Easy Power Apps collaboration with multiplayer apps

Efficient communication is the cornerstone of every successful business. At the Ignite virtual conference, collaboration themes formed the cornerstone of Microsoft’s vision for business apps including Satya’s keynote and Charles’s and Ryan’s sessions.

Our ultimate goal is to help our end users accomplish their tasks faster and be more productive in apps they are in.  Whether you prefer email or chat for work communication, our vision is to allow more seamless discussion, sharing and updating of your business data inside of Teams, Outlook and other Office apps.

And in November, we are taking the first step towards our vision.  Power Apps model-driven apps will help you connect with the right people quickly by showing you who’s available and who’s currently working on a record.  We are making sharing simpler by aligning the UI to what Microsoft Office users are accustomed to.

Whether you need to discuss the work with a colleague who doesn’t have access to a specific record yet, or find someone in the know, the new features allow you to accomplish your work more quickly and asynchronously.

Multiplayer apps

Co-presence shows you who is looking at the current record by showing their avatar in the top right corner of the command bar, just like Office apps do:

Clicking on the avatar allows you to see that person’s online presence, as well as start an email or a chat with them.

App users, such as the record owner, are displayed with their picture and on-line status. During the preview period this feature will be extended to user lookups and grid user columns.

Sharing

Links to records can be shared easily via the “Share” button in the top right corner of the command bar:

Copying the link allows you to easily paste it into any app.

This feature will be expanded during the preview period to allow copy-pasted shared links to give read-only access to the record to people who click on the link, allowing more streamlined collaboration with people outside of your team.

For more details, including how to enable the preview of collaboration features, see our docs.

Let us know in the comments if this will help you with your apps and what scenarios are you looking to unlock with easier collaboration.