What’s new: Power Apps August 2023 Feature Update

Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share a summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place. We’ve got a great set of updates across for our makers, security and monitor improvements, and updates to model driven apps for end users.

We are continuing to improve and simplify the platform, with updates in Trust, Maker and End User Productivity as well as new video and doc contents to help you adopt and optimize Power Apps within your organization.

Trust

• General Availability of Access Check to view all users who have access to a record.
• Monitor for model-driven apps is back!

Maker Productivity

• New Power Apps home page now generally available with expanded Copilot access
• Introducing new ways of creating tables
• Power Platform as Connected Service for Visual Studio is Generally Available

End User Productivity

• Model-driven app Aug 2023 monthly release

Trust

General Availability of Access Check to view all users who have access to a record.

We are happy to announce that you can see all the users who have access to a record. This allows you to view who you have shared your record with and who has access to your record from their security role assignment. The feature is being rolled out and will be available globally by end of September.

Being able to view all users who have access to your record allows you to improve your collaboration experience and to reduce support calls. This feature is enabled in your environments by-default so your users can find out who are their colleagues that they have shared their records.

The following are the two Organization Settings that are enabled by-default. You can reset these settings to better fit your business needs:

1. IsAccessCheckerAllUsersEnabled: This allows the admin to see who has access to the record.
2. IsAccessCheckerNonAdminAllUsersEnabled: This allows the admin, owner of the record, and users who have access to the record to see who has access.

Learn more at Check your user access and permissions – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Monitor for model-driven apps is back!

Recently Monitor for model-driven apps was temporarily disabled due to issues. We are excited to announce that the team worked hard to get your favorite debugging tool back up and running.

As part of this, we brought the Collaborative debugging feature to model-driven apps where it was previously only available for canvas apps. Now you can invite users to join a monitoring session by clicking “Invite” and monitor another user’s model-driven app session in a secure channel by clicking “Connect user”. Your data stays isolated between the user and the monitor owner(s).

Most of your experience will remain the same. However, previously you might have been generating links by clicking on “play model driven app” and using that link to monitor other user’s sessions. This will not work anymore as “play model driven app” generates a monitor enabled Model driven app link for your session. You can still use “Play model driven app” to monitor your own session. A session is a launching of the model-driven app using your authenticated user credentials tied to the Monitor tool. One key change is that the monitor link is now specific to a user and a warning message will indicate that the app was not able to connect to the Monitor session. The events generated by this app will not be streamed to Monitor

Learn more at Debug a model-driven app with Monitor – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Maker Productivity

New Power Apps home page now generally available with expanded Copilot access

The new Power Apps home page is now generally available for all users. The new home page features a modern design that offers an intuitive and user-friendly experience. The new layout showcases the latest AI Copilot app creation flow, plus simplified “Start from” options, making it easier than ever for you to start creating apps to solve your business needs. Whether you are new to Power Apps or an experienced maker, you will find the new home page convenient for your app development journey.

Also, if we detect that a user will run into issues to complete a Copilot app setup, they will be prompted to confirm that we can finish deploying the table and app in their own environment. If the user doesn’t already have a personal developer environment, a new developer environment will automatically be created to support the generation of the table and app.

Learn more at New Power Apps home page now generally available with expanded Copilot access | Microsoft Power Apps

Introducing new ways of creating tables

You can now create tables with more versatile options including conversation-based table creation and one-click table upload from your Excel file, both powered by Copilot when Copilot is enabled in your environment.

Learn more at Introducing new ways of creating tables | Microsoft Power Apps

Power Platform as Connected Service for Visual Studio is Generally Available

We have added Power Platform support for Visual Studio!

You can create a custom connector to your Power Platform environment from within Visual Studio and quickly build, test and debug your API using a Power App front end.

Once you are ready you can publish the final connector by using a Visual Studio Publish Profile.

Learn more at Power Platform as Connected Service for Visual Studio is Generally Available | Power Platform Developer Blog (microsoft.com)

End User Productivity

Model-driven app Aug 2023 monthly release

In this month’s release, model-driven apps have added the modern app side pane tabs and modern multi-session tabs. This builds on the experience outlined in modern, refreshed look. We also changed the parameter for testing channel upcoming channels to use a simpler format.

