In the following blog post, Erin Dominguez highlights new features coming to Power Platform in the 2022 Wave 1 Release.
In 2022 the Power Platform brings us new and exciting updates to enhance Maker and end-user experiences. The Power Platform features Power BI, Power Apps, Power Apps portals, Power Automate, and the two complementary tools, Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder. The 2022 Wave 1 release features better experiences with third-party applications, data versatility improvements, and strong enhancements to governance and security. The Power Platform was built to empower individuals, teams, and organizations for full scalability- meaning the platform could be leveraged for an independent Maker’s day-to- day processes or for an organizational-wide process improvement.
The following updates will be enabled for general availability on April 1st, 2022, but will begin in North America on Friday, April 22nd. You can view Microsoft’s regional deployments schedule here.
Microsoft continues to make it easier and more accessible for companies to become data-driven organizations through data reporting improvements, accessibility, and enhancements. Power BI features two enhanced licensing options, the first one being Power BI Pro and the other being Power BI Premium. Power BI Pro licenses a single Maker to create advanced custom reports, whereas Power BI Premium licenses a specific piece of reporting end-users can view without additional spending. The typical update themes among the wave one release for 2022 are within data sources and connection, data protection, and usability of Power BI. We see many updates across both licensing models that enhance data versatility and accessibility.
Power Query is a tool that allows you to grab data from sources and prepare it for transformation elsewhere. This tool was created to process large amounts of data to compliment digital data transformation within businesses. In the 2022 Wave One Release, you can expect to see greater accessibility with the addition of Query M formula language, better experiences in paginated reports, and the ability to access even more paginated reports through the extension of data sources. Paginated reports are report versions that Makers and Authors have designated as ready to print or share across end-users.
The Power BI service has always prided itself on digesting data and converting it into a source of truth for users. This has become even easier with these four additions for report users:
One enhancement that Power Apps admins and Center of Excellence (CoE) owners see is the ability to quarantine non-compliant Power Apps. The CoE starter kit includes various admin flows and compliance checks that allow admins to monitor their citizen developers and pro developers within their environments. The added ability to quarantine apps can now control user access for non-compliant power apps. Makers will bring apps into compliance through Power Apps studio, and admins can modify and view them through the admin center or power shell. As citizen development and pro developers continue to leverage the platform in any business, it becomes more and more critical to put guard rails in place within your tenant.
SharePoint users can now connect to Power Automate for Desktop. This update features gives users the ability to embed SharePoint actions into desktop automation. Makers can now run desktop automation that loops over SPO lists and allows them to write into SAP and use other actions from SharePoint itself.
To follow the trend of offline and online capabilities across other Power Platform products, we see added security measures within Azure Key Vault. This is no doubt an addition to enhancing the Power Platform’s security levels. We can expect to see more online and offline capabilities and enhancements through the added security layers in the future.
The biggest change we see is through enhancements in co-authoring. Microsoft has added the ability to start bot conversations with proactive triggers. This means that PVAs can now begin conversations based on statements that are typed and not just questions. This will all allow builders to offer more pro-proactive customer service based on keywords. We see an additional enhancement to connectors as well. Authors and Makers will now be able to connect to more custom connectors, but also be able to leverage these connections within PVA instead of having to write flows from Power Automate. This will reduce latency and increase Maker productivity. The final update to the authoring experience comes in the form of Microsoft Teams. Through PVA’s we can now automatically send Teams messages to channels through a Power Automate workflow. This will increase the response time from your customer service teams while also improving collaboration and streamlining communication into a centralized location.
Data accessibility and security are at the forefront of the wave one release changes. Dataverse now had integrations within Microsoft Search to create a cohesive data search experience. Dynamics 365 federations allows businesses to help search users find, learn, and navigate more business data information easily through this connection. Makers also see an additional dual-write improvement within UI. They will find enhance mapping, error detection, and more actionable error and status information for troubleshooting. Lastly, we see stronger capabilities to register, scan, label, auto-classify, and set data protection policies within Dataverse.
AI Builder is the Power Platforms tool to compliment AI models to transform your business processes. This tool can be utilized within Power Apps and Power Automate to transform and automate data without using data science or advanced coding skills. The two focuses within AI Builder’s wave one updates are document processing and AI model ops.
Confidence scores enhance the AI Builder experience to ensure that the Maker is accurately mapping the information and data collection behind the scenes within AI Builder. There are times within AI Builder where the documents are not correctly mapped, or we see low probability scores of data connection. Makers will now be able to access their training wizard to correct information and perform maintenance efficiently and in a timely manner.
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