What’s new: Power Apps April 2024 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. This month we’ve got a great set of updates for Makers, Admins, and users across Power Apps, Dataverse and Copilot.

Trust

• Delete stub, unlicensed or removed Microsoft Entra group users from a Dataverse environment Public preview
• Trust Microsoft Copilot with your Power Platform and Dynamics 365 data – Power CAT Live
• Power Platform admins can now assign licenses via Intelligent Recommendations – now in public preview!

Maker Productivity

• AI in Action: Powering Up with AI Series
• Build a Podcast Copilot with .NET and Power Apps
• Importing Managed Solutions – What has changed to the Upgrade verses Update Process?
• Introducing new Copilot features for Power Fx
• Power Fx: Column names escape double quotes
• Easier than ever experience to import data from SharePoint List

Trust

Delete stub, unlicensed or removed Microsoft Entra group users from a Dataverse environment Public preview

To comply with your security privacy and data retention policy, you can now delete disabled status stub, unlicensed or removed Microsoft Entra group users from your environment. Stub users are created when you import them from another system during migration. These users are created in Dataverse with a disabled status. When an active Microsoft Entra ID user loses their license, their user status is set to disabled. And when a user is removed from the Microsoft Entra group which is tied to the environment, the user’s status is also set to disabled. These disabled status users can remain in the environment forever. You can now delete disabled status stub users individually or in bulk and delete unlicensed or removed Microsoft Entra group users in bulk.

Learn more at Delete stub, app, and non-security group users | Microsoft Learn

Trust Microsoft Copilot with your Power Platform and Dynamics 365 data – Power CAT Live

How does Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Copilot for Power Platform ensure your data stays safe when you build experiences? James Oleinik elaborates on how Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles ensure that business data, accessed in the user’s context, remains secure within the Microsoft Cloud Trust boundary and is not used to retrain the AI model. Discover how Copilot enables users to interact with business data securely, supports regulatory compliance, and learn about the measures taken by Microsoft to ensure that Copilot is safe for your employees and your data.

Power Platform admins can now assign licenses via Intelligent Recommendations – now in public preview!

Intelligent recommendations will provide an admin with user recommendations in their organization who would benefit from having a Power Apps license (Power Automate will also be a part of this starting early next year). This feature will be integrated in Power Platform Admin Center and will allow Power Platform admins the ability to assign licenses, both individually and via security groups!

Learn more at Power Platform admins can now assign licenses via Intelligent Recommendations – now in public preview! | Microsoft Power Apps

Maker Productivity

AI in Action: Powering Up with AI Series

This video series showcases the capabilities of AI Builder, GPT and Copilot through tutorials and real-life use cases.

Learn more at  AI in Action: Powering Up with Power Automate Series – YouTube

Build a Podcast Copilot with .NET and Power Apps

Explore the integration of the Power Platform with advanced AI models and .NET to create a dynamic podcast application in this three part series.

Learn more at Build a Podcast Copilot with .NET and Power Apps: Setting up the Azure OpenAI Service | Microsoft Learn

Importing Managed Solutions – What has changed to the Upgrade verses Update Process?

When deploying managed solutions to Power Platform, there are multiple options you can choose from. In this episode of the Low Code Revolution, Scott Durow is joined by Shan McArthur who explains when to use each option, the differences between them, and some changes being rolled out that you may not be aware of.

Learn more at Importing Managed Solutions – What has changed to the Upgrade verses Update Process? | Microsoft Learn

Introducing new Copilot features for Power Fx

Power Apps, a powerful low-code platform from Microsoft, empowers users to create custom applications without extensive coding knowledge. One of the key features in Power Apps is Power Fx, a formula language designed for building rich apps. While Power Fx is a powerful tool, users often face challenges such as complexity, error handling, and lack of natural language explanation. To address these challenges, we are excited to announce the release of two new Copilot features: Explaining a Formula and Generating Power Fx from Natural Language.