Learn more at Monthly release 2309 – Release Notes | Microsoft Learn

We’ve also released new, and made updates to some of our documentation – see a summary before of some of the key updates: 

For Admins	Set up Application Insights with Power Automate (preview) (new) Conversation diagnostics in Azure Application Insights (preview) (new) Tutorial: Allocate add-ons to environments (preview) (new) Power Platform white papers (new) Power Platform licensing FAQs (updates) Licensing overview for Microsoft Power Platform (updates) Connector classification (updates) Capacity add-ons for Power Apps and Power Automate (updates) Set up inventory components (updates) Tenant-level analytics (updates) Administrator analytics and reports for Microsoft Power Apps (updates) View analytics for Power Automate cloud flows (updates) View analytics for Power Automate desktop flows (updates) Power Platform URLs and IP address ranges (updates) Use Word templates to create standardized documents (updates) Get Help + Support in Power Platform (updates) Migrate from BYOK to self-managed key with Power Platform (updates) Manage feature settings (updates) Manage application users in the Power Platform admin center (updates) Control environment creation and management (updates) Manage group teams (updates) Create a team template and add to an entity form (updates) Export data to Application Insights (updates) Secure the default environment (updates) Migrate apps and flows from the default environment (new) Center of Excellence (CoE) (August release, updates) Use core components (updates) Frequently asked questions (updates) Extend and customize CoE Starter Kit components (updates) Compliance and Adoption with the CoE Power BI dashboard (updates) Govern with the CoE Power BI dashboard (updates) Monitor with the CoE Power BI dashboard (updates) Nurture with the CoE Power BI dashboard (updates) CoE Power BI Dashboard (updates) Collect audit logs using an HTTP action (updates) Set up inventory components (updates) Set up the Power BI dashboard (updates) Set up the CoE Starter Kit (updates) Theming components (updates)
For Makers	Add Copilot to model-driven apps (preview) (new) Continue editing your app with Copilot (preview) (new) Use modern themes in canvas apps (preview) (new) FAQ for Copilot in model-driven apps (new) FAQ for continue to edit your app with Copilot (new) FAQ for Copilot control in canvas apps (new) Add Copilot control to a canvas app (preview) (updates) Create and edit elastic tables (preview) (updates) System requirements, limits, and configuration values for Power Apps (updates) Debug a model-driven app with Monitor (updates) Collaborative troubleshooting using Monitor (updates) Create a blank canvas app from scratch (updates) Create a canvas app from scratch using Microsoft Dataverse (updates) Add a screen using screen layouts (updates) Set up the timeline control (updates) Get started with Power Apps (updates) Build apps through conversation (preview) (updates) Set up the timeline control (updates) Model-driven app frequently asked questions (updates) Solutions overview (updates) Import solutions (updates) HTML text control in Power Apps (updates) Explore data on a grid page (updates) Reporting overview for model-driven apps (updates) Text input control in Power Apps (updates) Manage data retention policies (preview) (updates) Optimize images for upload (updates) Known issues with custom pages in a model-driven app (updates) Microsoft Stream video control in Power Apps (updates) Add or remove forms, views, or charts (updates) Create and design model-driven app forms (updates) Design a Power Apps canvas app by using Figma (new)
For Users	Use timeline (updates) Embed a model-driven app as tab app in Teams (preview) (updates) Troubleshoot issues in the Power Apps mobile app (updates) Frequently asked questions about Dataverse search (updates) Use model-driven apps in the Power Apps mobile app (updates) Optimize images for upload (updates) Explore data on a grid page (updates) Modern, refreshed look for model-driven apps (updates)
For Developers	Power Apps Test Engine overview (preview) (new) Power Apps Test Engine YAML format (preview) (new) Power Apps Test Engine Power Fx functions (preview) (new) August Power Platform CLI command reference update Fixed build issues for all Power Apps component framework samples Dependent Assembly plug-ins (preview) (updates) AppSidePane (Client API reference) (updates) pac admin (updates) Use FetchXML aggregation (updates) Query data using the Web API (updates) addPreSearch (Client API reference) (updates) Analyze plug-in performance (updates) Event framework (updates) Troubleshoot Dataverse plug-ins (updates)

Please continue sending us your feedback on features you would like to see in Power Apps. We hope that you enjoy the update!