in Azure Key Vault to encrypt all Power Automate’s customer data
Makers can create more complex workflows in Teams and Power Automate flows and define approvals at different levels or stages
Get automatic connection reference creation and selection with enhanced control for cloud flow authors
A new expression editor to add dynamics values within the same tab and build multiline expressions in the editing experience.
Improved expression editor screen | Image taken from Microsoft
Desktop flows:
Enhanced hosted machine groups with automatic Intune enrollment and virtual network set up to access on-premise resources securely
Dynamically scale up/down the virtual machine employed to run automations and quickly run desktop flows with entirely managed virtual machines
Easily create UI elements selectors to capture elements accurately
Enable desktop flow signing and signature verification before they’re stored in Microsoft Dataverse and reach more trust with cloud storage and flow orchestration
Quickly fix runtime errors with improved error messages for UI, Excel, Web, and mouse and keyboard actions
More straightforward UI elements selector editing with faster UI automation for design and runtime
Increase the desktop automations speed and facilitate its usage with the new SharePoint actions in Power Automate.
SharePoint actions within Power Automate’s action list | Image taken from Microsoft
Power BI
This Microsoft Power Platform solution improves the creation experience with Office, enables dataset web authoring, and enhances Metrics focused on business needs and integration with Viva Goals. Additionally, big data experience is elevated through:
Automatic aggregations
Query scale out
Data protection capabilities (through DLP)
Improved visibility into activity to admins.
Power BI essential highlights
Power BI Premium:
Businesses can choose between per capacity and per user capacity licensing options with flexible licensing models
Forget about workload spikes and capacity utilization by harnessing the Microsoft-owned resource management
Stop worrying about drops in performance while scaling beyond resource capacity and using pay-as-you-go pricing
Get operational reporting and distribution to distribute pixel-perfect reports easily
Allow customers to control and protect their sensitive data with data protection enhancements for information protection, cloud app security, and threat protection
Users can unlock several datasets for real-time, interactive analysis with hybrid tables that combine the DirectQuery capabilities with the VertiPaq in-memory caches performance
Log Analysis Services engine events to Log Analytics with Power BI Premium workspaces to provide insights into performed activities against the Power BI datasets for reports, refreshes, and ad-hoc queries.
Workspace configuration for Azure Log Analytics | Taken from Microsoft
Power BI Pro:
A new Power BI quick create SDK allows third parties to add an experience like the quick visualize options added to Dynamics and SharePoint lists
Improved Get data experience to produce content efficiently and successfully for Power BI self-service and pro users
Users can now work and collaborate simultaneously, adding new columns or measures to an existing dataset, editing the RLS of the model, and editing the format strings
Users will be able to choose which file type should be downloaded, save or download datasets and reports in different configurations
The visual format pane is now available in the mobile layout view so report creators can design reports and format visuals optimized for the mobile layout
Get quick automatic reports for users based on their data with the Power BI report authoring.
Quick create experiences for datasets | Taken from Microsoft
Power Apps*
Businesses can manage, enable, and support citizen development through all the organizations with Power Apps’ expanded governance capabilities. Makers and users can leverage rich data experiences and increase productivity when working together, benefiting from out-of-the-box collaboration capabilities. They will also get:
Modern experiences to manage and build data and logic
Support development with infused intelligence
Optimize user experiences and enrich data.
Power Apps essential highlights
Collaborative workloads:
Access related records in the grid while improving productivity and acquiring more meaningful insights into your data
Create robust personal views with the placeholder text updates and the quick saving of find filters as a view
Access any table with a modern advanced find in a model-driven app and explore the data easily while gaining more productivity
Easily explore the data with just a few clicks, thanks to the Power BI automatic visual generation
Makers can work on related records with additional features and can now build complex multi-entity forms in model-driven apps
Quickly start multiple chats on Teams with colleagues working on the same record without leaving your model-driven app and easily find existing chats related to a record
Enhance the user experience with the in-app notification, where the client toasts and the in-app notification toasts are shown in a single toast stack.
Client-side toasts within the toast stack | Taken from Microsoft
Every system connected:
Have an easy and efficient app-building experience with Dataverse tables within Power Apps Studio to update or create data and metadata
Quickly configure mobile offline for custom pages to help further enable mobile scenarios
Easily connect different data sources (e.g., Excel, SQL Server) with Microsoft Dataverse and interact with external data seamlessly.
Creating a table with a tabular connector | Taken from Microsoft
Fusion of components, composition, and collaboration:
Get more extended custom pages with more tools to create responsive layouts effortlessly while keeping the canvas apps precision
Users can now include links, lists, and other rich text in appointment descriptions
Add and join Teams meetings in your model-driven app within a single click to save time
Enhance productivity with improved link sharing and link copying with the new share button
View colleagues’ availability in multiple places in all model-driven apps.
Persona control in lookup and owner field | Taken from Microsoft
Power Virtual Agents
With the latest release wave, Power Virtual Agents allows everyone in your business to create robust custom bots with a simple, code-free graphical interface. Additionally, this solution enhances the authoring experience with:
Commenting and Power Pages integration
Data loss prevention options
Proactive bot update messaging in Teams.
Power Virtual Agents essential highlights
Bot configuration:
Bots can use AI natural language features with simple topics from a website to speed up your initial development time
Bot authors can now add processing logic at crucial events within a bot
Perform data management tasks and system integration with an extensive range of authoring personas that author low-code expressions
Reduce the needed time for inputting long multi-character sequences by enabling voice customers to answer bot questions with their phone keypads using multi-digit DTMF inputs
Bots can reach users and notify them of daily health check-ins reminders or when a time-off request is approved.
Core authoring:
Service and runtime:
Deliver a more natural experience with optimized text and speech talk track experiences
Bot authors can now create interactive and actionable rich media content with Adaptive Cards
Improve specific customer scenarios by creating bots with better customization using list variables and looping in conversations.
Design bots in new locations, meeting specific needs and scenarios while growing your business.
Power Pages
Get additional capabilities to work with lists and forms with the design studio and extra solution templates. Leverage more out-of-the-box functionalities to support no-code and low-code development and professional developers. Admins can improve administration and governance with their Power Pages sites, and Professional developers will also experience improvements to do more with the sites with:
Microsoft Power Platform CLI tool
Visual Studio Code.
Power Pages essential highlights
Administration and governance:
Template hub and prebuilt templates:
Efficiently configure, manage, and maintain websites with improved features for administration and governance
View capacity consumption reports, website details, and more site information from the Power Platform admin center
Identify and solve common website issues with the self-service diagnostic tools (e.g., portal checker)
Restrict access by IP address, configure integration with other services, enable maintenance mode, and more admin options.
Makers can easily create websites with different Dynamics 365 website templates within the template hub while extending their Dynamics 365 apps to enable user-facing functionality
Get two prebuilt site templates and a blank starter canvas to create new sites within the template hub.
Design studio:
Configure and build advanced customizations for basic forms in the Power Pages design studio
Get additional capabilities within the Learn hub experience to access video tutorials and guided learning about Power Pages
Style and configure advanced customizations of data grid components within the design studio.
Adding a metadata filter to a data grid on a website in design studio | Taken from Microsoft
General availability of the 2022 release wave 2: October 1, 2022.
*Some mentioned features for Microsoft Power Apps can be enabled for testing in your environment starting August 1, 2022
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