Learn more at Introducing new Copilot features for Power Fx | Microsoft Power Apps

Power Fx: Column names escape double quotes

With Studio version 3.24042, rolling out to Preview this week, we are making a small syntax change to how column names are specified in some function arguments.  Today they need to be wrapped in double quotes as a text string, but tomorrow they will not.  The functionality of these functions is not changing in any way.  We will automatically update the syntax in existing apps to reflect the new syntax – all existing apps will continue to operate as they do today.  The change makes these functions consistent with other uses of column names, easier to use by no longer requiring logical names, and consistent with other Power Fx 1.0 hosts such as Copilot Studio, Power Automate Desktop, and Cards that have been using this new syntax for the last year.

Learn more at Power Fx: Column names escape double quotes | Microsoft Power Apps

Easier than ever experience to import data from SharePoint List

We are excited to announce the public preview of easier than ever import from SharePoint List experience. You can easily transform your SharePoint Lists into Dataverse Tables and Copilot ready canvas apps in a single experience. Moreover, when Copilot is enabled, it will assist with your table creation by providing the best fitting table names, descriptions, along with selecting appropriate column data types based on the list data.  This makes it possible to bring your own data to the platform and establish your business apps in just a few clicks.

Learn more at Easier than ever experience to import data from SharePoint List | Microsoft Power Apps

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	Enable cross geo solution deployments (new) Change the base currency for an environment (new) Default OrgDBOrgSettings for server-side synchronization (updated) Power Platform licensing FAQs (updated) Set up Microsoft Entra Conditional Access (updated) Responding to Data Subject Rights (DSR) requests to delete customer data (updated) Responding to Data Subject Rights (DSR) requests for Power Apps customer data (updated) Responding to Data Subject Rights (DSR) requests to export Power Apps customer data (updated) Environment groups (preview) (updated) Back up and restore environments (updated) Tenant settings (updated) Migrate from BYOK to self-managed key with Power Platform (updated) Turn on copilots and generative AI features (updated) Data storage and governance in Power Platform (updated) Power Platform URLs and IP address ranges (updated) Managed Environments overview (updated) Manage feature settings (updated) Configure Dataverse search to improve search results and performance (updated) AsyncOperationBase table storage (updated) Power Platform security FAQs (updated) Block cookie replay attacks in Dataverse (updated) FAQ for Copilot data security and privacy for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform (updated) Use Power Platform Advisor (updated) Responding to DSR requests for Microsoft Dataverse customer data (updated) Safeguarding Dataverse sessions with IP cookie binding (updated) Administer Microsoft Power Platform (updated) Use service admin roles to manage your tenant (updated) Overview of tools and apps used for ALM in Power Platform (updated) Manage Power Apps licenses in your organization (updated) Troubleshoot user access issues for different environments (updated) Environment routing (preview) (updated) Create a team template to control access rights for automatically created teams (updated) View license consumption for Power Apps and Power Automate (preview) (updated) Miscellaneous privileges (updated) Regional and language options for your environment (updated) ALM Accelerator for Power Platform (updated) Delete stub users from an environment (preview) (new) Delete unlicensed or removed Microsoft Entra group users (preview) (new) Manage your customer-managed encryption key in Power Platform (updated)
For Makers	Connection references: Known issues and add FAQs (update) Add copilot for app users in model-driven apps (update) Choose finance and operations data in Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse (update) Salesforce virtual table data provider (new) Add copilot for app users in model-driven apps (updated)
For Users	Copilot assistance for form fill in model-driven apps (updated) Use Copilot chat in model-driven apps (updated) Draft well-written, input text with Copilot (preview) (updated) Mobile offline for canvas apps (updated)
For Developers	Tracing and logging (updated) Build and package plug-in code (updated) Deploy pipelines as a service principal or pipeline owner (GA release) Long-term data retention (updates) Use SQL to query data (updates) Available GitHub Actions for Microsoft Power Platform development (updates) Use Insomnia with Dataverse Web API (new) Custom column analyzers for Dataverse Search (new)

 

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